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Jennifer Weiner, whose novels Good in Bed and In Her Shoes earned her a place among women's book club aficionados everywhere, proves she still has the touch with Little Earthquakes, a tale of love, heartbreak, redemption, and friendship. Weiner's novel centers around four new mothers, all of whom must learn to adjust their lives and their marriages to deal with the challenges of raising children.
Ayinde is a beautiful, biracial newscaster who moves to Philadelphia after her husband, a star player for the NBA, is traded to the 76ers. She meets Becky, an overweight chef who plays the "pregnant or just fat" game every time she passes a mirror, and Kelly, an overachieving event planner who has her whole life mapped out down to the most minute details, after going into labor at a prenatal yoga class. The three become fast friends, and come to rely on each other for everything from burping techniques to intense emotional support. The group grows to include Lia, a semi-famous Hollywood starlet who leaves her husband and returns to Philly after a sudden tragedy.
While Little Earthquakes may leave little to the imagination, and some of the characters are laughably stereotypical (the Mama's boy Jewish doctor and the cheating ball player, to name a few), it is Weiner's gift for creating compelling characters with whom her readers can identify that make her such a successful storyteller. --Gisele Toueg
Book Description
Jennifer Weiner's richest, wittiest, most true-to-life novel yet tells the story of three very different women as they navigate one of life's most wonderful and perilous transitions: the journay of new motherhood.
Becky is a plump, sexy chef who has a wonderfull husband and baby girl, a restaurant that received a citywide acclaim -- and the mother-in-law from hell. Kelly is an event planner who's struggling to balance her work and motherhood while dealing with unemployed husband who seems content to channel-surf for eight hours a day. Ayinde's basketball superstar husband breaks her trust at her most vulnerable moment, putting their new family even more in the public eye. Then, there's Lia, a Philadelphia native who has left her Hollywood career behind, along with her husband, and a tragic secret to start her life all over again.
From prenatal yoga to postbirth sex, Little Earthquakes is a frank, funny, fiercely perceptive take on the comedies and tragedies of love and marriage.
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"First comes love. Then comes marriage. And then things start to get really interesting... In Good in Bed, Cannie Shapiro conquered public heartbreak and shaky self-esteem. In In Her Shoes, Rose and Maggie Feller learned about family secrets and the ties that bind. Now, in Jennifer Weiner's richest, wittiest, most true-to-life novel yet, this highly acclaimed storyteller brings readers a tale of romance, friendship, forgiveness, and extreme sleep deprivation, as three very different women navigate one of life's most wonderful and perilous transitions: the journey of new motherhood. Rebecca Rothstein-Rabinowitz is a plump, sexy chef who has a wonderful husband, supportive friends, a restaurant that's received citywide acclaim, a beautiful baby girl...and the mother-in-law from hell. Kelly Day's life looks picture-perfect. But behind the doors of her largely empty apartment, she's struggling to balance work and motherhood and marriage, while entering Oliver's every move (and movement) on a spreadsheet, and dealing with an unemployed husband who seems content to channel-surf for eight hours a day. And Ayinde Towne is already on shaky ground, trying to live her life to the letter of a how-to guide called Baby Success, when her basketball superstar husband breaks her trust at the most vulnerable moment in her life, putting their marriage in peril -- and their new family even more in the public eye. Then there's Lia Frederick, a Philadelphia native who has just come home, leaving Los Angeles behind, along with her glamorous Hollywood career, her husband, and a tragic secret, to start her life all over again. With her trademark warmth and humor, Weiner tells the story of what happens after happily ever after...and how an eight-pound bundle of joy can shake up every woman's sense of herself in the world around her. From prenatal yoga to postbirth sex, from sisters and husbands to mothers and mothers-in-law, Little Earthquakes is a frank, funny, fiercely perceptive Diaper Genie-eye view of the comedies and tragedies of love and marriage. "
Customer Reviews:
exellent book by excellent author!!.......2007-10-02
yet another fabulous book by one of my favorite authors! i became a fast fan after reading "good in bed" and have every one of her books, even collections of short stories featuring stories of her's.. i am not married, nor have any children, but i almost know what to expect, since weiner has a way of almost making YOU a character, like a fly on the wall... childbirth, dealing with sleepless nights, and endless days, not being able to get your baby to 'latch on' to feed, and sore nipples.. also products to buy.. like baby snugglis, baby einstein (which i have seen babies under a year old watch and do sign language with!) and the such. i recommend this book to anyone who likes a good story with a great story line that you can't stop reading (i stayed up until 4 am reading until i finally fell asleep with the book on my face LOL)... no filler BS to move the story along. believe me, once you read a book by jennifer weiner, you will want to read them all!
Little Earthquakes Jennifer Wiener.......2007-09-30
First of all I would say that this was one of my favorite books I have read in the last several years. I think Jennifer Wiener is an excellent author, and highly recommend this book and her others.
The book is about several women who are very different, and how their lives become entangled in a mystery. It kept me on my toes, and was so good I read the entire book within two days.
The book might appeal to mothers in that the main characters of the book were mothers (more so stay at home moms). I do not have children but loved the book. Again, highly recommended!
Well worth the cost!
Well written but depressing.......2007-08-30
As my title states, this was a very interesting story and very well written. However, as someone who has not had kids yet, I found it also to be a very depressing view of motherhood and really makes me think more than twice about having kids. None of the characters had anything good to say about motherhood, other than that they loved thier children. It was depressing!!!!
Chick Lit for the Baby Set.......2007-08-17
If you are a pregnant woman or new mom, this is probably a great read for you. However, for me, it was not up to the standards readers have come to expect from Jennifer Weiner. Author of "In Her Shoes" and "Good in Bed," I really enjoyed both of those chick lit tales. Weiner can write, and she certainly has her pulse on the women of today and their concerns. She creates characters that are not only believable but likable, women whose journeys are worth following.
Although I didn't relate to the subject matter of "Little Earthquakes"--motherhood and the non-ending focus on the perfect baby (with all appropriate accompaniments)--the struggles of the women in this story eventually had me finishing the book. There is no doubt much to recommend it to new moms...Weiner's story covers everything from prenatal yoga to decorating the baby's room to post-baby sex. Weiner is a natural writer, and she can draw you into a story. Just be sure you've got the baby bottle ready for this one.
Little Earthquakes book.......2007-07-27
Very good service - Book was here in no time - Thank you for a great service would come back
Book Description
In Home Before Dark, Susan Cheever, daughter of the famously talented writer John Cheever, uses previously unpublished letters, journals, and her own precious memories to create a candid and insightful tribute to her father. While producing some of the most beloved and celebrated American literature of this century, John Cheever wrestled with personal demons that deeply affected his family life as well as his career. In this poignant memoir of a man driven by boundless genius and ambition, Susan Cheever writes with heartwrenching honesty of family life with the father, the writer, and the remarkable man she loved.
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One of America's most celebrated twentieth-century writers, John Cheever struggled with personal demons that deeply affected his family life as well as his career. Beginning with her own memories, and then drawing on many previously unpublished letters and journals, Susan Cheever has produced an eloquent, intimate portrait that confronts his legacy both as a writer and as a father. John Updike wrote, "Whatever biographers and literary historians of the future make of John Cheever, their ur-text, their indispensable place of beginning will have to be Susan Cheever's beautiful book about her father."
