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Bezig met laden... Parrot en Olivier in Amerika (2009)door Peter Carey
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. Delightful. Carey has always been terrific to read and this is another highly pleasurable and thought provoking novel. In terms of style and delivery there is a little of John Irving about him. ( ) Our American Ruling Class is dominated by Greed and Racist actions vs The French one of mostly class hatred and the abiding horrors of both the French Revolution and the racism dominating two World Wars. I was hoping for Olivier to finally get any of his acts - from prisons to marriage to recognizing his servant with respect - together and was definitely pulling for Parrot to rise and shine until he dumped the n-word at the end of the book. WTH. Good to include engravings and paintings, non? A great story woven around the French Revolution and the establishment of America as an independent, democratic nation. The two key characters, a French aristocrat and an Englishman much displaced during his lifetime, were given the roles of narrators of their stories. It was interesting to read the way the two very different lives and views were developed for the reader.
"There are engaging, funny scenes throughout this picaresque tale, but the travelogue grows rickety and stalls too often." "Quirky and erudite, but the payoff in human-interest terms is meager." "But this conclusion in no way dampens this dashing novel – for it is in the testing of assumptions, in Garmont and Parrot's challenging of each other, that its beauty and intelligence lies." The narrative proceeds in leaps and bounds, sometimes with a hop backwards, omitting connections, giving an impression above all, perhaps, of confusion – confusion of event and motive, incomprehension, a vast drama without structure. The language is vivid, forceful and poetic (though I wish Olivier's aristocratic locution was free of grammatical blunders such as "of she toward whom", "of she who I affected to be unaware of", "to he who I intended to make my father-in-law"). There are terrific set pieces, such as the burning of the forgers' house – moments Dickensian in their vividness. Themes of fire and burning run through the story. An early kind of bicycle appears, with much discussion and even an illustration, and later on an American bicycle enters the tale. Are there hidden significances? I don't know. It's a dazzling, entertaining novel. Should one ask for more? "In the end, the novel’s richness can’t disguise the fact that the plot rather lags behind the ideas driving it. That said, it’s still one hell of a ride." PrijzenOnderscheidingenErelijsten
Fiction.
Literature.
Historical Fiction.
HTML:Parrot and Olivier in America has been shortlisted for the 2010 Man Booker Prize. From the two-time Booker Prizeâ??winning author comes an irrepressibly funny new novel set in early nineteenth-century America. Olivierâ??an improvisation on the life of Alexis de Tocquevilleâ??is the traumatized child of aristocratic survivors of the French Revolution. Parrot is the motherless son of an itinerant English printer. They are born on different sides of history, but their lives will be connected by an enigmatic one-armed marquis. When Olivier sets sail for the nascent United Statesâ??ostensibly to make a study of the penal system, but more precisely to save his neck from one more revolutionâ??Parrot will be there, too: as spy for the marquis, and as protector, foe, and foil for Olivier. As the narrative shifts between the perspectives of Parrot and Olivier, between their picaresque adventures apart and togetherâ??in love and politics, prisons and finance, homelands and brave new landsâ??a most unlikely friendship begins to take hold. And with their story, Peter Carey explores the experiment of American democracy with dazzling inventiveness and with all the richness and surprise of characterization, imagery, and language that we have come to expect from thi Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)823.914Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction Modern Period 1901-1999 1945-1999LC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
Ben jij dit?Word een LibraryThing Auteur. Penguin AustraliaEen editie van dit boek werd gepubliceerd door Penguin Australia. |