Amazon.com
A socially adept newcomer fluidly inserts himself into an unnamed Russian town, conquering first the drinkers, then the dignitaries. All find him amiable, estimable, agreeable. But what exactly is Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov up to?--something that will soon throw the town "into utter perplexity."
After more than a week of entertainment and "passing the time, as they say, very pleasantly," he gets down to business--heading off to call on some landowners. More pleasantries ensue before Chichikov reveals his bizarre plan. He'd like to buy the souls of peasants who have died since the last census. The first landowner looks carefully to see if he's mad, but spots no outward signs. In fact, the scheme is innovative but by no means bonkers. Even though Chichikov will be taxed on the supposed serfs, he will be able to count them as his property and gain the reputation of a gentleman owner. His first victim is happy to give up his souls for free--less tax burden for him. The second, however, knows Chichikov must be up to something, and the third has his servants rough him up. Nonetheless, he prospers.
Dead Souls is a feverish anatomy of Russian society (the book was first published in 1842) and human wiles. Its author tosses off thousands of sublime epigrams--including, "However stupid a fool's words may be, they are sometimes enough to confound an intelligent man," and is equally adept at yearning satire: "Where is he," Gogol interrupts the action, "who, in the native tongue of our Russian soul, could speak to us this all-powerful word: forward? who, knowing all the forces and qualities, and all the depths of our nature, could, by one magic gesture, point the Russian man towards a lofty life?" Flannery O'Connor, another writer of dark genius, declared Gogol "necessary along with the light." Though he was hardly the first to envision property as theft, his blend of comic, fantastic moralism is sui generis.--Kerry Fried
Book Description
Since its publication in 1842,
Dead Souls has been celebrated as a supremely realistic portrait of provincial Russian life and as a splendidly exaggerated tale; as a paean to the Russian spirit and as a remorseless satire of imperial Russian venality, vulgarity, and pomp. As Gogol's wily antihero, Chichikov, combs the back country wheeling and dealing for "dead souls"--deceased serfs who still represent money to anyone sharp enough to trade in them--we are introduced to a Dickensian cast of peasants, landowners, and conniving petty officials, few of whom can resist the seductive illogic of Chichikov's proposition. This lively, idiomatic English version by the award-winning translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky makes accessible the full extent of the novel's lyricism, sulphurous humor, and delight in human oddity and error.
Customer Reviews:
A Charming Russian Masterpiece .......2007-08-22
I bought a copy of the Bloomsbury Good Reading Guide. In that guide the editors selected 45 works of fiction as masterpieces from 375 well known writers of fiction - all written since since Cervantes. In that guide they describe why those 45 books are "masterpieces." Dead Souls is one of the 45 masterpieces, so I bought and read the book along with many others of those 45.
Dead Souls is not a novel but was called "an epic poem" by Gogol, similar to Tolstoy's characterization of War and Peace as not a novel but an "epic in prose." Hence, Dead Souls was not written as a balanced novel and as many critics have pointed out the actual plot is not terribly important. It was written as the first part of a three part trilogy on Russian life, and it was published as "The Adventures of Chichikov." The charm is found not in the overall plot, but it is found in the detailed descriptions of what happens day to day throughout the story.
From what we know, Pushkin suggested the story to Gogol based on the concept that serfs were considered to be the property of the landowner and there might be value in owning the title to dead serfs or "dead souls." Also, the characterization of being a "dead soul" has a second interpretation: it is to imply a moral and spiritual inferiority. So, the theme extends beyond the commercial transactions of buying up "dead souls" from various farm owners.
As a general reader, I was captured by the humour and charm of the daily life of the protagonist, Chichikov, as he travels by horse drawn carriage going from town to town in rural Russia, staying in small hotels or with farmers or rural gentry. In his travels he mixes with the locals in each town and he tries to ingratiate himself with the local officials as part of the process of building trust to find and buy dead souls; that is, he meets land owners and buys the title to those serfs who have recently died. Gogol treats us to a broad picture of daily life in rural Russia including many small details. It is so detailed that we can almost taste the food, smell the smells, and perhaps some will want to buy a horse?
In this work Gogol sets the literary tone for many Russian writers who follow in the 19th century including Dosoevsky, Tolstoy, and Chekhov. Dostoevsky, was in fact hailed as the new Gogol in the 1840s when he emerged from obscurity and became famous. There are many shorter works by these three authors where one could almost substitute Gogol for the author and one would be hard pressed to make the differentiation, and I reference Dostoevsky's "Poor Folk" as an example of a very "Gogol like" work.
This is a wondeful book that will disappoint few. Since reading this I have read many other Russian works and still think this is one of the better and more charming books of the era. If you like this but want something a bit different, I recommend Chekhov's one and only novel, The Shooting Party.
Russian satire at its best........2007-07-09
Gogol is rightly esteemed as the greatest satirist in classical Russian literature, and is certainly a personal favorite among the 19th century authors. "Dead Souls" is, in my humble opinion, his hands-down masterpiece. It doesn't offer the same sitcom-ish humor of "The Government Inspector," which was cutting-edge stuff in its time. Instead, it is riddled from beginning to end with more subtle, but still delightfully amusing vignettes as the enterprising Chichikov goes about his rather unconventional business of building his "estate" by buying up low-priced (i.e. dead) serfs.
I won't elaborate on the storyline, since that has already been done more than adequately in other reviews. It is enough to say that Gogol's brand of humor is both witty and insightful, and caused quite a stir among the intelligentsia of his day. Many, such as Belinski, viewed it as an attack on the corruption and ineptitude of the "establishment," i.e. the westernizing tsarist regime. There is certainly an element of that. Others saw it differently, including Gogol himself, if his later writings are rightly interpreted. "Dead Souls" is much more of a commentary on the loss of the Russian soul. It is about the corruption of traditions and cultural distinctives that defined what it meant to be Russian.
Decide for yourself which direction Gogol was coming from. It certainly helps to have some familiarity with the history and culture of the time, but Gogol's commentary is near enough to the surface that those things are not essential to appreciate his work. Either way, don't take it too seriously. Just get a good laugh out of it. I did.