Customer Reviews:
Confusion in creation- land .......2007-03-11
This memoir tells a great deal about the extended family of John Cheever. His is the less reputable wing of of a family which goes back to the early foundations of America. Susan Cheever writes with understanding and consideration of her father's troubled life. The shocking bankruptcy and abandonment of his father remained a basis for his great insecurity throughout his life. Susan Cheever reveals her father to be a man of great charm, and excellent ability to befriend and be helped by wealthy patrons, including those at Yaddo the Saratoga writing colony which for him was a second home. Susan Cheever also describes somewhat fitfully the mixed- up - marriage Cheever never let go of, one in which there seemed to have been infidelity on both sides- and which seemed to go downhill in the later years.
Susan Cheever writes with descriptive elegance about her father 's life. She does not however explain or even hint at the great mystery of how he managed to create his best work. And she does not really tell us what the work consists in, or how it best expressed what her father was.
I also felt the work lacking in another way. It does not really get inside Cheever and reveal to us the world the way he might have seen it. Nor does it trace the effect of his celebrity and alcoholism , of his wit and capacity for friendship on his children. Susan Cheever is silent about her father's effect upon her.
I found that is with all the basic admiration and sympathy that she expresses for her father, a certain coldness in the work- a coldness which was perhaps her father's also.
But again perhaps I found Cheever's story much less 'moving 'than I might have because I too am not a great fan of his stories.
Susan is a better writer than John.......2007-03-02
This is a very interesting look at the demons of the father, from alcoholism to a confused sexuality that wreaked havoc on his family. John Cheever forged a career writing about his own issues, tales of disillusion and disintegration in suburbia, all to alcoholic excess and in search of meaning. Susan, his daughter, is an absolutely excellent writer and explains what he was like as she grew up, so it is not a straight biography but mixed with memoire. Some of it is shocking, such as the way John periodically left to be with men, only to come back to a wife he clearly loved enduringly. But there is also a lot of redemption, of striving to be better though the pain is ever present. Oddly, I have never liked his writing much, finding his personal problems more of a spectacle and indeed more absorbing to learn about. Susan, I think, is the true writing talent in the family - her style is clear and unflinchingly honest, almost exhibitionistic. Few expose themselves so evenhandedly. Indeed, her moments are unforgettably vivid: such as her sitting in the lap of a drunken guest writer, in a tweed jacket reeking of cigarette smoke, saying to herself that she would marry that kind of man; or watching her father, after a few hours of writing and overcoming a hangover, pruning his lawn with ritual energy.
Truly a beautiful, often tormented, book. Warmly recommended.
A Terrific Book.......2003-12-07
Home Before Dark is a beautifully written, moving book that stays with you long after you have finished reading it. It helps that Susan Cheever's subject, her father, was (and remains long after his death) one of the finest fiction writers in the history of American literature. What distinguishes John Cheever's stories, outside of his magical touch with words, is the passion and love he brings to illuminating his small corner of the world -- life in the New York suburbs of the 1950s and 1960s. Most writers who explore the suburbs do so with an arm's length superiority -- taking pains to distance themselves politically, emotionally, and intellectually from their characters. What makes Cheever's stories such a joy it that he loves the world he writes about -- even as he recognizes its banalities and limitations. In Cheever's hand, the commuter life becomes a sad, beautiful symphony of lost hopes and desires. The 5:45 train, the clinking of cocktail glasses, the smell of meat cooking on an outdoor grill are not just dull routines of modern life, but thrilling and exotic elements of that peculiarly American optimism and quest for success that flowered after World War II -- all the more alluring because the quest is so often doomed.
In the same way, Susan Cheever brings passion and honesty to the telling of her father's life. In her hands, John Cheever's own outwardly unremarkable search for the suburban dream life of wife, kids, dog and station wagon in Ossining, New York becomes a dark romantic quest of longing, passion, success and disappointment. She is thoroughly honest (sometimes brutally so) in detailing Cheever's alcoholism, philandering, phobias and parental shortcomings -- so it is all the more remarkable that the final portrait of Cheever that emerges is so rich and full of love.
This book is the perfect companion piece for Cheever's indispensible Collected Stories (with that famous red cover). Think of Home Before Dark as a sort of lexicon to John Cheever's world. I keep both books on a special bookshelf -- easily accessible -- containing the books I come back to again and again, like old friends.
Cheever Still An Enigma.......2000-06-11
As a memoir of a daughter's relationship with her father, this is very touching, but there is little here that sheds much light on John Cheever, the writer. Given the various levels of family dysfunction and unhappiness in Cheever's stories and novels, it is gratifying that his daughter found so much to love in her father. For a more abrasive, but still admiring view of the man, you might also enjoy reading Benjamin Cheever's novel, The Plagiarist.
More John Cheever please; less Susan Cheever.......2000-02-03
This would have been a better book if Susan Cheever had more to write about. For example, she could have delved more into the business of his writing, how much money he made, or his friendships with other writers. A little bit of research wouldn't have hurt. This is a very slight book. Also, I could care to know less about Susan Cheever; i.e. how she had been the source of some of John's stories....
Book Description
From her home on the California coast, Dalva hears the broad silence of the
Nebraska prairie where she was born and longs for the son she gave up for
adoption years before. Beautiful, fearless, tormented, at forty-five she has lived a life of lovers and adventures. Now, Dalva begins a journey that will take her back to the bosom of her family, to the half-Sioux lover of her youth, and to a pioneering great-grandfather whose journals recount the bloody annihilation of the Plains Indians. On the way, she discovers a story that stretches from East to West, from the Civil War to Wounded Knee and Vietnam -- and finds the balm to heal her wild and wounded soul.
Customer Reviews:
Main character is great, the rest so-so.......2007-07-08
The title character of "Dalva" holds the book together, as a finely drawn, if rather unbelievable, woman who can be described by quite a lengthy string of adjectives, mostly positive. She would be an intriguing person to know, and I'm not thinking of her frequent, casual sex life, either. Harrison captures Dalva well at middle age, perhaps struggling with a fairly aimless direction and a fresh desire to find her son given up at birth. Those threads make for a decent novel.
The other characters were responsible for dragging Dalva down to an average score. The self-absorbed academic, Michael, was unappealing to me, even when he had some humorous mis-adventures. His connection with Dalva makes little sense. Michael's narrative forms the second of the three main sections, and adds little value. The other people have their moments of spark and insight, although none especially engaging.
The ancestor's journals about personal involvement with the Sioux and other key moments in the clash between the natives and the white man offered an enlightening view into that unfortunate time. However, I couldn't get into all of that, because at some point the journal entries don't add much to move the story forward, and almost read as extended asides.
3.5 stars, rounded down
Another excellent book from Jim Harrison.......2007-06-02
I just started reading Jim Harrison's books in May and have not read three and am going onto my 4th book. He is a great writer. This is a good book that drew me in and made me feel the character was real. It is a very good read.
