Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House

Zusatztext "Mr. Blandings' skinning by real-estate men! architects! contractors! and plumbers should provide the reader with a lot of sadistic satisfaction! if it isn't too uncomfortably reminiscent." -- The New Yorker Informationen zum Autor Eric Hodgins Klappentext The classic tale of leaving the city and building a house in the country, only to find country life isn't so simple. But it is hilarious. Mr. Blandings, a successful New York advertising executive, and his wife want to escape the confines of their tiny midtown apartment. They design the perfect home in the idyllic country, but soon they are beset by construction troubles, temperamental workmen, skyrocketing bills, threatening lawyers, and difficult neighbors. Mr. Blandings' dream house soon threatens to be the nightmare that undoes him. This internationally bestselling book by Eric Hodgins is illustrated by William Steig and was made into a film starring Cary Grant and Myrna Loy -- and a later film starring Tom Hanks called "The Money Pit." Chapter One: The Real-Estate Man The sweet old farmhouse burrowed into the upward slope of the land so deeply that you could enter either its bottom or middle floor at ground level. Its window trim was delicate and the lights in its sash were a bubbly amethyst. Its rooftree seemed to sway a little against the sky, and the massive chimney that rose out of it tilted a fraction to the south. Where the white paint was flecking off on the siding, there showed beneath it the faint blush of what must once have been a rich, dense red. In front of it, rising and spreading along the whole length of the house, was the largest lilac tree that Mr. and Mrs. Blandings had ever seen. Its gnarled, rusty trunks rose intertwined to branch and taper into splays of this year's light young wood; they, in turn, burst into clouds of blossoms that made the whole vast thing a haze of blues and purples, billowed and wafting. When the house was new, the lilac must have been a shrub in the dooryard -- and house and shrub had gone on together, side by side since then. That was a hundred and seventy years ago, last April. "If the lilac can live and be so old, so can the house," Mrs. Blandings said to herself. "It needs someone to love it, that's all." She flashed a glance at her husband, who flashed one back at her. Using a penknife as a key, the real-estate man unlocked a lower door. As it swung back, the top hinge gave way and splashed in a brown powder on the floor. The door lurched against Mr. Blandings, and gave him a sharp crack on the forehead, but the damage was repaired in an instant, and Mr. Blandings, a handkerchief at his temple and his wife by his side, stood looking out through the amethyst window lights at an arc of beauty that made them both cry out. The land rushed downward to the river a mile away; then it rose again, layer after layer, plane after plane of hills and higher hills lighter beyond them. The air was luminous, and there were twenty shades of browns and greens in the plowed and wooded and folded earth. "On a clear day you can see the Catskills," said the real-estate man. Mr. and Mrs. Blandings were not such fools as to exclaim at this revelation. Mrs. Blandings flicked a glove in which a cobweb and free-running spider had become entangled; Mr. Blandings, his lips pursed and his eyes half closed, was a picture of controlled reserve; strong, realistic, poised. By the way the two of them said "Uh-huh?" with a rising inflection in perfect unison, the real-estate man knew that his sale was made. The offer would not come today, of course; it might, indeed, not come for a fortnight. But it would come; it would come with all the certainty of the equinox. He computed five per cent of $10,275 in his head and turned to the chimney footing. "You'd have to do a little pointing up here," he said, indicating a compact but disorde...

Dettagli sul prodotto

• Autori: Eric Hodgins, Eric/ Steig Hodgins, William Steig
• Con la collaborazione di: William Steig (Illustrazione)
• Editore: Simon & Schuster USA
• Lingue: Inglese
• Formato: Tascabile
• Pubblicazione: 01.02.2005
• EAN: 9780743262323
• ISBN: 978-0-7432-6232-3
• Pagine: 229
• Dimensioni: 146 mm x 222 mm x 13 mm
• Categoria: Narrativa > Romanzi