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Cargando... Amateur Barbarians: A Novel (edición 2009)por Robert Cohen (Autor)
Información de la obraAmateur Barbarians: A Novel por Robert Cohen
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Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. I didn't enjoy this. The characters were too ordinary to be interesting. The writing was also quite ordinary, especially in the early chapters when the author made comparison after comparison using "as if..." The settings were unremarkable or not well described. It wasn't a bad book, just long and uninspiring.
Amateur Barbarians succeeds as a humorous and touching read despite the imbalance of its two leading men. Cohen’s sharp prose undercuts some of the emotional baggage, forcing readers to study these characters’ minor ambitions as if under a microscope. His meticulous reportage transforms the everydayness of life—and its inconclusiveness—into something more than ordinary. Distinciones
Artfully juxtaposing two contrasting personalities (as he did in Inspired Sleep), Cohen explores the terrain of male middle age in a novel that keenly observes the dissatisfactions of contemporary life. Teddy Hastings, the 53-year-old principal of a New England middle school, yearns for a grand adventure that would celebrate his manhood. Restless and impulsive, Teddy unwittingly causes a scandal that lands him briefly in jail. Disgraced and forced to take a sabbatical, Teddy leaves his wife, Gail, behind and flies to Ethiopia, where his college dropout daughter is working with orphans. Meanwhile, Oren Pierce, the younger man appointed in Teddy's absence, skitters through life in the same manner he has always done: perennially uncommitted, congenitally irresolute, though he is eventually forced to confront the limits of his desultory lifestyle. (Gail comes into play, as well.) Teddy's sojourn in Africa is the most dynamic part of the book, though it is Gail who acts as the novel's fulcrum; witty, sensual, focused and centered in reality, she remains an indelible figure as the two men in her orbit are diminished by the collapse of their dreams and expectations. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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Google Books — Cargando... GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999Clasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio:
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Wonderful insights into male psyche here, but the main reason to read Robert Cohen is the beauty of his prose, his genius-level observations on the human condition, and his light humorous touch that makes taking all his brilliance in such a joy. ( )