Dead Souls: Translation is Everything.......2007-05-15
Perhaps no other novel requires a more exacting translation than Nikolai Gogol's "Dead Souls." This translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky isn't bad, but it gives the book the Pevear/Volokhonsky treatment ... read their translations of The Brothers Karamazov, Anna Karenina and Dead Souls back to back and you'd think they were written by the same novelist (well, if you're from Mars and had never heard of the books beforehand, that is.)
But as Vladimir Nabokov pointed out in his lectures of "Dead Souls", the greatest of all translations was by Bernard Gilbert Guerney. This version of Dead Souls was recently revised by Susanne Fusso for Yale University Press and I recommend it highly.
So why does translation matter? Because as Nabokov points out in Lectures on Russian Literature, "Dead Souls" is more poem than novel. The plot to "Dead Souls" is almost entirely beside the point ... it all pretty much goes in a circle (by the way, The Wire - The Complete Third Season" was modeled on this style.) Where this novel shines is in its haunting and evocative language. Nabokov points out several mind-blowing techniques that Gogol employs ... one is to take an object, create a metaphor about that object to explain it's importance, introduce another object in that metaphor, then compare the second object to a person ... this being a new character, introduced via a highly elegant segue.
The Pevear/Volokhonsky version picks up most of this, but there are some dreadful "Dead Souls" adaptations out there (especially thisDead Souls version that truncates the action and misses the poetry altogether. Especially awful is this Dead Souls audiobook that Amazon.com correctly calls abridged, but both Audible.com and iTunes label unabridged.
"Dead Souls" is a deceptively dense book. I recommend reading it along with Nabokov's lectures to get the full effect. Also, don't be deceived into reading the so-called sequel ... Gogol wished these disjointed new tales to be burned at his death and most critics agree, for good reason.
Devastatingly funny: The satire that launched modern novel in Russia.......2007-05-09
Nikolai Gogol's Dead Soul launches the 'great Russian novel form' with a satire, so apt and so funny, that the novel remains as one of the most popular Russian text ever. Gogol's own personal life may have been a dire disaster, but as a novelist he stands next to only Tolstoy and Dostovesky, as short story writer only Chekov comes close to his fame, and mind you, he preceded them and their writing. He was, alongside Pushkin, one of the major early forces in Russian literary scene. Since all other major novelists from Russia have delved into tragedies and melodramas, going down to philosophical and religious questions, Dead Souls comes as a relief fun read, rather one of the funniest reads.
In Dead Souls, he provides a cast of unforgettable and hilarious characters in episodes that leave you reeling with laughter. The hero or the anti-hero Chichikov or Tchichikov drives from town to town, buying "dead souls" i.e. dead peasants, assuring landowners that this will benefit them as they would pay less tax on their workforce. The tax was based on census numbers, and since many peasants died between two census years, landowners ended up paying taxes on people who didn't exist. Chichikov's brilliant idea was to collect a long list of (dead) peasants he had bought, and use that for getting a estate for himself. The novel tells us a story after story of his meeting his landowners and getting his purchase by a mix of tact, sweet talk, and so on, each purchase is full of absurd and funny details.
Beyond the obvious laughters, the novel provides a very detailed description of Russia in early nineteenth century. The sketches of nature bring alive similes and metaphors that Gogol (who was a failed poet) uses remarkably well. While the observations related to people, customs, bureaucracy and Russia are full of brilliant wit, they in fact recreate a lively and throbbing world to us. The world as it was. The bureaucracy has not changed much since then. Nor have the quacks and hacks and cheats who make fortunes by buying and selling dubious things. Hence Dead Souls has this undying and translatable humor that will keep this book in publication forever.
I would rank Dead Souls alongside Three Men in a Boat, Catch 22, A House for Mr Biswas and The Hitchhikers Guide to Galaxy as the novels that made me laugh the most. It has shades of Tolstoy in details it provides about rural life and rich landowners, shades of both Tolstoy and Dostovesky in pointing to certain moral issues (but that is at most an undertone) and maybe he was the one who influenced the style of his more famous successors. If you haven't read Gogol, you definitely need to pick him next.
So So.......2007-03-07
Another author that I was expecting more of after all the fuss over him. Some parts of this book were mildly funny/interesting, but overall it just droned on and on. Had to force myself to finish it.
Amazon.com
When an author as successful as Rankin has been with his tough and idiomatic Scottish thrillers, a problem sets in after several books: how to keep the formula fresh.
Rankin has delivered a powerful series of books featuring his beleaguered Detective Inspector John Rebus, and while never less than gripping, a certain tiredness seemed to be setting in. Thankfully, Dead Souls is a resounding return to form, with a plot as enjoyably labyrinthine as any Rankin enthusiast could wish for, and pithy dialogue that fairly leaps off the page. Stalking the streets of Edinburgh on the trail of a poisoner, Rebus hits upon a freed pedophile and his subsequent outing of the man leaves him with very mixed feelings. But another problem develops for Rebus: a convicted murderer has him in his sights for some lethal games. And the tabloid press lionizing of Rebus won't help him in this situation.
As always, Rankin is perfectly ready to tackle contentious issues--precisely the thing that gives his books their powerful sense of veracity. And Rebus, no longer in danger of having a soap opera-like accumulation of personal problems, seems as fresh and well-observed a character as in those first exhilarating books. Rankin has caught his form again, with even more assurance. --Barry Forshaw, Amazon.co.uk
Book Description
Weary, wary, hard-drinking Detective John Rebus returns in author Ian Rankin's internationally acclaimed, award-winning series. As complex and unpredictable as the brooding mists that envelop his Edinburgh beat, Rebus is ever resourceful and determined-but this time, vulnerable and challenged as never before, with complications in his personal life, and events that shake him to the depths of his being... A colleague's suicide. Pedophiles. A missing child. A serial killer. You never know your luck, muses Rebus. Driven by instinct and experience, he searches for connections, against official skepticism. But at night, unsoothed by whiskey, Rebus faces his ghosts-and the prospect of his daughter's possibly permanent paralysis. Soldiering through dank, desperate slums and the tony flats of the Scottish chic, Rebus uncovers a chain of crime, deceit, and hidden sins-knowing it's himself he's really trying to save. . .
