|
| Man Gone Down: A Novel | 
 enlarge | Author: Michael Thomas
Publisher: Grove Press, Black Cat
Category: Book
List Price: $14.00
Buy New: $6.30
You Save: $7.70 (55%)
New (6) Used (8) from $5.71
Avg. Customer Rating:  26 reviews
Sales Rank: 22890
Format: Bargain Price
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 432
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.4 x 1.6
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
ASIN: B0018SWAJ2
Publication Date: December 7, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
|
| Also Available In:
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Evoking the work of great American masters such as Ralph Ellison, but distinctly original, Michael Thomas’ first novel is a beautifully written, insightful, and devastating account of a young black father of three in a biracial marriage trying to claim a piece of the American Dream. On the eve of the unnamed narrator’s thirty-fifth birthday, he finds himself broke, estranged from his white Boston Brahmin wife and three children, and living in the bedroom of a friend’s six-year-old child. With only four days before he’s due in to pick up his family, he must make some sense out of his life. Alternating between his past—as an inner city child bused to the suburbs in the 1970’s—and a present where he is trying mightily to keep his children in private schools, we learn of his mother’s abuses, his father’s abandonment, and the best and worst intentions of a supposedly integrated America. This is an extraordinary debut about what it feels like to be pre-programmed to fail in life—and the urge to escape that sentence.
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 21 more reviews...
Interesting stream of conciousness June 22, 2007
21 out of 21 found this review helpful
This clearly isn't a book for everyone, but I found it engrossing until the very end. The book is clearly rooted in the search for and struggles with identity. In many respects, it is a contemporary, post-integration era counterpart to Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man". The narrator's mixed race ancestry and largely White environment will make the book accessible to White audiences, but also should create some discomfort. The narrator's upbringing provided certain material and social advantages but also placed him in a marginal place in the world. Still, his main friends are White, as is his wife and he muddles through the obvious prejudice (racial and class-based) from his mother-in-law. The White people in his life are marginal in their own way, but the advantages of who they are carry them on better. Some of the class based issues (e.g., growing up poor in a rich suburb) cut across race, but don't overshadow it. For the narrator having Irish (and Native American) ancestry doesn't change his situation much--what ever value people put on race often fails to advantage people of mixed race backgrounds and, for the narrator, it adds to his confusion about his place in the world. Like most people, the narrator has surmounted significant hurdles such as alcoholism and less than attentive parents. On the other hand, he never fully met what other people saw as his potential, academically or occupationally and he is out of synch with most people his age, even while raising a family. His story reminded me of people who had grown up in strongly integrationist families or who otherwise found themselves outside the mainstream of African-American life.
This is not a book for people seeking simple linear story telling. It is a realistic walk through a few weeks of a man's life, although the walk is filled with backward looks and sideways glances at people, places, and events in the narrator's life. The book is basically about the struggle for identity and a place in the world, but it is not a conventionally psychological treatment, nor does it embrace the rhetoric of cultural studies or conventional identity ideology, although one can extract some of these things from the prose if one wishes. Rather, it is a realistic interior monologue with all the inconsistencies and contradictions that go with that. Some aspects of the narrator's life get surprisingly little treatment like his decision to stop drinking and his subsequent sobriety. In some ways, he seems to have simply found ways to not make that a big feature in his life.
The ending knocked a star off for me. Without offering a spoiler, let me say that it's a "surprise" that makes clear that the narrator's interior life is very different from what other people see. That point is pretty evident elsewhere in the book and I'm not sure anyone needs to be hit over the head with it, although the story clear needed some destination, if not resolution. Despite the ending being a "surprise" of sorts, it wasn't unexpected and it seemed pat and unworthy of the rest of the writing to me. It would have fit a short story better, where the narrative form often requires plotting that has some dramatic conclusion.
Still, this is an excellent book for someone who is willing to enter someone else's life and accept another person's view of the world. To the extent that White liberals (and some conservatives) often tend to see racial issues as confounded with class, the book deftly captures where that perspective is wanting. Many people, particularly White people, may want a colorblind world, but it's far from there and we have to think about how to live in the world we have with the people in it.
 Amazing January 26, 2007
18 out of 28 found this review helpful
This book makes art from life, and reminds me that life is art. It is beautifully written and changed the way I see the world, and the way I see myself. A journey worth taking.
A love/hate relationship with the character AND the book! February 19, 2007
18 out of 20 found this review helpful
Sometimes it is riveting, sometimes I give it 5 stars because it was just the thing I needed to put me to sleep. But overall, an IMMENSELY satisfying read. You go on a journey with the main character as he tries to figure himself out, care for his family, and figure out where he belongs in the world - and finally be OKAY with it. He's kinda crazy, but very endearing.
There are parts of the book where you wonder what in the HELL he is talking about because of the rambling, but just as you begin to get exasperated, Thomas hits you with a brilliant passage like an espresso shot and you sit up and pay attention again. You get sick of the character but can't put the book down. You want to put the book down due the rambling, but you want to know what happens next to the character - and also know that more pleasure is to be found in the journey! This book is a literary K-hole. Heh heh heh
What works BEST to put it all into perspective is reading the discussion questions at the end of the book (in addition to being well-read), and then it will all come into place. So that is why this book is a winner and I would definitely read it again.
 NOT FOR ME March 8, 2007
12 out of 17 found this review helpful
I read this book because of great reviews. I was disappointed. The writing is wonderful but the content and feeling of the book is repetitive. I never felt he was getting anywhere and I wasn't getting anywhere with him.
Brilliant at times but seriously flawed April 22, 2007
12 out of 13 found this review helpful
This is a book that I disliked at the same time that I couldn't put it down. There is brilliant writing here and wonderful insights that stay with the reader long after the book is finished. There is an examination of the African American and mixed race experience that rings true and important. But there is seemingly endless "introspection" fueled by depression and perhaps narcissism that prevented me from being completely engaged. Because all other characters are viewed only through the narrator's egoistic worldview, they never become any thing close to real. We, like the narrator, can only guess at their motives. The most blatant example of this problem is the ending - which is singularly unbelievable and unsatisfying.
|
|
|
Powered by Associate-O-Matic
| |
