Showing posts with label pulitzer - fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pulitzer - fiction. Show all posts

No Country for Old Men Review

No Country for Old Men
Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)
Are you looking to buy No Country for Old Men? Here is the right place to find the great deals. we can offer discounts of up to 90% on No Country for Old Men. Check out the link below:

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

No Country for Old Men ReviewCormac McCarthy's first novel since completing the Border Trilogy in 1998 is a dramatic change of pace. Gone is the focus on the wild Texas plains and the encroachment of civilization. Gone are the lyrical descriptions of untamed nature and young love. Gone is the belief that love and hope have a fighting chance in life's mythic struggles. Instead, we have a much darker, more pessimistic vision, set in Texas in the 1980s, a microcosm in which drugs and violence have so changed "civilization" that the local sheriff believes "we're looking at something we really aint even seen before."
Forty-five-year-old Sheriff Ed Tom Bell must deal with the growing amorality affecting his small border town as a result of the drug trade. The old "rules" do not apply, and Bell faces a wave of violence involving at least ten murders. Running parallel with Bell's investigation of these murders is the story of Llewelyn Moss, a resident of Bell's town, who, while hunting in the countryside, has uncovered a bloody massacre and a truck containing a huge shipment of heroin. He has also discovered and stolen a case containing two million dollars of drug money, which results in his frantic run from hired hitmen. Hunting Moss is Anton Chigurh, a sociopathic cartel avenger, a Satan who will stop at nothing, the antithesis of the thoughtful and kindly Bell. A rival hitman named Wells is, in turn, stalking Chigurh.
By far McCarthy's most exciting and suspenseful novel in recent years, the story speeds along, the body count rising in shocking scenes of depravity. Bell's first person musings about crime, society, and the people around him break the tension periodically, allowing the reader to ponder the wider implications of the action and to see it as a symbolic struggle for man's soul between good and evil, love and hate, God and Satan. As the violence continues and Bell becomes more discouraged, he visits his elderly Uncle Ellis, a former deputy sheriff and war veteran, and as they talk about World War I and the Vietnam War, where they were willing to give their lives for a presumably winnable cause, the contrast between those battles and this battle on the home front is seen in broader and bleaker perspective.
McCarthy's desire to preserve traditional values, and his grim vision of the present and future, reflect a view of life that many readers will not share. The artistry the reader has seen in McCarthy's thematic development throughout the rest of the novel is sacrificed in the last forty pages, in which Bell's overt warnings and cautionary remarks about the future sound preachy. Still, the novel is breathtaking in its construction, and Sheriff Ed Tom Bell is one of McCarthy's best-drawn characters. (4.5 stars) n Mary Whipple
No Country for Old Men Overview

Want to learn more information about No Country for Old Men?

>> Click Here to See All Customer Reviews & Ratings Now
Read More...

Olive Kitteridge: Fiction Review

Olive Kitteridge: Fiction
Average Reviews:

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

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

Olive Kitteridge: Fiction ReviewI am not normally a fan of short stories. While I appreciate the technical abilities of the short story writer, I find "shortness" troublesome. Generally, the longer a book is, the more appealing. Consequently, I was initially leery of the descriptions of Elizabeth Strout's newest novel, "Olive Kitteridge," which calls itself "a novel in stories."
All of the stories in this book occur in the town of Crosby, Maine. At the center of many of the book's stories is the person, Olive Kitteridge, a retired teacher. In the stories that don't feature Olive, her name may appear only once in an effort to tie it to the larger work. That the stories center on one town, and a limited number of that town's inhabitants, who also reappear from time to time, I did not encounter my usual problems with short stories. This book gently reminded me of what is best about short-stories: a brief slice of a life, a snapshot that tells a complete-enough story. In having all these stories bound together, one feels a bit like the proverbial "fly on the wall"; a fly who may spend most of, but certainly not all, it's time in one particularly interesting home (Olive's).
I especially enjoyed reading about Olive in her post-retirement years, the ways in which she deals with other people and herself. In many ways, I can identify with Olive, having doled out bits of malice in angering situations; or having been soft and tender-hearted during others. Like Olive, I too have been both fool and sage.
I really enjoyed "Olive Kitteridge." Olive is a complex person vacillating between viciousness and compassion. In the way all people are puzzles, so is Olive. In one story she does something deplorable, in another she potentially saves a life. People can never be fully known, merely experienced in bits and pieces, from which a general portrait may be formed. This book is a testament to the mystery that is humanity: why we do what we do, what motivates us, how even self-knowledge is warped and lacking, and how ultimately, all people are fundamentally incapable of seeing themselves as a whole. Olive also embodies hope: one is never too old for surprises.
Many of the "stories" in "Olive Kitteridge" are deeply profound and thought provoking. I will not be at all surprised when this book does very well. It's structure is unusual; it's message is penetrating and accessible and universal. Olive causes me to think of the many complex, and at times unlikeable, people in my own life in a different way. Strout is a master of revealing the many onion-like layers of interpersonal relationships. Halfway through "Olive Kitteridge" I went out and bought two of her other books. I am also tentatively considering reading some other short-story collections by authors whose novels I've loved.
Like any great book, "Olive Kitteridge" slightly shifts the way in which I look at the world and other people, and perhaps most importantly, myself.Olive Kitteridge: Fiction Overview

Want to learn more information about Olive Kitteridge: Fiction?

>> Click Here to See All Customer Reviews & Ratings Now
Read More...

A Confederacy Of Dunces Review

A Confederacy Of Dunces
Average Reviews:

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

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

A Confederacy Of Dunces ReviewThis is an incredibly funny and intelligent book. I initially borrowed it from the library, but ended up buying copies for friends. Next, I will have to get one for myself. It is a read you will want to read again and again. A Pulitzer Prize winner.A Confederacy Of Dunces Overview

Want to learn more information about A Confederacy Of Dunces?

>> Click Here to See All Customer Reviews & Ratings Now
Read More...