Amazon.com
Proulx found fertile, if rocky, soil for her first two novels (Postcards and The Shipping News) in the far northeastern corner of North America. In Accordion Crimes she ranges much further afield. The novel follows an accordion from the hands of its maker in Sicily in 1890 until it is flattened by a truck in Florida in 1996. In the intervening century it passes through the hands of a host of unlucky owners and their kin: Abelardo Relampago, who dies from the bite of a poisonous spider; Dolor Gagnon, decapitated by his own chain saw; Silvano, cut down in the jungles of Venezuela by an Indian's arrow.
Book Description
Accordion Crimes traces the long odyssey of a button accordion, an instrument made by a Sicilian who immigrates to New Orleans in 1891. Imprisoned in a round-up of Italian suspects after the political murder of the chief of police, the accordion maker is lynched, and his accordion falls into the hands of Apollo, a black steamboat screwman. The instrument begins its long, erratic voyage through 20th-century America, passing through the hands of the descendants of slaves, immigrants and their children, some of whom learn that the cost of becoming American is to surrender the private definition of self.
Accordion Crimes is alive with vividly drawn characters who sometimes meet violent, strange ends, and who, at other times, succeed in a hard world. Filled with indelible images, Proulx's latest novel is charged with sardonic wit and is, at different turns, darkly hilarious and heartbreakingly sad. What we see as the accordion weakens and disintegrates is a haunting and ominous sense of what is America.
Customer Reviews:
Rich. Dense........2007-09-07
I've just returned to this book for a 2nd reading after 10 years. In short, I enjoyed it much more than the first read, mostly for the rich savor of her prose, though the things that bothered me then still do.
The unrelenting bleak outlook of the book commented on by others is not a problem for me, though I sympathize with that criticism. Maybe because the sadness of her stories does not smack of the contrived, TV drama mentality of many pop authors. It is frighteningly real. I get the distinct, uneasy feeling that she does not make this stuff up. And there is just a tinge of the sardonic, a brush stroke of wry humor that cuts into the mix. That sort of thing does not set well with a lot of readers. Understandably. But EAP's ability to do bring it off is one of the things that makes her best work. -- And overdoing it makes some of her worst.
It's rich. Anne Proulx can condense two hundred years of a family history into two pages of selected detail and leave you with a sense of understanding the present character. Her sense of family and place runs deep. Accordion Crimes is dense with character and place. Any one chapter would stand on it's own as a novella. Spun together they make (at least for my 2nd reading) one of her best long works.
If she occasionally pushes her prose just a tad too far (those parenthetical sidebars get in the way after while) it's not enough to take the reader out of the story.
If you haven't gone back to this one in a while, try it again.
Delightful, rich and wicked.......2007-06-20
I enjoyed this book much more than "Ace in the Hole." Though I don't know that it was well received by reviewers, and I don't believe that it was one of her best sellers, it is nonetheless a very good book.
The book follows a green accordion. It begins in a small Sicilian village in the late 19th century. It then travels through nearly every major immigrant group in the United States that has ever played folk music on the accordion. Proulx's writing in this book is wicked. She is funny and tragic--sometimes in the same paragraph. The lives of the characters in this book are drawn fully. Sometimes she gives their family history reaching back several generations. We are even at times given glimpses into family futures. The characters are connected only through the green accordion--and their shared American experience.
Proulx creates these characters through something that is more than anecdote, but also less than story. She often begins by painting with a broad brush the landscape and history of a person, she then settles into a particular moment or moments in that person's life. These anecdotes reveal the character within the context of his or her time and place. Any single story, if read on its own, would amount to very little. But when taken collectively they give a unique perspective on history.
"Accordion Crimes" and "News from Paraguay" are very different books, but they are somewhat similar in their structure. But at the end of the day, Proux is more successful in the use of the form. Her anecdotes are fully drawn; the characters feel much more like characters and less like writerly composites. Proulx has a real feel for the place and the people in her stories. Tuck may give one or two details to create her character and their particular anecdote. Proulx gives a bushel basket full. And though these are different approaches, in the end I feel emotionally engaged on the character level in Proulx's book. I feel farther away in Tuck's book, as though I am looking down upon rather than living with or within her characters.