Farmland never looked so good!.......2006-07-22
How many people list Nebraska as a Must-See Vacationland? Read this book and you will. Harrison brings not only his characters but the Nebraska farmland to life. Suddenly, the Niobrara River valley is on my list of places to visit. Not unlike other Harrison novels, birds, animals, even spirits play significant roles in this elaborate, sweeping (like the Plains?) romance as Dalva seeks her child given up years ago for adoption and her own place in her family's rich heritage in this land. Harrison has created an illuminating and tragic love story on many levels.
A peaceful lecture.......2006-03-21
I've found very relaxing this book and reading it I knew much more about the story of American Indians.
WaamPaam Woo Haa Koo Koo.......2004-05-20
A pretty good book and much bigger on the dog as friend than the hideous cat (who, by the way, is no where to be seen in this fine novel). This is a moving story covering something like three or four generations and told from several perspectives--a third generation (I think) 1/8th Sioux, a drunken professor, and back to the Sioux (Dalva). As is typical of the author, this novel is full of wisdom, beautiful writing, hardship, sorrow, and survival. I rather liked it--and loved the absence of any sentimentality (or puny-brained felines). I was a tad annoyed by the rank confusion found on page 319 as to whether or not JWN (a major character) was dealing with a Lt Col or simply a Lieutenant. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the book and can recommend it.
Book Description
Turn-of-the-century New York City midwife Sarah Brandt and Detective Sergeant Frank Malloy are thrust into a twisted case of murder-when a seductress falls victim to her own charades.
"Victoria Thompson shines...Anne Perry and Caleb Carr fans rejoice!" (Tamar Myers)
Customer Reviews:
Another little gem!.......2007-03-14
Ms. Thompson's Gaslight Series is full of little gems and this book is another. This is the fourth in the series, and in it we see Sarah's and Frank's relationship is progressing a bit further. We also have them trying to find out who killed an opportunistic woman. Sarah's neighbour, Mrs. Ellsworth's son looks like he's been set up to take the fall for the murder, and Sarah knows that he didn't do it. She enlists Frank's help to try to uncover who the real killer is. The plot is a bit predictable, but the characters are very likeable. This is a series well worth the time of any historical mystery fan. I especially like the setting. Turn of the century New York City must have been a fascinating place.
4th in Gaslight Mysteries is best so far!.......2006-08-03
Murder on Washington Square by Victoria Thompson is the 4th book in the Gaslight series featuring Victorian era midwife Sarah Brandt and New York Detective Sergeant Frank Malloy. This was absolutely the best book so far in the series. When Sarah's neighbor, Mrs. Ellison's son is charged with the murder of his mistress, Sarah jumps to help prove his innocence, much to Malloy's frustration. Thompson does a terrific job of creating mood and dropping hints about the real murderer's identity without giving the game away. The chemistry between Malloy and Sarah is top-notch. I just love how Thompson has been inching their relationship along. The climax is edge-of-your-seat gripping and what happens afterwards will thrill fans of the series. She even throws in a twist at the very end to make the reader long for the next book. Murder mysteries don't get much better than this.
Good Job.......2003-02-02
Nice addition to the series. The plot is a bit obvious at times, but moves along nicely and the characters are developed well. Recommend
sweet & spunky.......2002-10-31
Victoria Thompson's Gaslight mysteries are one of my favorite series. Sarah is sweet and spunky (in a *good* way, honest!) with a charming sense of humor in addition to her stubborn sense of justice. The romance between this wonderful character and Frank really drives the stories for me, but the mystery is also excellent. This installment in the series deepens all the characters and fleshes out the time period even more lushly than before. If you're a fan of historical mysteries and haven't tried these books yet, you're really missing out.
Best of the Series.......2002-08-25
Thompson is getting the hang of mystery writing. This is an enjoyable book, more for the look into turn-of-the-century New York than the mystery. I especially like the hint that Brandt may someday find some closure to the death of her husband.
I hope Thompson refrains from coupling Brandt and Molloy. I'd rather see a better developed mystery than read about two blushing social opposites at the turn of the twentieth century.
Book Description
"A storyteller of refreshing inventiveness and subtlety" (San Francisco Chronicle), Jonathan Ames has won critical raves for this delightful "comedy of impeccable manners with a debauched '90s spin" (Elle).
Meet Louis Ives: well-groomed, romantic, and as captivating as an F. Scott Fitzgerald hero. Only this hero has a penchant for ladies clothes, and he's lost his teaching post at Princeton's Pretty Brook Day School after an unfortunate incident involving a colleague's brassiere.
Meet Henry Harrison: former actor, failed but brilliant playwright, and a well-seasoned escort for New York City's women of means. He dances alone to Ethel Merman records, second-acts operas, and performs his scrappy life with the dignity befitting a self-styled man of the world. What can this ageless Don Quixote of the Upper East Side have to offer a young gentleman such as Louis? What, indeed.
Well, the answer lies somewhere between the needs of an irascible mentor and the education of his eager apprentice...between cocktails on the Upper East Side and an even more intoxicating treat along the secret fringes of Times Square...and between friendship and longing.
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Jonathan Ames, whose first novel was praised as a "stylistic achievement" by Philip Roth a "striking debut" by Joyce Carol Oates, has written a hilarious and poignant story about a young man searching for love -- and for himself -- in the heart of New York City. A teacher at a tony Princeton day school, Louis Ives fancies himself as a gentleman modeled after his heroes in the works of F. Scott Fitzgerald. But in a comic and strange incident involving a colleague's brassiere, Louis loses his job. Without a lot of money, he heads to New York and finds a cheap room in the dirty and cluttered apartment of Henry Harrison, a failed playwright who dyes his hair with a mascara wand, sneaks into Broadway shows and the opera, and serves as an escort to the rich widows of the Upper East Side. The two men, separated in age by more than 40 years, develop a relationship that is irascible mentor and eager apprentice. But when he's not with his teacher, Louis has fascinations that lead him into the netherworld of Times Square. He develops a secret life there, which he fears will be his undoing and which he desperately wants to keep hidden from Henry. With early interest from Hollywood and an energetic, well-connected young author, The Extra Man is destined to become an instant classic among lovers of smart comic fiction and adventurous New York stories.
Customer Reviews:
Delicious and complex.......2007-06-11
The Extra Man is simply a great read, and a book that stays with you. I think it's because here Ames demonstrates beautifully his ability to mingle elements that might seem incongrous: readability and complexity; old world propriety and honest, intense sexuality; laugh-out-loud-humor and poignant depth. This book is a winner -- as is his other novel, Wake Up, Sir!
light & hilarious.......2006-08-15
very funny, better than Wake Up Sir, though that was entertaining as well.
Pretty good.......2006-01-05
Jonathan Ames is a great author. While not as good as Wake Up, Sir! The Extra Man is still an excellent and often hilarious read. This is a book that ends with you wishing it hasn't.
Can't Believe This Is A "Contemporary Classic".......2005-11-28
Johnathon Ames is a great writer. His prose and direct style definitely make for easy reading. His ability to create everyday people who get into the wildest situations make way for only slight suspension of disbelief.
