EM - February/March 2012 - (Page 35)

Life 1 Is the future green? Electricity Abroad Health & Habitat, page 34 New resolutions for fitness in 2012 Health & Habitat, page 31 35 February/March 2012 www.esb.ie/em Image in-box a selection of your photography 4 2 3 6 5 7 1 ‘French Alps in September’ by Andrew O’Connell, ESBI Eng Solutions. 2 ‘Autumn Walk’ by Kevin Grace. 3 ‘Black Rhino, Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania’ by Robert Scott, ESBI Engineering. 4 ‘Mainhattan Frankfurt, am Main, Germany’ by Brian O’Mahony. 5 ‘Homeward Bound’ by Dermot Shiels. 6 ‘Mixed reactions at the wedding’ by Michael Buggy, ESBI Engineering Solutions. 7 ‘Pisa’ by Kevin Grace’. By Kathleen Thorne book review Pereira Maintains By Antonio Tabucchi Published by Canongate Translated from Italian by Patrick Creagh Price €9.50 It is 1938 and much of Europe is in turmoil. In Lisbon, a man called Dr Pereira is a journalist responsible for the culture pages with an evening newspaper called the Lisboa. He works in isolation in a dingy office, which is located at a distance from the newspaper’s headquarters. Pereira is a widower. He is overweight and unhealthy and has a passion for omelettes and lemonade. He has few friends. In his apart- ment, he regularly speaks to his dead wife’s picture. He tells her everything about his daily life and in the absence of any real companionship he seems to draw comfort from this. Then out of the blue, he phones a young man, Monteiro Rossi, who has written an article on death in some obscure magazine. Why Pereira does this is not entirely clear, but he is a Catholic, has an obsession with death and, furthermore, his work requires the preparation in advance of obituaries of important, but ageing, European writers of the time. Names like Bernanos, Mauriac, Claudel and Lorca crop up frequently. Pereira meets young Rossi and employs him to write these obituaries. However, Pereira is taking on much more than he realises when he does this. His uneventful life is rattled out of the ordi- nary into an arena of moral and political problems. He sticks with his decision and its consequences until the end – an ending which seems at odds with the kind of man we meet at the beginning of the novel. Pereira Maintains is a short novel but it encompasses an extraordinary breath of experience from so many perspectives. It gives insights into the European political scene of the late 1930s. It is insightful in terms of personal psychology. Besides, it reads fluently and easily. n http://www.esb.ie/em

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of EM - February/March 2012

EM - February/March 2012
Contents
News
Services & Electric Ireland
ESB Networks Ltd
ESB Energy International
Health & Habitat
Life

EM - February/March 2012