Klik op een omslag om naar Google Boeken te gaan.
Bezig met laden... As a Friend: A Novel (2008)door Forrest Gander
Geen 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. geen besprekingen | voeg een bespreking toe
"Heroism is a secondary virtue," Albert Camus noted, "but friendship is primary." In his gem-like first novel, Forrest Gander writes of friendship, envy, and eros as a harmonic of charged overtones. Set in a rural southern landscape as vivid as its indelible characters,As a Friend tells the story of Les, a gifted man and land surveyor, whose impact on those around him (his friend Clay, his girlfriend Sarah) provokes intense self-examination and an atmosphere of dangerous eroticism. With poetic insight, Gander explores the nature of attraction, betrayal, and loyalty. What he achieves is brilliant in style and powerfully unsettling. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
Actuele discussiesGeenPopulaire omslagen
Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
Ben jij dit?Word een LibraryThing Auteur. |
1. The book is divided into four narratives. Their affective power increases from the first to the third, which is a lyric about despair, and the heart of the book to that point. The narrator of the fourth section ruined the lives of the narrators of the second and third sections. But in the fourth section, where the character responsible for the others' despair is finally given a voice, it becomes difficult to pay attention. The excerpts of that character's thoughts can only serve as condemnations of pretense and artifice -- but readers who have responded appropriately to the second and third sections don't need to be persuaded of such things. It would be devastating if the person who wrecked the lives of the other characters turned out to be genuinely inspired or otherwise profound, but no matter how much he talks about himself, art, love, and friendship -- even if that fourth section had been hundreds of pages long -- it isn't persuasive, shocking, or even interesting.
2. Many of Gander's images are typical North American lyric moments: large cricket-like creatures swarm from a cave; a dead shrew wriggles from the activity of the beetles burrowing in its body; a moth is cut in half by a machete. The squashed bugs, moments of sudden disgust, piles of shit or vomit (at least six in the book), are supposed to function as compressed, partly unreadable epiphanies: but they are a such a common device that they read more like placeholders for more appropriate metaphors -- images that might resonate with the surrounding narrative. ( )