We have Louis, a femmy but otherwise "straight" teacher in Princeton, NJ who loses his job after being caught dancing around his office in a lady coworker's undergarments. For some reason or another, he gets it into his head to move to New York City. His new roommate is Henry, an elderly but spry male escort to Manhattan's aged female society. They live in classic New York squalor with Louis in the tiny bedrooom and Henry on the couch. Henry becomes more difficult to live with, a natural grump who thinks he knows everything and assumes the persona of an aristocrat. He claims to be able to advance Louis socially, but all it turns out to be is hanging out with old ladies for a free meal and a show.
I don't know how it happened, but out of nowhere Louis is outed to us as a closet transvestite. It builds from a nervous curiosity to full-blown perversion as the story deepens. He starts frequenting a trans-bar where he makes his share of friends and lovers.
I work in television and I was once hired to shoot a docu-story set in a bar just like the one Louis hangs out in, so if you think that what he goes through is far-fetched, you don't know Manhattan. Ames expertly puts Louis through some serious complications thanks to his strange love.
This thing doesn't get five-stars for a couple of reasons. First, BEWARE, there are sex scenes that are very gay and quite explicit. That's not my thing and if I'd known it was coming, I wouldn't have bought the book. I found myself skipping whole pages just to keep my lunch down.
Second, Ames has a preoccupation with various formulaic elements, resulting in boring repetition. I loved his "Wake UP, Sir!" (which was written later) But, after reading "The Extra Man," here are some things that bother me:
("Wake UP, Sir's" main protagonist was Alan. Remember that as you read on.)
Alan and Louis are both writers and we never see them write anything.
Alan and Louis both live in New Jersey from the outset.
Both end up finding themselves run out of town and into New York.
Both Alan and Louis want nothing more than to be "young gentlemen," a la Fred Astaire in "Top Hat" or Jeeve's Bertie Worster.
Both fail miserably every step of the way, showing themselves to be anything BUT young gentlemen.
Alan and Louis love to wear seersucker jackets.
They both spend their time with older men with seemingly worldly ways and know-it-all advice.
Ames has a need to include within his stories characters with "mediterranean accents." Whatever that is.
Alan had a nose fetish. Louis has an armpit fetish. Both very strange.
Both characters get into major trouble thanks to their obsessions - Alan has booze and Louis has men who dress like girls.
Both men have a thing for Wodehouse.
Boring. You see where I'm going with this? It really makes me not want to read another Ames book because of this tedium; this formula that really doesn't need to be there. If I were to make a film about this book, I'd cast Jack Plotnik as Alan and Tony Curtis as Henry.
great comic novel.......2005-01-02
After reading "Wake Up, Sir" by the same author I got this earlier novel. And it's another glorious funny read. We, as lovers of books, will be blessed if Mr. Ames chooses to continue writing novels in this style. I am a big fan of Peter De Vries, Thomas Berger, and other comic novels; so a high five to Jonathan Ames.
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- "Washinton Square" by Henry James
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Henry James : Novels 1881-1886: Washington Square, The Portrait of a Lady, The Bostonians (Library of America)
Henry James
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Henry James : Novels 1871-1880: Watch and Ward, Roderick Hudson, The American, The Europeans, Confidence (Library of America)
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Henry James: Novels 1896-1899: The Other House / The Spoils of Poynton / What Maisie Knew / The Awkward Age (Library of America)
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Henry James: Novels 1901-1902: The Sacred Fount / The Wings of the Dove (Library of America)
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Henry James: Complete Stories, 1892-1898 (Library of America)
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Henry James : Complete Stories 1884-1891 (Library of America)
ASIN: 0940450305 |
Amazon.com
This volume in the Library of America's series on Henry James catches the author as he inaugurates his "middle period," the years when he wrote many of his best books. The three novels reprinted here concern women who must choose between competing alternatives. Catherine Sloper of Washington Square, plain and bookish, is romanced by the dashingly handsome Morris Townsend. But her father, sure that such a man could only love Catherine for her money, forbids her to see him. The young heroine of The Bostonians is torn between loyalty to her southern beau and her attraction to one of James's most unusual characters: a wealthy Boston feminist!
The Portrait of a Lady, arguably James's greatest novel, introduces us to Isabel Archer, a beautiful, vivacious, and independently minded American woman who travels to Europe and is seduced by its society. Her circle includes her terminally ill but deeply loving cousin, Ralph; the noble and adoring Lord Warburton; her witty and sarcastic friend Henrietta Stackpole; the meticulous aesthete Gilbert Osmond; the mysterious Madame Merle; and Caspar Goodwood, her passionate American suitor. Negotiating between the life each of them offers and represents, Isabel becomes part of one of the best books written about women's choices.
Movie buffs will be particularly interested in this volume, for all the novels in it have been made into films. The Bostonians was a Merchant-Ivory production in 1984. It starred Vanessa Redgrave as the feminist Olive Chancellor, sparring with southern gentleman Christopher Reeve! The Portrait of a Lady (1996), with Nicole Kidman and John Malkovich, was Jane Campion's opulent follow-up to The Piano. And Washington Square has been made into two major movies: the 1997 version starred Jennifer Jason- Leigh and Albert Finney; but the classic adaptation was William Wyler's 1949 film The Heiress, which starred Montgomery Clift, Ralph Richardson, Miriam Hopkins, and Olivia de Havilland in an Oscar-winning role. It's a real treat to read a superb book and then see how major filmmakers transform it into cinema that is compelling and entertaining it its own right. --Raphael Shargel
Customer Reviews:
"Washinton Square" by Henry James.......1999-11-19
I enjoyed "Washington Square" thoroughly. I believe any highschool student should read this if they are looking for a "book" report. I found it captivating and I couldn't put the book down. However I was a little disappointed in how the ending turned out, but what can I do?
Customer Reviews:
Still holds up thirty years later........2006-12-21
Judith Rossner, Looking for Mr. Goodbar (Washington Square Press, 1975)
Looking for Mr. Goodbar was an unconscionably shocking novel when it appeared in 1975. It was still shocking when Richard Brooks turned it into a devastating film featuring rising stars Richard Gere, Tom Berenger, and William Atherton as the three most important men in Diane Keaton's life. Now, here we are thirty years later. The scene Rossner set isn't shocking. But in some ways, her treatment of it is, and this is why Looking for Mr. Goodbar is still in print, three decades after its original release.
Theresa Dunn, we learn on the first page, is dead. She was killed by a guy she picked up in a bar a few hours beforehand (leading to Rex Reed's famous, and utterly inaccurate, statement "this is the story of what happens to Theresa in bars."). We go from police report to said guy's statement, which is equal parts amusing and chilling. Then the rest of the novel's three hundred ninety pages gives us Theresa's story as it leads up to her murder.
Despite Reed's tantalizing review, Theresa Dunn is not the kind of barhopper one might find in a bad seventies softcore movie. In fact, she spends not much time at all in bars themselves. (Mr. Goodbar, the name of the bar where she picks up the guy who kills her, is only mentioned by name twice in Theresa's portion of the story, if I recall correctly.) The novel actually focuses on Theresa's relationships, and how they contribute to the novel's outcome-- first with one of her college professors, and then conflicting, simultaneous relationships with two men, the macho and aggressive Tony and calm, staid James, as Theresa tries to figure out who she really is and what she wants from life.
