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Bezig met laden... Alcoholics (Mulholland Classic) (origineel 1953; editie 2014)door Jim Thompson (Auteur), Doug Dorst (Voorwoord)
Informatie over het werkThe Alcoholics door Jim Thompson (1953)
Bezig met laden...
Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek. I honestly could not find any redeeming features about this book. I tried. I read through the whole short volume. I didn't like the characters, the story, or its treatment of the main subject - alcoholism. I didn't like its treament of the mentally ill or its treatment of women or an individual who speaks with a lisp. I couldn't tell if the story was supposed to be funny or serious. Perhaps my reaction was because it was a "dated" book - having been written in 1953. To be fair, if the author were alive now, I wouldn't mind seeing him write a more modern version of this story for comparison. The story begins with a doctor (Is he a psychiatrist? I don't really know.) who is director of a small facility for patients who are alcoholics. When the patients get out of control, they are given small amounts of alcohol to drink. What?! The most pressing problem is how the facility, down on money, is to get enough financial backing to survive. Truthfully? I'd have shut this facility, built a new facility in its place and hired new, accountable staff. Hey! It was only a story, though... A bizarre little book, and when you're talking about Thompson that's saying something. Anyone familiar with his work, such as the wonderful "The Killer Inside Me" or "The Grifters" should not expect writing on that level here. What you do get is a down-on-his-luck doctor who means well but is ineffectual at curing alcoholics, a cook who believes in voodoo, an orderly who practices medicine when no one is looking and a sadistic nurse who gets off on torturing the resident lobotomy patient. Oh, and various drunks. It's a fast read and weird. geen besprekingen | voeg een bespreking toe
Dr. Peter S. Murphy needs fifteen thousand dollars by the end of the day, or the city of Los Angeles can say goodbye to the El Healtho clinic. A recovery center for the most severe cases of alcoholism in the state -- even if no one ever does quite seem to get dry there -- El Healtho has been the bane of Dr. Murphy's existence ever since he started running it. But now that its doors are about to close forever, Dr. Murphy finds he'll do anything to keep it open. Up to and including admitting Humphrey Van Twyne III, a patient with an extremely violent past whose wealthy family has the means to keep El Healtho open for business. Sure, the man isn't exactly an alcoholic. And yes, what he really needs is to be under the care of the surgeons who performed the lobotomy that's rendered Van Twyne all but a vegetable. But the money's good -- until the rag-tag group of ne'er-do-wells at El Healtho begin to wreak havoc with Dr. Murphy's plans, and suddenly no one day has ever seemed so long. A literary precursor to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Alcoholics is Thompson like you've never read him before, a pitch-black, mad-cap portrait of deviant behavior that is at once darkly comic, humane and harrowing. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
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It is a short novel, and its ending is a cheap, easy victory. ( )