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Bezig met laden... The Face of a Naked Lady: An Omaha Family Mysterydoor Michael Rips
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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. Weird, bizarre - call it what you will - Rips' deadpan delivery is just a tad bit too clinical and impassive. About his family!? Then where is the emotion? I like the form this book takes and the way it is non-linear, but it has way too many characters that just get mentioned in passing - what's the point of bringing in all these tangential characters that just confuse the reader? ( ) I read this boo, borrowedk from the library, in April 2006. This year I received a copy through my Paperbackswap account. I decided to reread it slowly. I placed it in our bathroom and read it only a few minutes a day. I was curious to know if I would enjoy it as much as I previously had. Michael Rips was not particularly close to his father. After his father died Michael happened upon a photo of a naked black woman in his father's things. He decided he hadn't known his father well enough.He decided he had to try to find out who the woman was and how his father had been involved in her life. That part of the story is a somewhat touching one, really. The thing is that Michael is a story-teller, and a pretty good rambler. The first time I read the book I kind of enjoyed that I guess. This time through I just wasn't nearly as enamored. I think I've matured a lot in my reading style over the years. We all surely hope to do that. I love memoir and this title certainly falls into that genre, at least in part. I generally enjoy a bit of self-discovery too but Rips is a bit holier-than-thou in the way he draws analogies. I enjoy a bit of fun in a story too. I think Rips goes too far in both directions though. He can't find a happy medium. In the earliest parts of the book he includes one story that is simply there just for its shock value, nothing more. I didn't like that. Most readers, I think, wouldn't. I was glad to be reminded the identity of the naked lady but I'm not so thrilled that I reread this book. Today, I wouldn't recommend it to most people and can only give it about a 2.5 stars. geen besprekingen | voeg een bespreking toe
A son uncovers the remarkable secret life of his midwestern father--and his Nebraska city--in this "beguiling [and] deeply unusual" memoir (The Boston Sunday Globe). Nick Rips's son had always known him as a conservative midwesterner, dedicated, affable, bland to the point of invisibility. Upon his father's death, however, Michael Rips returned to his Omaha family home to discover a hidden portfolio of paintings--all done by his father, all of a naked black woman. His solid Republican father, Michael would eventually discover, had an interesting past and another side to his personality. Raised in one of Omaha's most famous brothels, Nick had insisted on hiring a collection of social misfits to work in his eyeglass factory--and had once showed up in his son's high school principal's office in pajamas. As Michael searches for the woman in the paintings, he meets, among others, an African American detective who swears by the clairvoyant powers of a Mind Machine, a homeless man with five million dollars in the bank, an underwear auctioneer, and a flying trapeze artist on her last sublime ride. Ultimately, in his investigations through his Nebraska hometown, he will discover the mysterious woman--as well as a father he never knew, and a profound sense that all around us the miraculous permeates the everyday. "Writing with similar pain and urgency as Nick Flynn in Another Bullshit Night in Suck City and August Kleinzahler in Cutty, One Rock, Rips' terse, flinty syntax perfectly embodies the hard-boiled nature of this nearly surreal true-life tale." --Booklist "An amazing, beautiful book--a study of a certain family in a certain place at a certain time that gives us, in stunning shorthand, the reality of America." --Joan Didion, author of The White Album "At once a lyrical family portrait, a philosophical inquiry, a bittersweet evocation of a lost time and place, and an enthralling domestic mystery." --Susan Orlean, author of The Orchid Thief "Quirky, funny, moving, and immensely readable . . . a brilliantly observed story about place, family, and race in America." --Randall Kennedy Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)978.2History and Geography North America Western U.S. NebraskaLC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
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