Rossner approaches her subject matter in a frank, matter-of-fact tone. Thirty years on, it's not the sex that's shocking, nor the idea of having it casually; we've seen it all a thousand times before. It's small offhand comments about tangential topics, or terminology (none of which, of course, is capable of being used in an Amazon review), that are still a shock to the system. Reading it, you realize that not all of the boundaries we pushed in books in the seventies were eventually broken; some of them rebounded.
But all that aside, what's it like as a book? Well, it's readable, and a relatively quick novel; Rossner does know how to keep the pages turning. I'm not sure whether she had literary aspirations with this novel (and, to be honest, I'm not sure whether she achieved them, though being re-released by Washington Square Press in 1995 certainly lends the novel an air of credibility in that regard), but it's certainly two or three rungs above your garden-variety genre potboiler or Beeline novel. Rossner's characters are deep, rich constructions, even when they border on the stereotypical (Theresa's sister Katherine and her husband are clinging-to-the-sixties free love poster children, better for a laugh these days than anything else), and the situations in which they find themselves are grimly realistic. Rossner wrote herself a fine novel, and one that deserves to be rediscovered by a new generation. *** ½
Painfully real account of a life lived carelessly.......2005-04-13
Rarely has a bestseller had such a powerful yet upsetting impact on the psyche of contemporary American sexuality. Judith Rossner's novel brutally reflects the condition of today's swinging singles scene with the story of Theresa Dunn, a young 20-something grade school teacher living alone in Manhattan during the freewheeling 70's. On the surface, Theresa resembles the compassionate, down-to-earth All-American Girl that we can all identify with. Her ambition and desire for freedom and personal liberation transform her from a shy, insecure girl into an independent young woman living in the Lower East Side with a career teaching second graders. But as a result of a few traumatic events in her childhood and several debasing sexual relationships, this image is slowly deteriorated as we gain more insight into Theresa's troubled emotional and mental state. Add to that the unforgiving tide of the era's sexual revolution, Theresa becomes swept away in a pessimistic and alienated life of nameless sex and drug use.
Fearing genuine emotional intimacy and attachment with anyone, Theresa instead tries to fill the spiritual and emotional void inside of her by taking home various men from bars and clubs for sex, and then kicking them out afterward so that she won't have to face the emotional consequences. Not surprisingly, Theresa soon finds herself spiraling downward at an out-of-control rate, and just as she realizes that she is careening toward catastrophe, she takes the wrong man home with her, and thus seals her own tragic fate.
Rossner spends a considerable amount of the novel producing the background circumstances for Theresa's behavior, so that we can see why she unwittingly paid the ultimate price for the sake of misguided pleasure. What sets this novel miles ahead of similar psychological thrillers is the unsympathetic realism that is portrayed in the circumstances surrounding Theresa's self-destruction. The sex scenes are unpleasant and emotionally deadening and you'll never find more starkly realistic dialogue anywhere else. And then there's that notoriously graphic and bone-chilling ending which will haunt you for several weeks to follow....
Probably the biggest reason why such an overwhelmingly depressing novel like this was so widely popular and culturally influential is because Theresa is such an explicit reflection of the very worst in all of us. Not only do we see Theresa's insecurities and fears in our own thoughts, but her story is still told today again and again through the real-life tragic misjudgments of Natalie Holloway, Matthew Shepherd and others. This is not a crime novel or thriller. Rather, it is a psychological study of the tragic self-destruction of a human being. Overall, `Looking for Mr. Goodbar' is an essential must-read for those who are brave enough to acknowledge why we as individuals often cannot help but destroy ourselves.
A More Seedy, Sexually Charged "In Cold Blood".......2004-01-19
This is definitely one of those novels that is like a car accident-- it's ugly, but you can't look away. Rossner's hypnotic writing style and pitch-perfect characterization will hook you from page one. What is perhaps most haunting about this work, however, is not being ushered into this dark, lonely way of life that Theresa Dunn leads but rather finding out just how many similarities you share with her. This book will definitely stay with you, which isn't the best feeling, frankly, but trust me, if you don't read it, you're missing out on a superb literary experience.
Compelling..........2003-10-19
This book was lent to me by a friend in March 2003 and I didn't get around to reading it until June 2003. I'm so glad I took time out to read this book. It was sad, compelling, smart, provacative and intriguing-all in one. I won't spoil the story for anyone but it's one of the top 50 books ever written.
Caution on the road to love.......2003-02-19
Judith Rossner's warning in her novel to take a flashlight when we visit the darkest corners of sexual experimentation is forever relevant. "Looking for Mr. Goodbar" (the title not a character but a pick-up bar) gives us a Catholic teacher of deaf children who, after dark, takes on a truly dark character and sets out on the bar scene looking for sex and, maybe if she's lucky, love. But the search for both is strewn with broken hearts, disappointments and dangers, as Theresa finds out too late. Rossner's main character comes across as a basically desperate human scarred by years of indifferent parents, a sister who was preferred in childhood over her and a low self-image caused by a curved spine (although later corrected by surgery). In seeking approval, validation, redemption and love, Theresa ventures forth into the darkness and risks of anonymous sex and, of course, not finding in the darkness what she seeks. The accomplishment of "Goodbar" is Rossner's uncanny ability to focus on and then bare the desperation that fuels any person's search for love or whatever it's called. All too often, the searchers who wander too far into the blackness meet the same final fate that Theresa does, and Rossner's descriptive talents of that fate spare no one. Hers is a cautionary tale that, if we must, don't go too far into the night without a light on in the brain. Without it, we may never get a second chance. The book was later turned into a theatrical film with Diane Keaton turning in a tremendous performance. Both the film and book warrant attention and respect of the dangers of the night.
Book Description
Describing Washington Square, Henry James wrote that it was "as if the wine of life had been poured for you, in advance, into some pleasant old punch bowl." Created in 1826 through the visionary efforts of philanthropist and New York City mayor Philip Hone, the elegant and vibrant square anchors one of the world's most storied neighborhoods, Greenwich Village. Today, the quarter retains much of the charm it possessed in earlier eras when it served as a mecca for artists and activists, intellectuals and indigents, brahmins and bohemians. Yet its history has been clouded by half-truths and myths, while some of its most colorful and influential residents -- and its role in the city's growth -- lie undiscovered. Neighborhood historian and preservationist Luther S. Harris has spent twenty years researching the real story of New York's social and cultural hub, and in Around Washington Square he has produced the definitive history of Greenwich Village, illustrated with more than two hundred photographs and engravings, many from his private collection. Harris's prodigious research efforts among city council minutes, real-estate tax and conveyance ledgers, directories, family histories, architectural records, institutional and business inventories, newspapers, private collections, and public archives have uncovered surprising facts about the origins of Greenwich Village and its influence on the development of Fifth Avenue and upper Manhattan.
