The Bottom of the Sky Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Are you looking to buy The Bottom of the Sky? Here is the right place to find the great deals. we can offer discounts of up to 90% on The Bottom of the Sky. Check out the link below:

>> Click Here to See Compare Prices and Get the Best Offers

The Bottom of the Sky Review"You think a family means more than people in it? If one might kill the other one, which one would you save, Geno?"
William Pack's novel, "The Bottom of the Sky" poses this question early on... ...and answers it in such a way--two ways, actually--that I am lost for the proper word. Brilliant? No. That's on the dust cover. `page turner?' No, that's on the dust cover too. Timely? Well, yeah, but that's on the dust cover. Powerful? Poignant? Naw. People in the know already said that and were stunned.
Stunned. That's it. That's me at the end.
Stunned. Stunning. Stunning. The thesaurus has no suitable synonym for that.
I lost count of the places I wanted to savor again. On page 314, nearly two thirds of the way through, I started taking notes: "... his guts were processing a ball of nails."
You don't get this kind of writing just anywhere; hardly ever in a debut novel.
Page 320: "...I lose this, I become them." Levi's struggle in six words. Page 346: "I don't want my world to contract until I'm all that counts to me." His fear. He was on the way, too. Almost becoming all that counts to himself--much, much earlier, in the parts before I started taking notes.
In chapter 41, I wanted to jump through the book so I could personally strangle Dierdre, whom I started thinking of as `Devildre' because she was so... so... evil.
So read the book. You're a fool if you don't.
You'll be a fool not because you'll miss the word-choices, the rich, rich language few novelists dream of on their best day, even if they have a superb editor like Pack does. Not because you won't find your guts processing nails. Not because you won't confront yourself where you don't want to go in the darkest region of your fear. Or your hopes either, for that matter. And by the way, not because you won't find out what's really, really important in life: It's not the corner office.
Read this book for the education you'll get while you're doing all that.
You'll learn what caused the sub-prime mortgage crisis. Sound familiar? Recent? I never really understood it until I read "The Bottom of the Sky." William Pack explains it all in terms that will make you seethe even if you think 'sub-prime' is some kind of meat.
Bernie Madoff-like shenanigans on Wall Street: You'll come to understand the culture that makes such things possible in the financial world. The culprits are all here, in "The Bottom of the Sky."
"The Bottom of The Sky" sort of begins and ends in Two Dot, Montana. It's a real place. I've been there. It has a bank, and a hardware store, both vacant, both ghosts of something that never should have been. And a few die-hard residents who don't realize that the whole damn town is a ghost. Two Dot, Montana. Look it up on Yahoo Maps or Google Earth. It's a real place, all right. Real close to the Crazy Mountains--the bottom of the sky.
Young Levi grows up in Roundup, Montana, which is just down the road a piece from Two Dot. His mother collects dryer lint. If you don't shed a tear when you find out what she does with it, you have no heart. Don't hold your breath. You won't find out until the end, nearly.
Levi's the sort of kid who visualizes answers to complex mathematical problems without working it out on paper. As a young man he takes this prodigy--and a wife--with him to the financial world where he works his way up in the mythical firm of Bookman Stuart Securities on the sheer strength of his intellect. Those closest to Levi love him for his honesty and integrity, but some of his Ivy League coworker-superiors-competitors hate his success even though it's making them rich too. Some of them want to stab him in the back for it and take it all for themselves.
Levi brings common sense and honor to his job, but he pays a heavy price. You'll have to read the book to find out just how heavy it really is.
If you do read it, you'll be rewarded by a new understanding of human nature, of human greed, of human love. On top of all that you'll understand what's going on in the financial world at this very moment in time. You'll get an education on that.
William Pack should know. He was there. In Two Dot, and on Wall Street.
"Kill the firm, save the planet." That's one of the answers. There's another. Maybe you'll find a superlative for 'stunning' and write your own review.
Get this book and read it. Then wait until William Pack comes up with another. It will be a blockbuster, because everyone will know him by then.
The Bottom of the Sky Overview

Want to learn more information about The Bottom of the Sky?

>> Click Here to See All Customer Reviews & Ratings Now

Read More...

Everything: A Novel Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Are you looking to buy Everything: A Novel? Here is the right place to find the great deals. we can offer discounts of up to 90% on Everything: A Novel. Check out the link below:

>> Click Here to See Compare Prices and Get the Best Offers

Everything: A Novel ReviewKevin Canty writes with a spare beauty. The book is designed so that there is a lot of white space on the pages and this space carries meaning. 'Everything' is about people who are lost, looking for love, recovering from poor choices and yet have a resiliency that carries them through their damaged lives with strength and a certain dignity. Canty's characters are able to tell us as much about themselves in their silences as when they speak.
The characters that comprise this novel overlap, and each chapter is primarily about one or two of the characters. There is RL, owner of a bait, tackle and guiding shop who has not had a loving relationship in years. He is a big man - in girth, spirit and appetites. He likes his booze and he wishes desperately for a woman. He was married for a while to a Dead Head who followed the Grateful Dead for years, leaving him to raise their daughter, Layla, on his own. Layla gives meaning to his life. She is nineteen years old and a college student. When not at school, she spends her summers in the Montana wilderness with RL where most of this novel takes place. Layla is recovering from a love affair gone amiss. RL realizes that Layla is not likely to be with him for much longer. He is trying to learn how to let her go.
RL decides to take in an old lover of his who is having chemotherapy for melanoma. In the back of his mind he hopes to resurrect some sort of relationship with her despite the fact that she is married. Betsy helps give some meaning to RL's life because, with Layla in college, he faces the empty nest syndrome. With his big heart, he needs to give. However, with his huge appetites, he also expects a lot from others.
June is a close friend of RL's. She was married to RL's best friend who died eleven years ago. As the book begins, June decides to give up her widowhood. Her husband, Taylor, was her great love but now she wants another love. Eleven years of grieving is a long time. On top of that, she is a hospice worker, spending her days with the nearly dead.
Edgar is RL's employee, an artist and lover of fishing. He 'knows' fish and feels at one with the trout that inhabit the rivers of Montana. He is married with one child and another on the way. He is trying to make some difficult decisions in his life.
Canty has an inimitable sense of place. The reader feels like the Montana mountains are looming. I felt the lushness of the land, along with the hard life the inhabitants face. This is not a land for the weak but it can be a land for the lost - an end of the road place where people depend on one another. There is a lot of alcohol consumption in the book but there is rarely a mention of television or movies. Despite the loneliness of all the characters, they depend on one another for sustenance.
The characters speak to us in what they don't say as much as what they tell us. This is a book about everything that makes us human - love, work, life, money, pain, joy, loneliness and connection. Canty gets it. His characters run the gamut of the soul. They are not sweet, nor are they urbanized. I pictured them in Carrhartts and jeans, rubber boots and down parkas. I felt their hands get cold and traveled with them on the dirt roads that were slick with mud or snow. I felt their pain and I soared with them in those rare moments of joy. It takes a fine author to take me to the depths of despair and soar the height of joy with his characters.
Another wonderful book by Canty is Winslow in Love.Everything: A Novel Overview

Want to learn more information about Everything: A Novel?

>> Click Here to See All Customer Reviews & Ratings Now

Read More...