One of the things that kept me reading "Accordion Crimes" was her imagination and the writing itself. Where as the other books I read this month often felt heavy on literary devices--techniques to compel the reader forward--Proulx relied simply on damn good writing. I can easily see why this book is not a popular read. With its scores of characters it would not make for good book group discussions. And even after I had spent a few hours with the book it was difficult for me to say exactly what happened. But I do know they were hours well spent.
The thing I liked most about the book, aside from the writing, was Proulx's willingness to look at the ugliest parts of America--and then make us look at them. The themes are big, and any single event in the life of any single character could have been the stuff of a novel in itself.
Not for everyone.......2007-02-17
Reading Annie Proulx's ACCORDIAN CRIMES is like taking a bath in Chival Regal. It's not for everyone but it is oh so elegant. The prose is elegant, the violence is elegant, and the characters are elegance in the raw. The images, the details, and the power of her writing are often overwhelming causing the reader to stop and take a breath. And she writes with wit, a trait not often found in today's writers.
ACCORDIAN CRIMES uses an Italian made, green accordian as a device to explore the underbelly of the immigrant experience. Not pretty for many, the antithesis of I REMEMBER MAMA. We follow the accordian and its owners from 1893 to 1993. A hundred years of struggle, despair, and isolation experienced by blacks, Italians, Germans, Poles, French, Mexicans from New Orleans, Chicago, Minnesota, Iowa, Montana, Mississippi, Texas. Unforgiving country inhabited by Proulx's relentless, unforgiving characters. Again, not pretty, not for everyone, but an American masterpiece.
Haunting lyricism.......2006-07-27
This beautiful and haunting novel, told with lyrical language, follows the fortunes of an accordion, focusing on each character for as long as they have the accordion in their possession. It is "the instrument of unsuccessful men, of poor immigrants and failures" and passes through the hands of a cast of unlucky characters. Even the incidental characters have drama; one man's wife is killed by inhaling a shrimp while laughing.
Brought to America by its Sicilian maker in 1890, the accordion survives a century and traverses a continent. The instrument travels from Italy to New York, the Midwest (in the hands of Germans), Texas (Mexicans), Maine/Canada (French), Louisiana (black slaves from Nantes) and Chicago (Poles). It plays a central role in folk music all over the world, but the novel is not so much about accordions as a tale of the migrants and the dispossessed. There is a need to record the history and stories of those whose history is not part of the established cannon and this is done through their music which evokes memories and fills the resentful silence just as it fills the pages of the novel.
As the migrants struggle to fit in with the American culture, they are tempted to deny their own ethnicity. Taunted for their roots, accents, language and custom, they reject their heritage. One character laments that "to be foreign, to be Polish, not to be American, was a terrible thing and all that could be done about it was to change one's name and talk about baseball." The Americans treat the Italians (and Sicilians whom they consider the same) "like cheap shoes. They buy cheap, they walk long and hard, when the shoes are worn out they throw them aside and get others. Shiploads of these shoes come every day." This racism continues through the migrants themselves so that the question is asked, have they learned nothing by their experience? Cultures combine and evolve, which should lead to a great sumptuousness and ethnical diversity. This cultural wealth is reflected in the vibrant prose, but often the points of distinction are `watered down' to blandness, however, which is evident in everything, even cooking.
There is a suggestion that it is hard to recall roots and connections after leaving home; "Wasn't that the old evil thing, brothers and sisters losing each other? Wasn't it the old, old thing, families torn up like scrap paper, the home place left and lost forever?" It is hard to trace people's roots, especially if they kept no records.
The music belongs to certain people - those who brought it with them. One man wants to play the music because he is infected by it, but feels that he can never be as good as those who have learned it from birth. To others, ethnicity is a commodity to be exploited. One musician is told how to play to a crowd. "Most people don't understand it, but one song gives a nice ethnic flavor. That's what we want to stress, ethnic flavor. Ethnic music is not that old-time stuff anymore. These days everybody is ethnic, might as well make money on it."
