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Chargement... What the Family Needed: A Novel (2013)par Steven Amsterdam
  
Aucun Actuellement, il n'y a pas de discussions au sujet de ce livre.   ) SESchend | Feb 2, 2024 |  ) SESchend | Sep 6, 2017 | But instead of crimes to fight and villains to vanquish, they confront inner demons, and their extraordinary abilities prove not to be magic weapons so much as expressions of their fears and longings as they struggle to come to terms with who they are and what fate deals them. Expectations were high. I love the idea of people gaining super powers and yet not becoming superheroes. I was especially interested in seeing how such a story would unfold in the context of a family. The stories--and these are really more like short stories tied together by the connections the characters share across tales--have a linear progression. Each chapter focuses on a different member of the family and jumps a little (or a lot) further in time as the book moves along. Each time the reader is dropped down right at the moment the character discovers his or her power. Kept me on my toes. Kept me on my toes right up until the end where the book seemed to lose a little steam. [b:What the Family Needed|15815357|What the Family Needed|Steven Amsterdam|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1350922470s/15815357.jpg|17415004] wasn't perfect but I was glad of the journey it took me on. We shall meet again [a:Steven Amsterdam|2958060|Steven Amsterdam|http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1316938663p2/2958060.jpg]. (  ) diovival | Oct 14, 2013 |  Cette critique a été écrite dans le cadre des Critiques en avant-première de LibraryThing. ) LaurenKaz | Sep 14, 2013 | Cette critique a été écrite dans le cadre des Critiques en avant-première de LibraryThing.The prose itself is crisp and unpretentious; my main problems with the book were the discontinuity between the "chapters," which are set years apart, and the lack of any thematic cohesion across the stories. I kept expecting Amsterdam to build towards some narrative climax tying the individual stories together, but the ending only left me with more questions about what exactly he was trying to convey. "What the Family Needed" is a prime example of both the strengths and weaknesses of much of modern literature: technical proficiency that signifies little. Disclosure: I received a free copy of this book through LibraryThing's Early Reviewer program. (  ) sullijo | May 22, 2013 |
 In his second book, Amsterdam again deploys a discontinuous narrative technique, presenting us with a novel-in-stories related by different characters whose interior points of view continually shape our impressions. And again, there are long chronological gaps between sections, so we witness fragments of individual lives ricocheting off each other over three decades. While the novel begins sedately enough, Amsterdam takes us before long into strange and marvellous territory, endowing each of his characters with a superhuman power. It’s like The Incredibles but with real people who realise they have the power to fly, read minds and so on; it is suggested that this ‘gift’ is bestowed by a single character, Alek. This device might have been cartoonish and gimmicky but Amsterdam’s deft touch, always managing to confound our narrative expectations, makes the work brace itself – like one astonished character – then lift off. Appartient à la série éditorialePrinters Row Journal (61) Prix et récompenses
"Okay, tell me which you want," Alek asks his cousin at the outset of What the Family Needed. "To be able to fly or to be invisible?" And soon Giordana, a teenager suffering the bitter fallout of her parents' divorce, finds that she can, at will, become as invisible as she feels. Later, Alek's mother, newly adrift in the disturbing awareness that all is not well with her younger son, can suddenly swim with Olympic endurance. Steven Amsterdam's incandescent novel follows the members of this gorgeously imagined extended family over three decades, as they each discover, at a moment of crisis, that they possess a supernatural power. But instead of crimes to fight and villains to vanquish, the family confronts inner demons, and their extraordinary abilities prove to be not so much magic weapons but expressions of their fears and longings as they struggle to come to terms with who they are and what fate deals them. As the years pass, their lives intersect and overlap in surprising and poignant ways, and the real magic is revealed to lie not in their superpowers but in the very human and miraculous ways they are able to accept, protect, and love one another. Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
Critiques des anciens de LibraryThing en avant-premièreLe livre What The Family Needed de Steven Amsterdam était disponible sur LibraryThing Early Reviewers.  Discussion en coursAucunCouvertures populaires
 Google Books — Chargement...GenresClassification décimale de Melvil (CDD)823.92Literature English English fiction Modern Period 2000-Classification de la Bibliothèque du CongrèsÉvaluationMoyenne: (3.56)
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