Customer Reviews:
Rebus and Rankin in top form........2007-04-01
Dead Souls in number 11 in the Rebus series and for me it is one of the best.
The plot has even more than usual going with 4 or 5 stories running concurrently with the main one. What makes this even more special is that all the plots are really interesting and don't feel like a distraction.
One thing for fans of DS Siobhan Clark to note is that she barely appears in this book.
I have only visited Scotland once and didn't stay very long but reading Rankin always makes feel like I am familiar with the streets of Edinburgh and talk with a broad Scottish accent.
I'm off now to re-read the whole series!
Moderate.......2006-06-23
The formula of mixing several ongoing cases with the personal lives of those who detect them removes detective fiction from the starchy abstractions of a Christie or Hammett, but often leaves the reader thrashing through mountains of detail in order to get to the final approach for landing in which the vital clues all come out of the closet in order. It is the pursuit of renewal of the motivation to be police officers and to do what is just in a usually unjust world that drives this book, and as such character drama, it is massively effective. While the mystery hobbles itself by introducing madmen and conspiratorial indolent rich in the last quarter of the book, and while it is somewhat easy to spot the intended progress of the novel, it makes for a good read for those who like "comfy" personality-based mystery writing.
For Inspector Rebus, Problems are Coming in Clumps.......2006-05-28
In this 11th episode of the Rebus chronicles, John's life is becoming ever more complicated. His daughter is recovering from her accident/hit-and-run but is wheelchair bound, and old friend has committed suicide, and he still grieves the loss of another. Now he is up against a pedophile, a released murderer and a missing person case.
He is out to get the pedophile and leaks his name and place to the press; a deed he will regret very soon. This is just one proof that John is getting out of hand and loosing his usually strong sense of honor. He also can't figure out why his old colleague would choose to take his life.
Cary Oakes is an inveterate liar and murderer. He has just been deported from the US, after serving fifteen years for murder. During his penal time, he has taken courses in lock-picking, car theft and mugging; with a masters in hiding in plain sight. All of Edinburgh is up in arms about his arrival and John's old nemisis, newspaper man Jim Stevens, is out to make a bundle telling Oakes story. Oakes has come back to settle a long-time grudge, but doesn't mind making a few recreational killings along the way.
The misper (missing person) is the son of a old friend from his hometown in the Fife. They almost married, but he went into the army and she stayed at home with a mutual schoolmate. She's asked John to look for her son. All of the old feelings and emotions come bubbling back to the surface.
Is she still attracted to John, does he still have feelings for her. John is in a quandry about all this plus his feelings for his job, for Patience, for his daughters health, the death of his good friend (in the last book) and mentor; and his drinking could become a problem again.
Rankin just keeps getting better, and his feeling for the foibles and strength of Rebus' character gets stronger with each book.
Pretty good!.......2006-03-05
I have heard a lot of positive feedback on the Inspector Rebus series by Ian Rankin but haven't tried one until now. This book was so well-written and complex that it has made me go out and buy everything else of Rankin's that I can find (and there is a fair amount out there).
Rebus is an Inspector in Edinburgh who is aging (50's?) and has numerous issues in his life - be it the girlfriend, the ex-wife, the wheelchair bound dauhgter, his lapses in professional judgement etc. In this book, he comes across a pedophile that may not be as reformed as one would like, a missing son of an old-time flame and a recently released killer from the US returning to Scotland with murderous ambitions.
The book went quickly and I enjoyed it a lot. Although as an earlier reviewer stated, Rankin does keep a large number of sub-plots in progress which can make the reading a little more difficult as you find yourself trying to remember which character belongs in which sub-plot.
Recommended.
Rebus is torturing himself and making his bosses mad..........2003-09-05
Rebus is one of the best cop protagonists out in the market today. He is a very complex person, who is no longer sure of himself or of the job he is supposed to be doing as a detective inspector in Edinburgh. His family is broken up, his daughter injured in an `accident' that was intended for him, his relationship with his new significant other is on the rocks, and his relationship with his bosses is in the toilet. Probably from his rather unorthodox methods. Rebus is not afraid to mingle with the morally-challenged underside of Edinburgh... he makes his own rules up as he goes, and that particular trait of his tends to get him in trouble.
In this book, Rebus has way too many strings to hold onto. A young man has gone missing who just happens to be the son of one of Rebus' old flames. The U.S. is ever-so-nicely sending home a known serial murderer, who continues to wreck as much havoc as possible in Scotland. Rebus also gets involved in another case concerning a pedophile (I hate reading books on that particular topic!), and the embarrassment leads to bad press for the cops.
Rankin is a good writer. Trouble is he puts way too many off-shoot plots in his books. It makes it very difficult to keep track of these guys and the plots. I do like Rankin's ability to characterize. His characters come across as real people, with real problems, and this is one of the traits I look for in books.
Karen Sadler
Average customer rating:
- Soul Stirring
- good writing triumphs over unpromising material
- Book fails to raise plot, characters from the dead.
- The death of a child
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Souls Raised from the Dead: A Novel
Doris Betts
Manufacturer: Touchstone
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ASIN: 0684801043 |
Customer Reviews:
Soul Stirring.......2003-02-14
A wonderful novel that stirs the emotions with characters that stay on your mind. The writing is crisp but what shines the brightest are the complex and REAL characters in the novel. A novel that is sure to move even the most stoic of readers.
good writing triumphs over unpromising material.......2000-06-10
I almost gave up on this book after the first 100 pages. After encountering the overprotective father, the plucky but seriously ill daughter, and the narcissistic, self-indulgent mother who had deserted the family two years earlier, the stars seemed in alignment for an overwrought, maudlin tearjerker. Instead, Doris Betts has given us a finely told, thoughtful story about those things we cling to when disaster befalls, especially about the exercise of faith in the absence of any reason to hope. The writing is often superb, as in this observation about the girl's grandmother: "Sex was more important to men than it had ever been to Tacey. Maybe those old Jewish male prophets valued sex so highly it had attained to them the level of sin; she did not, so it had not." Or this, a description of women waiting for their men in the hospital emergency room: "These women wasted no energy by pacing. None of them touched a magazine. They solidified themselves in the first chairs they had taken some time ago, and waited like stones for something external to make them move." Most characters are well-developed; the plot is only moderately suspenseful, but surprisingly compelling nonetheless. I wished that the author had delved more into the inner life of Frank, the main character, and I thought a few plot turns bordered on the implausible. Nonetheless, Betts has done remarkably well telling a story which initially appears unpromising.