The narrative device echoes a musical composition, frequently jumping forward to tell how someone's story turns out in quick sentences, and then returning to the story. Chapters are punctuated with pictures of different styles of accordion. The music is the story, just as jazz is "confused music, the melody, if there was one, deliberately hidden in braided skeins of rhythm." And as things are turned around, this is the nature of American where "the natural order of the world is reversed and the old learn from children."
Annie Proulx raises issues of displacement and belonging, examining the sacrifices that are made in the name of progress. She has some hard-hitting points to make, asking what progress has been made since the Civil Rights Movement of the `60s.
Accordion Crimes is a collection of sad stories of migrants trying to overcome adversity. They are linked by economical, deceptively metaphor-laden prose which forms precise images. It is a rich and detailed novel; noisy, huge, energetic, seething and idiosyncratic, which demands immediate re-reading.
Literary Crimes.......2006-07-09
If Diane Arbus, Sylvia Plath, Edgar Allen Poe, and Ambrose Bierce had a baby, it would be indistinguishable from Doris Day when compared to E. Annie Proulx, America's most disturbed and disturbing writer. If you can read Accordion Crimes without becoming ill then sticking your head in a bag of ravenous ferrets would be a stroll in the park for you.
I love great writing and am willing to forgive a lot if an author really uses the language beautifully. I followed Proulx from Postcards through Shipping News, turning a blind eye to her unpalatable perspective, admiring the sheer muscularity of the prose. But technical skill without soul simply isn't enough. After all, Jeffrey Dahmer was handy with power tools and John Wayne Gacy was a talented clown. If Postcards and Shipping News suggested a moral compass with its magnetic North in the center of hell, Accordion Crimes flatly declared a worldview that made the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch look like a Hallmark greeting card.
A writer as gifted as Proulx can lie convincingly, and the greatest of her literary crimes is a portrait of immigrant life predicated on wave after wave not of people but of class hatred and warfare. Her vision is so bizarre, extreme, bleak, and unsupported as to be unique - the fabrication of some ghastly quarter-truth that satisfies her belief in the irredeemable depravity of humanity. That there is enough fact in this fantastic construction to lure readers into believing all of it is Ms. Proulx's blackest sin, a crime of bad faith, deception, and sensationalistic manipulation.
One good way to judge a writer's moral fiber is by observing how s/he treats his or her characters. Rest assured that no matter how difficult your life may seem, you can take comfort in the knowledge that you do not live in one of Ms. Proulx's novels. No writer has ever despised her protagonists more, finding increasingly ghoulish, twisted, and sadistic ways to hurt them, maim them, torture them, until at last she kills them. If you can find one drop of compassion, hope, joy, or even soul in this book you've read it more carefully than I have. It is one thing to hear Coltrane practicing scales, quite another to listen as his solos summon the spirits. Proulx writes well but pointlessly, gleefully pouring salt into a self-administered wound.
Average customer rating:
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Accordion Crimes
Manufacturer: Scribner
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: 0684833115 |
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Accordion Crimes
E. Annie Proulx
Manufacturer: Simon & Schuster
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
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ASIN: 1857025342 |
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Accordion Crimes
Annie Proulx
Manufacturer: Fourth Estate
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 185702575X |
Book Description
As a child, Gina Cascone would hide under her bed, in the closet, and
run away from her parents, hoping somehow to escape her worst fear.
But she couldn't hide from the awful truth...
She had to go to Catholic school.
Do nuns have legs? Is Original Sin the "starter sin" for novices? Can the
rosary be said in under fifteen minutes? These are some of the questions
that vex young Gina Cascone as she makes her way, grade by grade -- and
prayer by prayer -- through the rigors of a Catholic education. All the
answers can be found in this hilarious classic of childhood foibles: the
traumatic first day of school, the dorky plaid uniform complete with
matching beanie, glow-in-the-dark rosary beads, first confession trauma,
proper dashboard decor ("Cadillacs got Jesus; Oldsmobiles got Mary"), and
the race to save the most "pagan babies," who weren't lucky enough to be
born Catholic and American.
