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Chargement... Castlepar J. Robert Lennon
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Inscrivez-vous à LibraryThing pour découvrir si vous aimerez ce livre Actuellement, il n'y a pas de discussions au sujet de ce livre. Lennon has a gift for creating a strong sense of character, and a strong sense of atmosphere. The pace of the novel is managed very well, too. Where I think he stumbles is in choosing and using themes--here things like disciplining children, authority, war. A certain heavy-handedness on these subjects, in the end, obscure the good work he does on the other things. The main character's secrets are rather predictable (an abusive childhood, wartime horror) and they should have been made part of the setup, not what we waited the whole novel to find out. Moving beyond or with these predictable, practically cliche, formative experiences is more the makings of a great novel. As it is it is good, and shows the potential for much better. I read this over the weekend. It was suspenseful and meditative and well-craffted. Unfortunately, somewhere in the middle it took on the aspect of some long, creepy, illustrative scenario you might find in a Psychology textbook. Not entirely enjoyable, but unnerving enough to not want to stop reading.
Lennon’s latest monster, in his novel “Castle,” is Eric Loesch, a middle-aged former military man with an unfortunate history of service in the Middle East — one he doesn’t like to talk about or even remember. With nowhere to go after being dismissed from duty, he finds himself drifting back to his leafy upstate New York hometown and getting lost in the deep, muddy currents of his childhood. It’s not nostalgia that draws him back; it’s just the only future he’s got left.
Formal and a little defensive in his encounters with curious locals, Eric Loesch starts renovating a rundown house in the small, upstate New York town of his childhood. He discovers there is a parcel of land in the middle of his woods that he does not own. What's more, the name of the owner is blacked out. Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
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Google Books — Chargement... GenresClassification décimale de Melvil (CDD)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999Classification de la Bibliothèque du CongrèsÉvaluationMoyenne:
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This is a book driven by its slowly developing, dark, but ultimately interesting plot.
It's one of those novels that, at the end, I'm glad I finished. I wasn't put off by its clunky phrasing or its few undeveloped plot elements. I was put off by its darkness, by scenes of Eric's physical and mental abuse as a child, and of his involvement in wartime torture, This is not a book to read at bedtime.
We are not sure which parts of the story happen in Eric's life and which are in his head. The book is open to many interpretations. ( )