Book fails to raise plot, characters from the dead........1999-05-27
While my tears flowed in several places throughout Souls Raised from the Dead, I found myself dry-eyed and skeptical at the end. Betts' novel of a girl on the cusp of adolescence diagnosed with kidney disease and surrounded by a myriad of colorful adult figures could have been so much more than the plot-driven surface treatment she gave the characters. Mary Grace Thompson suffers from kidney failure, but Betts never tells the reader what that involves. Only as the reader turns the pages do the stages of dietary restrictions, dialysis, increased medications, and hope for a donor become clear as the next steps. Betts' implied medical horror is only a shadow compared to the black and white truth of medical reality. I would have been happier knowing the clinical details; however, the in's and out's of kidney failure were not the focus of this book. And therein lies my biggest disappointment with Souls Raised from the Dead. The book's focus was the cliched characters and their relationships--stoic father and prickly, loving, daughter; selfish irresponsible ex-wife and two current girl-friends with different needs and wants; self-righteous grandparents and "white trash" grandparents who have a good heart where Mary is concerned. Betts did not delve into their personalities enough to make me emphathize with them. The dialogue was stilted, though some of the one-sentence descriptions were poigniant. Betts describes Mary Thompson's thoughts through the stages of her illness with clarity, though Betts never shows how Mary's feelings of isolation, denial and detachedness affect her relationships with her father or grandparents. Betts also delved into the character of Tacey Thompson, Mary's paternal grandmother, and her struggle with a faith contradicted by reality. Initially, I was prepared for a wrenching story, but by the end of the book, I was annoyed with the predictable plot and could easily visualize this as a made-for-TV movie.
The death of a child.......1998-11-01
Doris Bett's 1994 novel Souls Raised from the Dead is a heartbreakingly sad book. Mary Thompson, age thirteen, lives with her divorced father, both of them having been left by Mary's petty, selfish, but very beautiful mother. Mary develops chronic kidney failure, and her slow demise is wrenching to both the book's characters and this reader. One realizes just how precious children are, and just how unfair life can be (or, to this lucky reader, how fortunate he and his family have been). As I read this novel in the evenings, I found myself going to check on my sleeping daughters, to make sure they were breathing soundly and snug under their covers. The true villain in this book is Mary's mother, who conceivably could have donated a kidney (Mary's father has only one sound kidney), but is too wrapped up in herself and astoundingly selfish to even see the need, let alone its urgency. Despite its highly emotional theme, Betts is not a sentimental writer. I appreciate this. She simply tells her story, and trusts its strength to hold and move the reader. This novel may hit too close to home for some parents; I do recommend it for adolescent readers.
Average customer rating:
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Designing Dead Souls: An Anatomy of Disorder in Gogol
Susanne Fusso
Manufacturer: Stanford University Press
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Dead Souls (Globe Radio Repertory presents: Dead Souls, an audio dramatization of the novel)
Nikolai Gogol
Manufacturer: University of Washington Press
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ASIN: B000Q5WJRQ |
Product Description
5 cassette tapes in clamshell case. 9 episodes plus side 2 of tape 5 has original music composed by Ivan Illitch Eppler for Dead Souls series.
Average customer rating:
- The book Brockmann fans have been waiting for - Gina & Max
- Go read this. Now! Our big beefy security guard loved it!
- Another great novel
- Good Wrap Up
- Mixed feelings
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Breaking Point: A Novel
Suzanne Brockmann
Manufacturer: Ballantine Books
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ASIN: 0345480139
Release Date: 2006-07-25 |
Book Description
Uncommon valor in the line of duty and unconditional devotion in the name of love are the salient qualities of the daring men and women who risk it all in the heart-pounding thrillers of New York Times bestselling author Suzanne Brockmann. Crafted with precision and power, her characters come alive with a depth of emotion few writers have achieved. Now, with Breaking Point, Brockmann breaks even further through the pack and delivers a stunning payload.
As commander of the nation’s most elite FBI counterterrorism unit, agent Max Bhagat leads by hard-driving example: pushing himself to the limit and beyond, taking no excuses, and putting absolutely nothing ahead of his work. That includes his deep feelings for Gina Vitagliano, the woman who won his admiration and his heart with her courage under fire. But when the shocking news reaches him that Gina has been killed in a terrorist bombing, nothing can keep Max from making a full investigation–and retribution–his top priority.
At the scene of the attack, however, Max gets an even bigger shock. Gina is still very much alive–but facing a fate even worse than death. Along with Molly Anderson, a fellow overseas relief worker, Gina has fallen into the hands of a killer who is bent on using both women to bait a deadly trap. His quarry? Grady Morant, a.k.a “Jones,” a notorious ex-Special Forces operative turned smuggler who made some very deadly enemies in the jungles of Southeast Asia . . . and has been running ever since. But with Molly’s life on the line, Jones is willing to forfeit his own to save the woman he loves.
Together with Max’s top agent Jules Cassidy as their only backup, the unlikely allies plunge into a global hot zone of violence and corruption to make a deal with the devil. Not even Jones knows which ghosts from his past want him dead. But there’s one thing he’s sure of–there’s very little his bloodthirsty enemies aren’t willing to do.
Count on the intense action and raw honesty that Suzanne Brockmann consistently delivers, as she goes for broke in Breaking Point–and never looks back.
From the Hardcover edition.
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PRAISE FOR SUZANNE BROCKMANN
Gone Too Far
“Sizzling with military intrigue and sexual tension, with characters so vivid they leap right off the page, Gone Too Far is a bold, brassy read with a momentum that just doesn’t quit.”