Download Description
"As a child, Gina Cascone would hide under her bed, in the closet, and run away from her parents, hoping somehow to escape her worst fear. But she couldn't hide from the awful truth... She had to go to Catholic school. Do nuns have legs? Is Original Sin the ""starter sin"" for novices? Can the rosary be said in under fifteen minutes? These are some of the questions that vex young Gina Cascone as she makes her way, grade by grade -- and prayer by prayer -- through the rigors of a Catholic education. All the answers can be found in this hilarious classic of childhood foibles: the traumatic first day of school, the dorky plaid uniform complete with matching beanie, glow-in-the-dark rosary beads, first confession trauma, proper dashboard decor (""Cadillacs got Jesus; Oldsmobiles got Mary""), and the race to save the most ""pagan babies,"" who weren't lucky enough to be born Catholic and American. "
Customer Reviews:
catholic schools are universal.......2007-08-16
this is a funny book one with which I could identify. any one who has attended a catholic school in the 60's or 70's knows where the author Gascone has been
Catholic bashing packaged as humor..........2007-05-20
I, too, grew up Catholic. I, too, have hilarious stories of my experiences. How lucky I feel, though, to have been raised to honor and respect my faith. Yes, my old friends and I still chuckle over certain eccentric nuns, over chapel veils and pagan baby collections, but mostly we feel lucky and richer for this experience. Since my patent leather shoe days, I've been widowed (young), lost my father (young), raised six children...no heartache or challenge has been too great, as I have been comforted and strengthened by this two thousand year old faith Gina Cascone so glibly dismisses. Had she remained true to her faith, some of what she says could be taken as good natured fun. She has instead turned her back on Catholicism and puts herself above sacraments and revered practices and beliefs. Her humor smacks of arrogance and ignorance. How sad.
This book is fantastic.......2006-08-29
A word of advice. Do not lend your copy of this book out. I am so glad they finally reprinted the book. I've lent 3 copies out - never to receive any of them back. This one will not leave my possession. You will laugh until you cry. I too went to Catholic schools and am still a happily practicing Catholic. I have some great memories too. Growing up during the 50's and 60's just does that....like the time I got into trouble for pretending I was a priest and pretending to consecrate Necco wafers. I don't know anyone who could put the laugh until you cry spin on the parochial school stories though. Irreverant, yes. A must-read? absolutely. Ms. Cascone tells her story not because she hated Catholic school, but because she has this fantastic sense of humor. I'd read anything she wrote. I bought sight unseen her book Life al Dente. I read excerpts of it to my Jewish husband in the car this weekend and even he laughed like crazy.
Disappointed.......2005-11-13
The book did bring back pleasant memories of attending a Catholic School. It's too bad that Gina Cascone hated attending a Catholic School. I kept reading hoping that at some time she would say something good about being a Catholic. But that never happened. If I hadn't experienced Catholic Schools myself, this book would convince me that sending your child to a Catholic school is child abuse. I only recommend this book for people who hated being Catholic.
Thoughts from a convert.......2004-11-18
Right off the bat I should state that I did not go to Catholic school nor was I brought up Catholic. I joined the Catholic church as an adult so I never got to experience anything like tha author details of her childhood. This is part of the reason I wanted to read the book. I love memoirs. I love Catholicism. I love good religious humor. This sounded like a perfect mix of them all.
I did find a lot of it humorous including her rebelious nature, her naive misunderstandings of doctrine, meeting her Sisters and other school chums. And while I realize that this is supposed to be read asnd appreciated as "the world according to a child" perspective, I did have a problem with the fact that the author did not bother to correct herself in certain things now that she is an adult and should better understand. For example, speaking about the Immaculate Conception as being the same as the Virgin Birth of Jesus. Even I, as a new Catholic, know that these are two completely different things.
Overall I was pleased with the book but I do have to admit that I got bored near the middle, put the book away for a few weeks and finished it later. Since each of the short chapters were on a different topic it was easy to pick it up and put it down again without missing a thing.
