conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What could be a title for a story about Motherland, Liesl, Nazi with the genre: Literature & Fiction, Genre Fiction?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A title for this story could be 'Motherland'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me a description for a story titled Motherland about Tom, Somewhere, Clancy with the genre: Literature & Fiction, Dramas & Plays.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: "A riveting thriller obviously written by a man who has been there and done that! Somewhere Tom Clancy is smiling!" Tom McDevitt, Chairman, Washington Times
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me a description for a story titled Motherland about Maya, Ammamma, India with the genre: Literature & Fiction, United States.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: In this quiet but engaging debut novel, an American teenager spends the summer with her relatives in southern India and gains new insight into her past, her family and her heritage. Born in Kerala, Maya spent the first four years of her life there, cared for mainly by her grandmother, Ammamma, until she was sent to live with her parents in New York. At 15, with her parents' marriage undergoing a rough patch, she is sent back to India to stay with her Aunt Reema and Uncle Sanjay, their 10-year-old daughter, Brindha, and Ammamma at their house in the tea hills above Coimbatore. It's been years since Maya came to visit, and this time she is keenly aware of cultural differences: the different spheres of men and women and the persistence of the caste system. She feels stifled by the attentions of Ammamma and resentful of the time she must spend with the old woman. When Maya suffers an accident while most of the family is away, she and Ammamma grow closer, and Maya learns a hidden family fact. But only when Ammamma falls illDand the entire family gathers, including Maya's parents from New YorkDdoes Maya begin to comprehend more deeply the complexities of relationships. This coming-of-age tale is dense with cultural explanations, including a wedged-in minor story line about the guerrilla Tamil Tigers. The writing style is more prosaic than lyrical, and the detail robs the prose of liveliness in places, but Maya's voice is consistent and convincing. Less ambitious and not as sophisticated as other recent works by writers with roots in India, the story can piggyback on the current boom in all things Indian. Agent, Emma Sweeney at Harold Ober Assoc. (Jan.) <BR>Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first four paragraphs for this story.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Motherland
  Frank rubbed his sleepless eyes. Around midnight, he had begun speculating that the new patient wasn't Hartmann at all but someone posing as him. He recalled the boy's big brow, his pale eyes. Had they developed into this elegant, destroyed skull? It was possible, but weren't the ears all wrong? Hadn't Hartmann's ears stuck out from his head? This man's lay flat.
  When a nurse brought Hartmann some soup, Frank watched the scarf come off and the mouth attempt to eat. He sat down silently beside the patient, regarding the lipless hole flexing at the pressure of the spoon. Hiss, suck. The muscles had knit together to make a flap that worked like a second, outer tongue. Its motion made the thinnest skin bleed along the cheekbone. Hiss, suck. A dry noise, a wet noise, machine-like, inhuman. Hartmann's neighbors glanced at him and then away.
  Frank leaned forward and dabbed at Hartmann's blood with some gauze. He felt the gray-blue eyes fall on him, then back to the soup. Hartmann took three more spoonfuls. Hiss, suck. Then he offered Frank the bowl.
  Hartmann read the sentence and leaned back, looping his hands over his knees. He seemed to be studying some spot in the air above the other patients' beds. He shook his head slightly, as if amused by the statement, as if he now owned pain the way he'd once owned knowledge.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me three more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: He didn't know how to say to Hartmann that he should want to live. You had to want to live. You had to respect life. But he knew his words would sound simple, and if he and Hartmann argued, Hartmann would win.
  Frank didn't sleep that night. He looked outside at the guard station, the incinerator, the concrete wall of the cistern, and the pines beyond. There had been some warm days and the snow had hardened on the ground. The sky was deep with stars. He mentally started and scrapped several letters to Liesl, expressing his concern, requesting more information, explaining about his denied furlough. When the night sky began to lighten, he washed his torso in cold water and stood there, feeling his skin freeze. His nipples and belly tensed first, and then everywhere prickled with goose bumps. The sensation did not make him feel any more wakeful. He shoved his arms into a shirt and buttoned it. He lay back down on his bed and tried to read Hartmann's poems again, but the words buzzed and fluttered. He tucked them in his pocket. Down the hall, he heard others rising, and he emerged for his morning rounds, avoiding Hartmann. The operating room was empty, so he walked in and inhaled the smell of carbolic acid, remembering the soft, pulsing feel of the tissues he'd repaired and the drag of sutures through flesh.
  He made his way to the cafeteria and drank coffee made from dandelion roots. There was not even chicory left in their kitchens. "Better brew in Berlin, I hope," Frank told the cook. "I'm leaving in two days."
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last paragraph.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Deepest thanks to Bowie and Bruce, for teaching me how to write like a mother. Thank you, Kyle, for showing me how to be a storyteller, for giving me the hours I needed, for your constant faith, mischief, and love.