–Tess Gerritsen
Into the Night
“She skillfully builds suspense. . . . With its complicated, complex characters and a sexy romance seasoned with humor and danger, Brockmann’s [novel] is absolutely irresistible.”
–Booklist (boxed and starred review)
Out of Control
“Brockmann consistently turns out first-rate novels that tug on the reader’s heartstrings, and her latest is no exception.”
–Publishers Weekly
Over the Edge
“A taut, edgy thriller.”
–Linda Howard
From the Hardcover edition.
Customer Reviews:
The book Brockmann fans have been waiting for - Gina & Max.......2007-09-19
A dynamic book that integrates multiple plots in delivering a complex central character and the strong woman determined to fight for her man. The emotional scenes of loss and devastation are written with a poignancy that makes the chracters live and breathe. Combine all that with suspense, drama and romance for a book that is almost impossible to put down.
Go read this. Now! Our big beefy security guard loved it!.......2007-08-08
Max Bhagat and Gina... at last! A few books ago Max - an elite FBI counter-terrorist agent - raged impotently as Gina was tortured and raped on a hijacked plane, unable to rescue her before it was too late. Eighteen years younger than him, Gina was brave and brilliant and strong, even when cruelly violated. Max fell in love with her but always struggled with the age difference. He used his dangerous job and his super-rigid control to keep them idiotically apart. It was cataclysmic for us readers when they finally went to bed together a couple of books later. Wow, yeah. (Still recovering.) Thankfully it's time for their defining love story, thankyou Suzanne Brockmann! A horrified Max now faces his worst nightmare: Gina is reported dead from a bomb blast in Europe. Fellow FBI agent Jules Cassidy - remember him, with the ability to morph from gay flirt to mega-alpha hero with a flick of his eyelashes, sweetie - goes with Max to identify Gina's body. Oh. My. Gosh. That is one incredible scene, with Max rendered inept and helpless and emotionally naked. Thank God for solid-as-a-rock Jules to help him through. To their shock, the dead body isn't Gina. To their further shock, they learn she's somehow tangled herself up with `Jones' - a dangerous ex-Special forces operative turned lethally criminal. And - just to emotionally cripple Max even further - Gina might be pregnant. This brilliant story, leaping from country to country and finally climaxing with guns blazing and raw, jagged emotion, shows why Brockmann has the ability to chain us to her pages. Her characters leap right into your heart, and the melting of iceman Max to `breaking point' has been a long time coming. Actually, I don't think he melts, I think he gets blowtorched by Gina! And omigosh, the kitchen table gets an amazing workout! Go Max, go Gina. Go read this. Now!
Another great novel.......2007-08-06
For those of you who have read Brockman's books, this is the book that reunites Gina Vitagliano with Max Baghat, and Molly Anderson with Grady Morant. And as usual, where there is Max, there is Jules. For the prospective reader who is not familiar with the author's books in this particular series, you will be able to follow the story despite major character events having occured in previous books. Following is a 'brief' summary of the major story lines in the book.
Jules and Max Baghat are FBI agents, but their job is put to the side when they must journey abroad to retrieve the body of Max's long time love Gina. Max and Gina have individual personal problems resulting from their past imvolvement with a terrorist hijacking, as well as the obstacle of a large age difference, that has put their romance in chaos. When Gina fears she will never get Max to let it all go and embrace the relationship, she flys off to Kenya to join a group giving medical and spiritual aid to the natives. But news of her body being found in the ruble of a suicide bomber's wake in Germany sends Max and Jules off to identify her body...only it's not Gina. So, the mystery and race to find Gina ensues.
Back in Kenya (at the time before the suicide bombing) Gina has found a friend in an slightly older woman, Molly. They work hard together to combat disease, sickness, and the tough issue of female genital mutilation. Molly is an old hand at foreign aid and work, and has been waiting for the love of her life Grady(a man who is hunted by foreign drug lords/psychopaths who she met in a preivious book) to find and return to her. Lo and behold, Grady comes to her in Kenya...in disguise. The three of them join together to save girls from an impending FGM and end up the victims of a horrid scheme to capture Grady. Gina and Molly become hostages after sepaerating form Grady, and so he must join forces with Max and Jules to save the two women, who mean more to them than their lives.
Weaved into the book are the past events of Gina and Max while at a rehabilitiation center (Max was shot in the last book). All of their issues are dragged out into the open, and though we allready know that the conflict will be too much and Gina will leave Max for Kenya, these "flash-backs" are an integral part of the big picture.
So this book is broken down into these revisted past events of Max and Gina, the present-past of Gina and Molly and eventually the addition of Grady, Molly and Gina's kidnapping, Max and Jule's search for Gina with the addition of Grady, and then the eventual culmination of it all when all these characters finally come together to overcome those evil men who seek to capture and kill them all.
----------------------------------
Some other reviewers have not given this book the credit it deserves, in my opinion.
In regards to the lack of Seal Team 16 or Troubleshooters, that one reviewer was dissapointed in, it must be said that the book does not imply that it would involve those groups. This book is not of a lesser quality or off course among those of Brockmann's book's that do invlove TS or the seals. And while the main characters were introduced in books that did involve those special teams, they are not directly linked to them so it would have been a bit of stretch to bring them all together again, so soon. The settings, foes, and allies of this book work perfectly and would not have been quite as good if the Seals and TS teams had been more than mentioned as being possibly involved.
As for the oppinion that there is a lack of passion between the characters, and that they are one sided, Well, I have to strongly disagree. Brockmann does an excellent job of exposing the character, flaws, wants, and needs of our protaganists.
The book manages to flow wonderfully as it bounces back and forth between the relationship struggles of Max and Ginaa (fter max's injury at the end of 'Gone Too Far'), Gina's trials in Kenya (where we also get Molly and Grady's story), the suspense of Max and Jules's frantic search for Gina and Molly, and the reunion and climax of the plot.
As for those prospective readers who are worried about the suposed "lack of passion" mentioned by other reviewers, you will only be dissapointed if the only reason you read Brockman's books are for the sex scenes, which she is very good at writing. While the book does not have as many intense -sex- scenes, that are in some of her other books, there is in no way a lack of passion. The emotions of the couples are pulsing with passion as it struggles in the face of life and death events.