Average customer rating:
- Remarkably boring
- 47 Bodies in a Rwandan Church
- One of Leonard's best!
- Formulaic, but not bad
- Would you contribute??!??!
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Pagan Babies
Elmore Leonard
Manufacturer: HarperTorch
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Binding: Mass Market Paperback
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Unknown Man #89
ASIN: 0060008776
Release Date: 2002-01-08 |
Amazon.com
After 30-odd novels, one might think that Elmore Leonard has nothing left to prove. But Pagan Babies, a novel filled with his signatures (tight plotting, scathing wit, and that grittily realistic dialogue), shows once again why he sets the standard against which other crime novels are measured. In fact, Leonard has raised the bar. How many authors would dare use the Rwandan genocide as backdrop for a story that moves gaily between romantic comedy and a massive, labyrinthine con? More to the point, how many of them would pull it off?
Father Terry Dunn doesn't have qualms about substituting punishment for penance. If that means killing four Hutu murderers who slaughtered his Tutsi congregation, so be it. Being an instrument of divine wrath has certain disadvantages, however, so Dunn breaks camp and heads for Detroit, where he's welcomed by family, a five-year-old federal indictment for tax fraud, and a fast-talking fireball named Debbie Dewey. Fresh from a stint in prison for assaulting her former fiancé, Randy, with a Ford Escort, Debbie is out for revenge:
"I still can't believe I fell for it. He tells me he's retired from Merrill Lynch, one of their top traders, and I believed him. Did I check? No, not till it was too late. But you know what did me in, besides the hair and the tan? Greed. He said if I had a savings account that wasn't doing much and would like to put it to work... He shows me his phony portfolio, stock worth millions, and like a dummy I said, 'Well, I've got fifty grand not doing too much.' I signed it over and that's the last I saw of my money."
It's only a matter of time before Debbie's desire for cold, hard cash and Dunn's fundraising for Rwandan orphans join forces in a carefully plotted financial assault on Randy's benefactor, Tony Amilia, who just happens to be the last of the old-school Detroit Mafia. Throw in a couple of hit men to whom loyalty is a foreign word, and you've got vintage Leonard: a fast-paced, roller-coaster ride of a novel where deceiver and deceived are gloriously shifty signifiers. --Kelly Flynn
Book Description
Father Terry Dunn thought he'd seen everything on the mean streets of Detroit, but that was before he went on a little retreat to Rwanda to evade a tax-fraud indictment. Now the whiskey-drinking, Nine Inch Nails T-shirt-wearing padre is back trying to hustle up a score to help the little orphans of Rwanda. But the fund-raising gets complicated when a former tattletale cohort pops up on Terry's tail. And then there's the lovely Debbie Dewey. A freshly sprung ex-con turned stand-up comic, Debbie needs some fast cash, too, to settle an old score. Now they're in together for a bigger payoff than either could finagle alone. After all, it makes sense . . . unless Father Terry is working a con of his own.
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E-book extras: "Martin Amis Interviews 'The Dickens of Detroit'"; Elmore Leonard's "If It Sounds Like Writing, Rewrite It"; "All By Elmore: The Crime Novels
Customer Reviews:
Remarkably boring.......2007-07-01
The description sounds cool, right? Con man, Africa, the Detroit mob - all mixed up into a "witty, fast-paced" book? Not so. Pages and pages of repetitive dialogue, boring details, and conversations that add nothing to the storyline. I found myself skipping ahead several times to get past the fluff. Even the meat of the story is rather second-rate. You keep hoping that it'll get exciting, pick up the pace a bit, but are disappointed. Anyone accustomed to good work by Frederick Forsyth, Ludlum, Michael Connelly, David Baldacci or John Grisham will be sorely disappointed. Please look elsewhere.
47 Bodies in a Rwandan Church.......2006-11-04
In 'Pagan Babies' Elmore Leonard takes the reader from post-genocide Rwanda to mobbed up Detroit and back again. Leonard's writing here meets or exceeds his usual high standards for gritty and sardonic wit and intricate plot and then there are the characters who people his plot. Almost without exception, every character in the book is playing an angle of one kind or another - if not several angles.