Formally established as a separate political jurisdiction -- the Fifteenth Ward -- in 1832, the neighborhood known today as Greenwich Village reached its social apogee in the 1850s and 1860s as the home of New York's wealthiest and most powerful citizens. Then known as the Empire Ward, it boasted Manhattan's finest churches and homes, its most exclusive clubs, its best-endowed libraries and galleries, and its grandest hotels, shops, and theaters. The neighborhood had also begun to attract artists and writers, including leading members of the Hudson River School and such prominent literary talents as Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, and Walt Whitman.
Deftly balancing architectural, cultural, political, and social history, Harris follows the quarter's history into the twentieth century. Early in the century the Village acquired its bohemian reputation and became synonymous with radical politics, revolutionary art, and idiosyncratic lifestyles. Intellectual exchanges at Mabel Dodge's Fifth Avenue salon, among others, reverberated nationwide, as did the groundbreaking plays of Eugene O'Neill, journalism of Lincoln Steffens, and paintings of the Ashcan School. As expertly recounted by Harris, for the rest of the twentieth century the Village continued to draw many in the arts -- from Edward Hopper and Jackson Pollock to Allen Ginsberg and Bob Dylan -- helping to make New York the art capital of the world. Preservation battles in the 1950s and 1960s over the opposing ideas of Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs left the Village fabric largely intact. Concluding with the neighborhood's decline in the 1970s and renaissance in the 1980s and 1990s, Around Washington Square captures the charm, energy, and individuality of Greenwich Village.
Customer Reviews:
Exhaustively Covers Topic.......2006-11-12
It is clear that years of devoted and painstaking research went into the writing of this book. One is given a strong idea of how the neighborhood has evolved as well as the society and mores of its inhabitants over several centuries. The book is well illustrated and there are many images that I have never seen elsewhere.
Greenwich Village's Complex History.......2004-06-29
Created by the rich and merchant class as an escape from the recurring ravages of yellow fever and cholera, Greenwich Village was, essentially, never really mapped out; never really settled in accordance to any public plan. Perhaps this haphazard beginning is what gave the area its combined refined yet anarchic flavor that exists until this day.
Luther Harris' book, "Around Washington Square: An Illustrated History of Greenwich Village" is an excellent introduction to the history, myths, lies, and unknown truths about this magnet for the students, the homeless, the artists, and the real estate agents who each value Greenwich Village for their own reasons. The text is very informative, and the illustrations are lush and generous. Broken down into easy-to-handle sections, Harris nonetheless is comprehensive. (He apologies to his readers if any particular individual, group, or building was omitted but he needn't have: just about all the bases were covered.) This is an exhaustive and wonderful book.
The Square That Shaped a Nation.......2004-03-20
In the 1930s Greenwich Village, already mythic as the American bohemia, was a disappointment to the visiting French architect, Le Corbusier. He found the skyscrapers of Lower Manhattan and mid-town, "mystically alluring", but the Village, which stood between these two sites of modernity, failed to measure up. In his later book, When the Cathedrals Were White (1947), he described it as "an urban no man's land made up of miserable low buildings and poor streets of dirty red brick". By contrast-and this contrasting story is the one that Luther S. Harris tells in Around Washington Square-Henry James, in his famous account of his return to the United States in 1904, celebrated the Village. He regretted the skyscrapers that "so cruelly over-topped" his beloved Trinity Church in Lower Manhattan, and he found the fashionable but bland Upper East Side no more congenial. In Greenwich Village, however, he found solace. "This portion of New York", he wrote, impresses many as "the most delectable."
"The village has a kind of established repose which is rare in other quarters of a long, shrill city; it has a riper, richer, more honourable look than any of the upper ramifications of the great longitudinal thoroughfare, the look of having had something of a social history." James has it right and so does Harris. The Village is the northernmost point of the old medieval Street pattern of colonial New York, and it marks the beginning of the modem grid. That doubled physical character is perhaps an apt symbol of the combination of historical presences and avant-garde creativity that has marked the cultural life of this part of the city.
Harris appropriately begins his story with the creation of Washington Square and goes beyond the usual accounts. He emphasizes the complexity of its birth, revealing that its creation required a modification to the recently established 1811 grid plan. That posed a political problem that was managed with patience, persistence, and astuteness by the then Mayor, Philip Hone, a merchant, one of New York's two great nineteenth-century diarists, and the father of the square. By starting at that point, however. Harris omits the separate history of Greenwich, from which the mixed-up street pattern of the West Village derives, and he neglects a longer and important social history that played itself out a couple of blocks from the square. South and west of the square was Manhattan's longest-established African American neighborhood; it dated from the seventeenth century, having been enabled by the Dutch, who allowed slaves to buy land there and use their income from that land to purchase their own freedom. The British authorities were less accommodating to the community, but it persisted into the nineteenth century until the infamous Civil War Draft Riots, when it was devastated by a series of savage attacks on blacks.
He subjects many of the myths of the Village to the test of documentation, sometimes enriching the myth, sometimes undercutting it. While most urban studies of this genre tend to repeat each other, with no one seeking solid evidence for the well-cultivated memories of the place, Harris has dug deep into the holdings of the Municipal Reference Library and Archives, into newspapers and city directories, and, with special success, the visual record of the neighborhood. The book is subtitled An illustrated History of Greenwich Village, and that it is indeed. It has over 200 illustrations, and a very high proportion of them are uncommon, not the usual suspects which-like the myths-get reused from one history to the next.
If Harris offers no thesis, he does have a point to make. Although Manhattan is marked by constant change or, as one historian recently it, "creative destruction", there is remarkable continuity in the Village. Even with the recent intrusion of Starbucks, book- and drugstore chains, and overbearing buildings recently erected on the square by New York University, the neighborhood's appeal to creative people persists, particularly creative people in the arts literature. His point is made by the multiplicity of individuals who populate his history from Whitman, Melville, Poe, and Anne Lynch's salon in the middle of the nineteenth century up until the present. These individuals-some well remembered, others less so-have provided a crucial density to the world of culture-making.
One cannot begin to summarize the number of connections made by Harris, but the entangled associations of artists and intellectuals with groups and places that he elaborates reveal how the Village works. Harris points to the allure of the history of the place and its inhabitants. The most ambitious and talented pursue the challenge and the glory of association with the ghosts of giants. But part of what is unique about the Village are its many physical and cultural nooks and crannies. Harris's strategy of combining an account of the architecture the physical layout of the Village with the history of its literary and artistic figures becomes an explanation. The area feeds on the power and energy of New York, but it provides space-a necessary space-for invention of self well as art.
Still, the maintenance of the Village has required vigilance. Le Corbusier's views were not unique, and Robert Moses, the power planner who reshaped New York during the middle third of the twentieth century, saw little to save around Washington Square. His plan to run expressways through the park and SoHo, just south of the Village, threatened both the history and the social texture of the neighborhood. One Village mother, worried that her child's swings in Washington Square Park were at risk, took up her pen. The result, writes Harris, was not only a successful political mobilization that stopped Moses, but also The Death and Life of American Cities (1961), perhaps the most influential book on cities, planning, and architecture to be published in the twentieth century.
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- "You Can't Please Your Father and Me Both; You Must Choose Between Us..."