This is an excellent book, which I first read and have just finished listening to (produced by brillianceaudio). If you love a novel that has realistic characters and problems thrown into intense events of drama, action and suspense than this is a book that you will love.
Good Wrap Up.......2007-06-06
Her books are always action packed with a little bit of humor. I thought it was a good wrap up to story lines used in the background of some of her other books.
Mixed feelings.......2007-05-26
I'm new to Ms. Brockman's Troubleshooter series, but now a big fan. I did a marathon read of the series over vacation and found each and everyone of the installments well worth the read . . . except, Gina got on my last nerve! With a choice between Alyssa Locke and Gina Vitagliano why in the world would Max Bhagat want Gina? It just didn't play for me.
Book Description
"[A] pungent mix of literary biography, history and international political thriller.... A story steeped in intrigue, duplicity and nefarious figures, all told with...imagination and bold interpretation." (Baltimore Sun)
When John Dos Passos and Ernest Hemingway went to Spain to witness the Spanish Civil War firsthand, the devastation they met was far from impersonal: As Spain was unraveling thread by thread, so was their friendship. They had arrived in Spain as comrades, leftist writers-in-arms. But when Dos Passos's friend Jose Robles went missing, Dos Passos's search for Robles would eventually take his literary career and his friendship with Hemingway to the breaking point.
"A gripping narrative.... [The Breaking Point] dexterously navigates the political minefields of the era and has the pace and drama of a detective novel. There are many books on writers and the Spanish Civil War. This is one of the most important and original, and one of the very best." (New York Sun) "A definitive account of this defining moment in 20th-century intellectual history." (Weekly Standard)
"What makes The Breaking Point such stampede reading-a kind of Guernica-is precisely Koch's partisanship, a furious choosing of sides in the bloody past, back when history was breaking hearts." (Harper's)
Customer Reviews:
A light page turning thriller with a surprising set of on-line reviews.......2007-01-18
I was thrilled to read this book. As a young man, my first reaction when I read the early Hemingway was literary enthusiasm, an enthusiasm that waned as I matured. I also have been ambivalent about Dos Passos. I was never quite convinced by the official story that Dos Passos' writing got progressively worse as his politics did too. I have read the late Dos Passos and the early Dos Passos. Whatever "changed" about his work to justify condemning the later works to oblivion while keeping the early works in print was lost by me - the late Dos Passos was as good a writer as the early Dos Passos.
This book filled in a lot of gaps and lacunae in my own understanding of Hemingway, Dos Passos, and the 1930s. It should be noted that for many decades there was an official story about Spain, America, and communism in the 1930s. In the official story, the Spanish civil war was a real war fought to win between the leftist republicans (the good guys) and the fascists of Franco (the bad guys) and in the end the bad guys won.
The fall of the Soviet Union has turned the official story on its head, but only for those who have paid attention. Anyone unfamiliar with this change in our historical understanding of the nature of the role of the Soviet-Stalinist machine in the US, Spain, and elsewhere should review the "annals of communism" series published by Yale.
In general Koch makes a good case as a detective, putting forth a plausible hypothesis that fits the the post-soviet facts. Koch's argument is consistent with what we now understand the situation in Spain in 1936 to be. I found nothing Koch says about Hemingway or Dos Passos that is inconsistent with what I already knew about these two and their relationship. And Koch hangs all the facts together in a fun, vulgar, cheap, pot-boiler, pulp fiction style that actually makes it fun.
What I find amazing are the reactions other readers have had to this book on Amazon. They range from the enthusiastic (like me), to those who find Koch's style awful, to those who are upset by either Koch's post-soviet notion of the history of communism, Spain and America in the 1930s or by Koch's depiction of particular people, most notably, Hemingway. Koch is not a bad writer. But he has written this book in a rather crass, tabloid style that, in my mind, fits the material of his story perfectly. Heavily footnoted, academic prose would have suffocated the story Koch is telling. Instead, we get a chummy narrator who cajoles, contradicts himself, back tracks, and then sets the record straight. It is all quite entertaining and easy to read. If you want the footnotes, they are in the back of the book, and should be consulted in due course. As I mention above, some people have difficulty believing that Stalin was able to play the world as we now know he did. Everyone got played. Hemingway the least of them.
As for Koch's depiction of Hemingway, there is nothing outrageously new here for anyone who has ever done any sort of real research into Hemingway. Hemingway changed women like he changed underwear. Hemingway was drunk most of the time. Hemingway had a peculiar moral compass that placed great importance on personal bravado and acts of courage. Hemingway was a politically uncommitted, largely disengaged, and easily influenced by the times. Hemingway had the ego of a rock star. And now we know, Hemingway, like dozens of others of his generation, got played by the Stalinists. Is any of this controversial? And yes, To Have and Have Not was a cut-and-paste job. Who can fault Koch for opining that the book was trash?
For me, Koch's story does what every good piece of non-fiction should do - send me to the end notes to find out what books to read next.
Comintern-agent?.......2006-10-12
A very nice read, with much feeling for the atmosphere of the period. However, Stephen Koch has written a book halfway between fiction and non-fiction, and it is too often unclear where fact ends and fantasy begins. In many cases historical facts are presented incorrect. This is especially problematic where negative qualifications of (at the time) living persons are given without a shade of proof. A small example, is his qualification of Joris Ivens's Dutch cameraman John Fernhout (in the USA known as filmmaker John Ferno) as a 'Comintern-apparatchik' (page 62). On the basis of the available archive material in the Netherlands and the USA there is no reason whatsoever to assume that Fernhout had anything to do with the Comintern. Never in any research about Dutch persons and their connections with the Comintern or Soviet-services did Fernhouts name turn up. He is mainly remembered as, well, Ivens's cameraman, and as the filmmaker in the household of Crownprinces Juliana of Holland during her exile in Canada in Woldwar II. In Stephen Kochs book, Fernhout is just one of many people who are called Comintern agents rather rashly.