Rich characters - there's 'Father' Terry Dunn returned from Africa to 'raise money for orphans' (the pagan babies), and ex-con with a schtick and a scam named Debbie Dewey, plus several Detroit Italian mobsters, a Hoosier hick hitman, not to mention several very bad banana-beer swilling men in Rwanda and 47 unburied bodies in Father Terry's Rwaandan church.
Steve Buscemi (Sopranos, Fargo) excels on the audio version.
Highly recommended for readers who enjoy Elmore Leonard, crime/mystery or just a good story.
One of Leonard's best!.......2006-08-27
With Elmore Leonard, I think you are either a fan and you eagerly read everything he writes or he just isn't your cup of tea. I am a fan and I loved this book. In fact, I think it is one of his best. He uses the genocide in Rwanda as a backdrop for his story of a priest with a secret. As is common with Leonard's books, you can't be sure who is good and who is bad. For some people, this may be disorienting, but I think it is what makes Elmore Leonard the best crime novelist out there. I love a book that keeps you unsure whether you really know or understand what is going on. Definitely recommmended.
Formulaic, but not bad .......2006-08-26
Terry is priest with a secret and a trip home to America turns into much more then he bargained for. At the beginning you think you know what the book is going to be, just some boring account of a guy going home to get money for his mission. The reality is much more interesting then that and the end result is not unsatisfying.
Would you contribute??!??!.......2006-05-15
Well this is a new author for me and a different kind than I usually read. I do believe my dad bought this book for me because Elmore Leonard comes from Detroit. I did enjoy this book. Is Terry a good guy or a bad guy? Hard to tell! One minute you think he is a Saint and then next minute he is in cahoots with a sexy blonde that was just released from prison. Is he the conned or the conner?
A good book in all. Fast paced and hard to put down. At times I had troubles following along and it was difficult to read about people getting murdered, especially small children so many times.
In general a good book. I would like to read others of his!
Average customer rating:
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Almas paganas = Pagan Babies (Punto de Lectura)
Elmore Leonard
Manufacturer: Punto de Lectura
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
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ASIN: 8466308040 |
Book Description
Terry Dunn is not an ordinary priest; his parish is in war territories in Rwanda. Before he returns home to Detroit, his mission is to collect money for the orphans. He will do anything to fulfill his goal, even face the mafia of the city. Debbie Dewey, an ex-convict, also has a mission: to take revenge on the man that stole thousands from her. Perhaps working together, father Dunn and Debbie will be able to fulfill their objectives... and have a good time together while doing so.
Description in Spanish: Terry Dunn no es un cura cualquiera. Su parroquia está en los territorios en guerra en Ruanda. Tiene un pasado turbio y un futuro incierto, pues debe volver a su Detroit natal, de donde huyó por problemas con la justicia. Sus intenciones actuales son recaudar dinero para los niños huérfanos de Ruanda. Y está dispuesto a todo por esta causa, incluso a enfrentarse a la mafia más peligrosa de la ciudad.
Tampoco puede decirse que Debbie Dewey sea una chica convencional. Ex convicta y aspirante a artista, también está embarcada en una misión: vengarse del tipo que le timó 67.000 dólares y por cuya culpa acabó en prisión. Quizá trabajando a la par, el padre Terry y Debbie consigan cumplir sus propósitos... y a la vez pasar un buen rato.
Average customer rating:
- What were they thinking....
- not what I wanted, but satisfying
- Missed the Mark
- Dysfunction Junction...
- It was like re-living entire phases of my life...
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Pagan Babies
Greg Johnson
Manufacturer: Dutton Adult
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0525935606 |
Customer Reviews:
What were they thinking...........2003-03-12
Please, Please don't trust the reviews that have been written for this book. This is one of the best books I have ever read. Trust me, I have read just about every type of fiction there is now. The writing was wonderful. And, most importantly the characters were so drawn out that by the end of the book I felt such an affinity to the plight of the characters hoping that eventually Greg Johnson may write a sequel....And, I have recommended this book to an avid reader like myself, and she loved it as well!!
not what I wanted, but satisfying.......2002-08-06
I don't exactly know what I was looking for out of this book, but in the end, I found it. The plot line was not all that spectacular or origional, but i found myself completely adoring the characters. Janice is absolutely fabulous and 3 dimensional and many can relate to both Janice's life, as well as Cliffords.