- a classic American tale of parents and children
- A pleasure
- Early James At His Best
- the sacrificial American girl
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Washington Square (Signet Classics)
Henry James
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ASIN: 0451528719
Release Date: 2004-04-06 |
Book Description
With a new afterword by Michael Cunningham
What Catherine Sloper lacks in brains and beauty, she makes up for by being "very good." The handsome Morris Townsend would do anything to win her hand-even if it means pretending that he loves the homely ingénue, and cares nothing for her opulent wealth.
Download Description
Inspired by a story Henry James heard at a dinner party, Washington Square tells how the rakish but idle Morris Townsend tries to win the heart of heiress Catherine Sloper against the objections of her father. Precise and understated, the book endures as a matchless social study of New York in the mid-nineteenth century.
Customer Reviews:
"You Can't Please Your Father and Me Both; You Must Choose Between Us...".......2007-07-08
Although Henry James is best known for The Portrait of a Lady (Penguin Classics), this slender volume of a young woman's lifetime is one that resonates for the oddest reasons. With a protagonist who is entirely passive, a plot that is somewhat uneventful and a cast of supporting characters that are entirely unsympathetic, "Washington Square" is a novel that encapsulates a life hardly worth reading about. Paradoxically, that is precisely why it should be read, and why it's so surprisingly memorable.
Catherine Sloper is shy, plain, dull and a little slow in her studies. Her mother was none of these things, leaving her somewhat of a disappointment to her father, an accomplished and well-respected doctor, a man who Catherine adores and longs to please. Well aware of her spiritless nature, Catherine is astonished when she receives the attention of the handsome and charming Morris Townsend, and is soon devotedly in love with her new suitor. Encouraged by her romantic and foolish Aunt Lavinia Penniman, Catherine accepts Morris's proposal of marriage. Unfortunately, her father is not at all impressed by the match, (believing Morris to be a mercenary after her dowry) and forbids Catherine from seeing him on the threat of disinheritance. Torn between the two most important people in her life, the listless and confused Catherine decides to wait. But will her beloved wait for her, or is she deceived by his true intentions?
Catherine's complete ordinariness is what makes her special within the context of the novel, as I am hard-pressed to think up another heroine who is so uncommonly common. Though she is a pleasant enough person, there is nothing remotely interesting to her, save the predicament she finds herself in. Her situation is frustrating to behold, as the poor girl is torn between her intelligent, infallible father and her charming, loving fiancée. Although her father has his daughter's best interests at heart, he handles the affair with such practicality and stubbornness that his crusade against Townsend eventually dwindles into a battle of will between himself and his daughter, and then petty revenge and one-upmanship. Likewise, though Morris Townsend seems faithful and loving, declaring that he has no interest in Catherine's inheritance whatsoever, we cannot shake a sense of untrustworthiness in him. Despite Catherine's plainness, you can't help but feel that neither man deserves her.
To be privy to Catherine's inner struggles is to witness a tiny and insignificant life within literature, with none of the romance, passion or tragedy of Lizzie Bennett, Tess Durbeyfield, Cathy Earnslaw, Jane Eyre, or any other literary heroine that comes to mind. Although Mrs Penniman alleviates some of the gloom with her far-flung intrigues and romances, her presence ultimately brings more harm that good to her young charge. Catherine is a woman who suffers in silence, without witness or companionship, a testimony to how passive-aggressiveness, lost opportunities and selfishness can destroy the life of one who has no means of fighting back. Every single individual on earth would like to believe that they are special, unique and important in some way, and the mediocrity of a life ill-spent becomes quite terrifying by the close of the novel. Catherine's attempts to assert some control over her father and her suitor are pitiful to behold, though they are victories, they are tiny ones within the context of her life. It's almost as if James uses Catherine as a vessel for every individual who has simply "misplaced" their life, and the emptiness that follows those who don't have the means, strength or fortitude to fight against those that hold them in sway. Make sure it never happens to you.
a classic American tale of parents and children.......2007-03-21
Eloquently composed by a master of the World and American novel, Henry James, WASHINGTON SQUARE is a revelatory , painful study of wealth, prestige, and social discrimination in mid nineteenth century New York. Quite possibly James' masterpiece, it poignantly depicts with sympathy and intellectual blindness the a father's oppressing memory of his dead wife upon his innocent, frail and oblivious daughter. The daughter, Catherine Sloper, has become an iconic chatacter in American dramatic literature and film due to James' superficial description of her awkwardness coupled with the arrival of her wit, ruthlessness, spirit and clever sensibility after she is jilted by her fiancee. A remarkable study of how parents unknowingly deprive children of love and nurturing though their grief and personal disappointment.
A pleasure.......2007-01-22
Washington Square is a pleasure to read. Best of all is Henry James' lush prose; his ethereal descriptions of characters and their emotional states and feelings towards others is peerless - and beautiful, and often funny in a stylistic sense. The novel itself functions as an expostition of human greed and the need for control, physically and emotionally. The four focal characters are all well drawn, and because of that their more despicable natures come forward. The naive Catherine; her father, the overbearing Dr. Sloper; his sister, the officious Mrs. Penniman; and the greedy, and lazy, Morris Townsend, ostensibly interested in Catherine only for her, and her father's, money. There is plenty of scheming and posturing by all four of them, and any more words from me will spoil the novel. Also amusing, is the dated sensibilities of the characters; but it all adds up to an enjoyable novel by an American master.
Early James At His Best.......2006-12-18
Though James rejected this tale for inclusion in the New York Edition of his works, presumably because it was too simple and straightforward, many readers have not shared his judgment, insisting instead the work has great merit.
Its theme is an intriguing one that raises the following question: Is it better to be clever or good? Even here, for James, the answer is not all that simple, his conclusion being it's probably best to be some subtle combination of both.
Dr. Sloper and Morris Townsend, the central male figures, are clever men, but each is deficient in his own way. The caustically witty Doctor wants to be just, but his pride in being right about Morris as a fortune hunter ultimately overrides his fatherly concerns. For this reason, he becomes a sort of Hawthorne-like villain, a scientific, detached, almost gleeful observer of his own daughter's plight, rather than a suitably caring parent. He suffers, finally, not from an excess of cleverness, but from a defect of generous felt emotion. Morris, too, is a definitely clever character, but at the same time he's the spoiled creation of enabling women, a boy-man who's more a self-interested player at life than a vital participant in it, an early version of the fatherless "It's all about me" youth of later modern fiction.
The heroine Catherine is a sorely beset young woman, pulled this way and that, now by her right-at-all-costs father, then by her fortune hunting suitor. She is a good, dutiful daughter throughout, though the novel details her growth in intelligent personhood. She finally gains the independence needed to tell her manipulative father where his parental rights end and her own moral self begins. Similarly, once her education in life is complete, she is able to avoid a final romantic capitulation, telling the shameless Morris in the novel's last scene what her mature self now requires he hear from her. Naturally, he's too self-involved to accurately understand her real character.