The main matter I would like to adress is Stephen Kochs verdict on Dutch filmmaker Joris Ivens, who is one of the main characters in his book. The author says Ivens was a 'Comintern agent' and 'Comintern apparatchik'. It is fair to admit that Ivens's position was a lot more complicated than that of others. Stephen Koch writes himself that his judgement on Ivens is based on my book 'Living Dangerously. A Biography of Joris Ivens'. But I never used the term 'Comintern agent'.
There is no doubt about the fact that Ivens was a member of the Dutch communist party at the time, and that in the thirties he was in almost permanent contact about his filmwork with communist and Comintern organisations. Unfortunately Stephen Koch does not define what a Comintern agent is, but I would suggest that such an agent was at least
1) Not free to do what he liked. Defecting or disobedient agents were liquidated or called back to Moscow and never heard of again.
2) He would have some serious secret mission.
I have called Ivens a freelance communist. In my view he was one even as a partymember. He was completely loyal to party politics, but nevertheless remained largely independent at an organisational level. The relationship between Ivens and Comintern organisations was one of consultation between two parties rather than one of giving or receiving orders. An obvious exception was his work at Meshrabpom Studios in Moscow - a studio that was part of the Comintern apparatus - where he was an employee before he went to the United States.
As for the secrets, in Spain Ernest Hemingway was fully aware of the fact that Ivens was a card carrying communist. John Dos Passos knew that he was an unconditional admirer of the Soviet Union well before they departed for Europe (Ivens's views were apparent even from his public speeches in the USA). It was clear from the beginning that Joris Ivens would be the director of their film 'Spanish Earth' and would thus have a decisive say.
The secret mission from Moscow that Stephen Koch suggests is: Ivens came to destroy the literary avant-garde of which John Dos Passos was considered the main representative in the US. For this reason Ivens was supposed to stir up contradictions between Hemingway and Dos Passos. This theory is a red line through Stephen Kochs book, but in my view this is mere speculation and hardly realistic. Such a plot would have been contrary to communist policies of the time: every Western artist, modern or old-fashioned, was hailed by the communists as long as he or she sympathized with practical communist policy. In general I don't believe in, and see no proof for, the suggestion that Ivens's doings connected to Hemingway and Dos Passos were concocted on forehand since 1936 or even earlier.
Hollywood will never make a movie of this great story, but somebody should.......2006-09-05
This book is absolutely important for people interested specially in the following topics: Spain, 20th century history, communism, literature (Dos Passos, Hemingway), politics, and modern history in general. It is recommendable for any book reader also because it is masterfully written. Like a detective story, the author has done a tremendous work of investigation.
By the way, this follows Stephen Koch's previous work "Double Lives", which is, I believe, the "intellectual father" of this new book, since they are very related.
There is much to be amazed of, much to learn about, in this story. The role of the Soviet Commintern in world politics and its consequences in our social lives is something that I can't stop being amazed at. How they handled people, propaganda, ideas, and changed evil into good and viceversa in (mostly) everybody's minds deserves more attention from us, the people, so we don't go through the same story again.
There are three contending sides in this political/criminal story: the communists (aka Stalinists) and their servants (propagandists, artists, hit-men), the independents (non-stalinist communists, anarchists, and other revolutionaries), and the vanity fair people (rich, stupid, intellectual and irresponsible fellows who lent their names to one or the other side of the battle that caused the lives of many REAL working-class people. This book is a good incentive to pause and reflect upon the miseries that many irresponsible self-called intellectuals have caused on us, common folk. They never fought, they never risked their lives, but they helped to provoke (and still do) the wars and dictatorships of the 20th century immensely. From Marx (who never met a factory worker in his rascal life) to Picasso, Garcia Marquez, Hemingway, Dos Passos, Hammett, Orwell, even Einstein or Delano Roosevelt, were practically puppets in the hands of the soviet agenda.
Here we have the Stalinists (Commintern) killing thousands of anti-fascists and saying they were fascists, and at the same time pacting with the nazis in Germany in order to share Europe between the two countries. And everybody believed it! But what this book is about is not so much the big picture, but the involvement of some of its most relevant artistic protagonists. We deal here with very personal and human stories.
Jesus was right, you mustn't hate your enemies, you must love them.If you go out looking for enemies, whether it is "the rich" or the "Jews", you may find him where you never thought: in your own side. Robles looked for enemies among the rich in Spain (paradoxically, he was one of them), took sides with those he thought were the "good" side against those he thought were the "fascist" side; well, he got himself his due reward.
Or also:
"Judge not, that you be not judged." Matt. 7:1 (Robles judged wrong)
"They have sown the wind .......2006-08-01
and they shall reap the whirlwind."
"Breaking Point: Hemingway, Dos Passos, and the Murder of Jose Robles" is Stephen Koch's excellent examination of the destruction of the friendship between American writers Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos during the Spanish Civil War. The Spanish Civil War served as a crucible on which many relationships (between people and between people and their ideology) were either forged or broken. In the case of Dos Passos and Hemingway once they entered the political whirlwind of the Spanish Civil War that friendship was irretrievably fractured.
It is not well-remembered that, at the height of his fame, Dos Passos was placed on the same pedestal as Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner. The first two volumes of his masterpiece, the USA Trilogy (42nd Parallel and 1919) had been enormous successes. By the time Volume III, "The Big Money", was released in 1936, Jean-Paul Sartre hailed him as "the greatest writer of our time". Edmund Wilson's review went so far as to claim that Dos Passos was "the first of our writers, with the possible exception of Mark Twain, who has successfully used colloquial American for a novel of the highest artistic seriousness." Dos Passos' literary reputation began to change during the Spanish Civil War. Dos Passos, along with Hemingway and many other literary figures including George Orwell made his way to Spain to assist in the Republican cause. Like Orwell, Dos Passos was deeply affected by the brutal infighting amongst Republican supporters. In the case of Dos Passos, he was deeply distressed by murder of a friend, anarchist and Johns Hopkins Professor Jose Robles, apparently executed by Stalinist cadres for his nonconforming radicalism. Hemingway mocked Dos Passos for his unmanly concern for his friend. Dos Passos reports that he told Hemingway that "the question I keep putting to myself is what's the use of fighting a war for civil liberties, if you destroy civil liberties in the process?" Hemingway replied "civil liberties, [__ _ _ ]. Are you with us or against us?" It is no surprise that Dos Passos' next book was criticized severely. The New Masses magazine referred to it as a "crude piece of Trotskyist agit-prop". Dos Passos never reclaimed the popularity he had achieved with the USA Trilogy.