Missed the Mark.......2002-04-25
This was a random purchase while perusing a thrift shop on a Saturday afternoon. The novel begins with its main characters, Janice and Clifford, at a catholic elementary school. I expect that the novel will end with them as adults with a host of issues resulting from their catholic upbringing. I don't know for certain that this is the case because after 100 pages of text I lost interest in the story, characters and author. Johnson doesn't offer any cleaver insight into "The Church" or how its influence affects the psyche of the characters. The writing is clear, nothing really creative, but easy enough to digest.
Those readers who have grown up or are growing up catholic, may better connect with the characters and story given their familiarity with some of the rudimentary scenes offered in the novel. As a non-Catholic, I had hoped that the author would be able to introduce and connect me to a catholic upbringing experience through his character's story. Perhaps, I had hoped, the author would offer some insight or perspective on the history of sexual abuse within the church. Well no such luck. Due to languid, flat characters and image-less writing, I could not commit to the remaining half of the novel. Unfortunately, the best part of the book seems to be the review on the back page. Can't recommend this one.
Dysfunction Junction..........2000-07-23
As if proving the old cliche that you can't judge a book by its cover, Greg Johnson's book promises much but ultimately delivers very little.
Pagan Babies is the story of a long-standing hyper-dysfunctional relationship between protagonists Clifford and Janice. Johnson deftly begins their relationship as Catholic school "refugees" and accurately portrays the many times harsh realities of early 1960s Catholic education.
As the decades progress, however, both the relationship and the narrative begin to fray, and Pagan Babies ends up sounding like an episode from MTV's current nighttime drama "Undressed" (Clifford gets Janice pregnant, then discovers he's gay. She gets an abortion, he moves to Atlanta and turns tricks in Piedmont Park. Janice also moves to Atlanta and gets engaged, Clifford sleeps with her fiance. And on and on...)
At the end of the novel (and in a deeply unsatisfying conclusion), Clifford and Janice return to each other's arms and renew their dysfunctional devotion. No two people, in my opinion, deserved each other better.
While Johnson's writing is both tight and lyrical, the plot is choppy at best and terribly confusing at worst. If the book is in your library, check it out, but I would advise against purchasing a copy.
It was like re-living entire phases of my life..........1998-11-18
From the lasting effects of a Catholic upbringing to the trials and tribulations of growing up a gay male with a female best friend, this book hit so many nerves I feel as if I could have added some chapters and have kept perfectly in tune with Clifford and Janice. Both darkly funny and deeply touching, I've read the book six times and each time it rings truer than the previous read.
On general principles Mr. Johnson has tapped into the difficulties and contradictions we all face when growing up and trying to sort out our identities and destinies. The characters could be your neighbors or even yourselves or your family members. A solid, wonderful read.
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Pagan Babies
Leonard Elmore
Manufacturer: Delacorte
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000WML4EW |
Average customer rating:
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Pagan Babies
Manufacturer: Delacorte Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
Paperback | Leonard, Elmore | ( L ) | Authors, A-Z | Mystery & Thrillers | Subjects | Books
ASIN: B000HJI358 |
Average customer rating:
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Pagan Babies
Elmore Leonard
Manufacturer: Dell Pub Co
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000OV6QSU |
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Pagan Babies
Elmore Leonard
Manufacturer: Penguin Books Ltd
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
Paperback | Leonard, Elmore | ( L ) | Authors, A-Z | Mystery & Thrillers | Subjects | Books
ASIN: B000OISIQ6 |
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Pagan Babies
Manufacturer: Recorded Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Audio CD
ASIN: 078875355X |
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Pagan Babies
Elmore Leonard
Manufacturer: Delacorte
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000GLR2ZE |
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