This short novel, finally, is rich in witty literary parody. It's closing chapters read like an inverted "Odyssey," with the patiently waiting Catherine weaving embroidery in Penelope-like fashion, until the surprise return of the long wandering Morris. All in all, despite the masterly author's doubts, this is a work of considerable distinction.
the sacrificial American girl.......2006-07-10
Washington Square can be read as an upper-class fairy tale. Catherine Sloper has the tendency to see the people around her as if they were characters in a novel. Her father's education has been based on safeguarding Catherine from the vulgarity of "appearance". He is mostly concerned with her daughter not being overdressed. But how is she to learn not to overestimate her acquaintances? The influence of her aunt, a woman of powerful romantic imagination, misleads the young Catherine in her view and opinion of the young and dazzling Morris Townsend. Is he really madly in love with her? What has made this young gentleman worthy of receiving the benefit of every doubt in the Sloper household? Catherine seems to lose her sense of her rights in this relationship: "she had only a consciousness of immense and unexpected favours".
The problem is that Aunt Penniman delights in a drama, and the young Townsend has too high a sense of performance himself to disappoint her. A kiss and an embrace may no longer be a demonstration of affection, but a "sign". The poor bachelorette does not think too much about it, and will take whatever comes her way. Can this man be untrue to her when he says that she is irresistible? Is he in love or is he mercenary?
In the opinion of Dr Sloper, the young Townsend is out to seek his fortune through marriage. He has been reckless in his early youth, squandering his small fortune. But is it too despicable of him to seek to remake his life through matrimony? How are we to draw the moral profile of such a person? Are we capable of mercy, or only of Sloper's smug scorn of Catherine's need for love? It seems to be the case that the "interested" Morris may be altogether more likeable than Catherine's father.
When is the right moment to leave a partner whom one mistrusts? Isn't it better to suffer for a twelvemonth and then get over it than to commit oneself for life to someone unworthy of our cares, be it boyfriend or Dad? Is Morris really a selfish idler? On the occasion of her being disinherited, would Morris still care to marry an unattractive and impoverished girl?
Cosmopolitanism is in the novel a measure of young Catherine's incapacity to develop. After her father takes her for an artistic tour of Europe, she hasn't managed to grow into a "wiser" woman. But how is wisdom to be measured? She becomes withdrawn from her tactless and proud father. After she has been cruelly jilted, Dr Sloper is perverse enough to mock her having lost her chance to marry a charming young man. One is led to believe that Sloper had some Freudian attachment to his daughter, who had come to substitute his her beautiful mother in Sloper's heart. James's understanding of romantic and human emotions is deeply moving.
Amazon.com
The talented Alex Jennings creates an atmosphere of gripping psychological tension and brings a variety of characters to life in this new audio edition of a crime classic. When the student Raskolnikov puts his philosophical theory to the ultimate test of murder, a tragic tale of suffering and redemption unfolds in the dismal setting of the slums of czarist, prerevolutionary St. Petersburg. While Jennings's adept repertoire of British accents works to demonstrate the varying classes of characters, it occasionally distracts the listener from the Russian setting. However, Dostoyevsky's rendering of 18th-century Russia emerges unscathed, bringing the dark pathos (such as wretched poverty and rampant suffering) to life. (Running time: 315 minutes; 4 cassettes)
Book Description
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT by Fyodor Mikhailovitch Dostoevsky (1821-1881) is an unparalleled psychological study of the criminal mind, conscience, guilt, and redemption, coupled with an examination of spiritual purity and devotion. The tension-filled story of Raskolnikov - a student who plans and executes the murder of an old moneylender -- of Sonia, the pitiful young woman from the streets who cares for him, and the inevitable events that follow is considered Dostoevsky's masterpiece.
Download Description
This epic tells the story of Raskolnikov, a student who believes he is superior and entitled. He commits a crime and the book traces his downfall. After being shipped off to Siberia for a prison sentence, Raskolnikov finds suffering to be a means by which the soul is purified of all its sins.
With the help of CliffsNotes you'll understand the overall structure of the work, actions and motivations of the characters, and the social and cultural perspectives of the author.
Customer Reviews:
Dostoyevsky's Best!.......2007-10-02
I liked this slightly better than The Brothers Karamozov which is also one of the best books ever! The book is similar to Poe's, A Tell-Tale Heart in which a man commits a murder that absolutely nobody suspects. What becomes his undoing is only his guilty conscience.
Spiffy-fantasticness.......2007-09-19
I had my doubts when I started this book. One problem I had was that I bought, what I later discovered, a really awful translation. Several times durring the story I felt myself thinking "oh common, lets move this along!" It seemed like yet another book where there is a main plot that deviates into several smaller plots along the way just to "beed up" the story. I wanted to give up. Fortunately, I'm pig headed and I kept with it to the very end, and I'm glad I did. Upon finishing the book I realized just how beatifully written it actually is. It's honestly a work of art. The development of the characters and the graphic descriptions are so fantastic that I really did lose myself in it.
Page turner par excellence.......2007-09-19
I went into this with an open mind. I had heard of the author, of course, but never expected to read anything of his. Someone left a copy lying around. I grabbed it to have something to read while I soaked in a hot bath. The bath turned cold and I was still reading.
I'm not sophisticated enough to expound on the deeper meaning or the underlying philosophy. For me the book was simply a highly entertaining read. I couldn't put it down, as they say. I didn't want it to finish. The author created a world in which you could fully "immerse" yourself. Good reading for the bath.
In one word, GREAT.......2007-09-18
This book is a masterpiece. Fyodor Dostoevsky makes it so pyschological that you become the murderer and start worrying yourelf. He takes the reader in and out of the mind of a murderer and his consequences. The book is also very fast paced and doesn't lag at all, which is a plus.
The only downside is that the Signet Classic version of Crime and Punishment smears like crazy. The book is tiny itself and your thumbs have to go on the book but then it would also smear letters and make it look ugly.
Another Philosophical Classic from the D-Man.......2007-07-06
This is a most excellent work of fiction, though it can not hold a candle to, say, The Idiot or The Brothers Karamazov. As a Dostoyevsky fan, I rank this book as number three in his best works (out of the ones I've read so far). It's amazing, but I always manage to find myself in one of his characters. I think everyone can, and perhaps that's why Dostoyevsky is considered such a great writer!
Rodion "Rodya" Raskolnikov is a Russian college student who (to put it in his best friend's words) is "morose, gloomy, proud and haughty, and of late has been suspcious and fanciful. He has a noble nature and a kind heart. He does not like showing his feelings and would rather do a cruel thing than open his heart freely. Sometimes, though, he is not morbid, but simply cold and inhumanly callous; it's as though he were alternating between two characters. He never listens to what is said to him. He is never interested in what interests other people at any given moment. He thinks very highly of himself and perhaps he is right . . ."
This last part is probably the most true. Rodya thinks so highly about himself that he has written an article titled "Crime" in which a theory on the Extraordinary Man claims The Extraordinary Man, according to Rodya, has the full right to commit any crime he wishes and get away with it granted, of course, that the crime is aimed at improving the human race and society at large.
Rodya is so convinced that he's an Extraordinary Man that he sets out to prove it by commiting a murder. He so happens to know a cruel old woman who gives loans in exchange for collateral. She is very smart but unkind and abuses her younger sister constantly. Rodya sees the world as a much better place without her and sets out to "cross the boundaries that the Ordianry Man will not cross."
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