The Civil War proved to be the point in time during the first half of the 20th-century at which many intellectuals and artists (literary and otherwise) of the left had to face an apparent conflict between their personal sense of morality and their ideology. Until the Civil War the various factions of the European and U.S. left seemed to live together (with the exception of post-revolutionary Russia) in a fractious and far from symbiotic relationship. However the Civil War transformed what had merely been a dysfunctional relationship among various Marxist groups, anarchists, and socialists into one that was physically dangerous and fratricidal. Although Koch's "Breaking Point" focuses on the relationship between Dos Passos and Hemingway (and Dos Passos and Robles) the story also paints a broader picture of a time and place where many intellectuals and artists (literary or otherwise) on the left had to face an apparent conflict between their personal sense of morality and the socio-political imperatives of their ideology. Orwell and Dos Passos resolved this conflict on the side of their personal morality. Others were not so well-inclined. "Breaking Point" paints a vivid picture of the life of the 'intelligentsia' in the crucible that was Spain.
Koch provides the reader with background information on the friendship between Dos Passos and Robles and between Dos Passos and Hemingway. This background also provides the literary and political milieu in which Dos Passos, Hemingway and their contemporaries operated. Koch does not paint a flattering picture of Hemingway. He comes across (rightly I might add) as a raging bully tormented by a lethal combination of arrogance and insecurity. This arrogance and bullying shows up in stark terms once the story moves to Hemingway's and Dos Passos' time in Spain reporting on the War. Dos Passos is confounded and depressed by the murderous political intrigue while Hemingway adopts his typical macho "war is war" posture and doesn't appear to give these horrors a second thought. Hemingway's arrogance and bullying is not news to be sure but it is always worth being reminded that there is no correlation between great talent and a pleasing personality. In fact, to the extent there is a correlation it is just as likely to be an inverse rather than direct one. Dos Passos, though treated better by Koch, does not come across as a hero either. Rather, there seems to be an indecisive, almost Hamlet-like aura to him and his ongoing inability to stand up to Hemingway's verbal and psychological onslaughts. Nevertheless, it is clear that Dos Passos had, like Orwell, a keener, far less naïve eye when it came to the political in-fighting that did as much damage to the Republican cause as Franco (and Hitler's and Mussolini's) bombs. Hemingway was a political naif who had neither the time nor inclination to question Stalin's and the Comintern's murderous intrigues in Spain. In many respect's Hemingway fit Lenin's definition of a "useful idiot" to a t.
"Breaking Point" is an excellent political and literary biography. It is well worth reading.
Two novelists observed by a third.......2006-05-29
Koch is the author of one of the most interesting books of modern criticism, STARGAZER, one of the first books to take Andy Warhol seriously, so in my book he may be forgiven many sins, but THE BREAKING POINT is pretty bad.
As history, who knows? I can't believe all the things he dishes out about the power of the Politburo to enforce the Popular Front and its supposed hegemony of US culture. And his condemnation of the filmmakers who made THE SPANISH EARTH is just unpleasant. Ivens was no Soviet agent, he was a committed documentarian. (That's not to say that THE SPANISH EARTH isn't a boring piece of schlock.) What sets Koch apart from other writers, however, is his incessant banality as a writer, as a stylist. He is incapable of writing a single sentence without committing some go for broke solecism. He will set your teeth on edge from page one, right from the moment you discover that he plans to refer to his two protagonists as "Hem" and "Dos" all through the text, thus stripping them even of the dignity of their names. (Martha Gellhorn becomes "the Girl.")
His rib poking gets painful around page 9 or 10. Yes, Dos Passos is great, but not for the reasons Koch cites. And despite what Koch asserts, without argument, TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT and THE FIFTH COLUMN are not bad books. They are indeed among the most interesting US novels and plays of the last century. Koch is like a novelist attempting to enliven history with a novelist's little tricks, gleaned from the WRITERS DIGEST. Get right in there, focus on your characters, make them quirky, show what they're drinking and wearing. Imagine their thoughts. Tell us what they're thinking. Make one an angel, the other a devil, that way the reader will be able to distinguish them. Well, I loved STARGAZER but this one's for the birds.
Customer Reviews:
Family Relationship Novel.......2006-05-11
It is obvious that Ms. Billings' passion is for the family union and loyal friendship. Applause to her poignant story of the Brickman family, their struggles that filter from one generation to another, and their determination to overcome misgivings and misunderstandings from previous and present mistakes -- true-to-life issues so often many of us take for granted, but need to examine within ourselves and those we love. The reader is drawn right into the family, laughing at their shannigans, annoyed with some of their decisions or rooting them on. The Brickmans are certainly people we can relate within our own household or people we know. Most importantly spiritual enlightenment played an important role in their lives no matter how hard they tried to handle matters on their own. Definitely an inspirational read.
Books:
- Death in Venice: And Seven Other Stories
- Desolation Angels
- Diary of a Madman and Other Stories (Penguin Classics)
- Dombey and Son (Modern Library Classics)
- Edgar Allan Poe: Complete Tales & Poems
- Effi Briest (Penguin Classics)
- Faust I & II (Goethe : The Collected Works, Vol 2)
- Germinal (Penguin Classics)
- Green Hills of Africa
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
Books Index
Books Home
Recommended Books
- A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge, Third Edition
- The Immortal Game: A History of Chess, or How 32 Carved Pieces on a Board Illuminated Our Understand
- Introduction to Macromolecular Crystallography
- Smack
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- Tarantula
- Show Me Yours: Understanding Children's Sexuality
- The Imagery of Chess Revisited
- Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies: A Complete Illustrated Guide to the Warner Bros. Cartoons
- Native Orchids of North America North of Mexico
The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol
Fathers and Sons (Norton Critical Editions)
A Hero of Our Time (Penguin Classics)
The Master and Margarita
Eugene Onegin: A Novel in Verse (Oxford World's Classics)
