Point Of Books Great House
| Title | : | Great House |
| Author | : | Nicole Krauss |
| Book Format | : | Hardcover |
| Book Edition | : | First Edition (US/CAN |
| Pages | : | Pages: 289 pages |
| Published | : | October 12th 2010 by W. W. Norton & Company |
| Categories | : | Fiction. Historical. Historical Fiction. Contemporary. Literary Fiction. Novels |
Nicole Krauss
Hardcover | Pages: 289 pages Rating: 3.48 | 16803 Users | 2374 Reviews
Narrative In Pursuance Of Books Great House
For twenty-five years, a reclusive American novelist has been writing at the desk she inherited from a young Chilean poet who disappeared at the hands of Pinochet's secret police, one day a girl claiming to be the poet's daughter arrives to take it away, sending the writer's life reeling. Across the ocean, in the leafy suburbs of London, a man caring for his dying wife discovers, among her papers, a lock of hair that unravels a terrible secret. In Jerusalem, an antiques dealer slowly reassembles his father's study, plundered by the Nazis in Budapest in 1944.Connecting these stories is a desk of many drawers that exerts a power over those who possess it or have given it away. As the narrators of Great House make their confessions, the desk takes on more and more meaning, and comes finally to stand for all that has been taken from them, and all that binds them to what has disappeared.
Great House is a story haunted by questions: What do we pass on to our children and how do they absorb our dreams and losses? How do we respond to disappearance, destruction, and change?
Nicole Krauss has written a soaring, powerful novel about memory struggling to creat a meaningful permanence in the face of inevitable loss.
(front flap)
Details Books Supposing Great House
| Original Title: | Great House |
| ISBN: | 0393079988 (ISBN13: 9780393079982) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Literary Awards: | Orange Prize Nominee for Fiction Shortlist (2011), Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Fiction (2011), National Book Award Finalist for Fiction (2010), Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Fiction (2010) |
Rating Of Books Great House
Ratings: 3.48 From 16803 Users | 2374 ReviewsCrit Of Books Great House
How to Extract EmpathyKrauss is a mistress of extracted empathy. She can drag it out of you even when you fight it, particularly empathy for writers: for Nadia, a writer prevented by success from writing what she ought; for Dov, an Israeli, prevented by apparent paternal sadism from becoming a writer at all; for Lotte, an Holocaust-traumatised emigre writer, who reportedly goes skinny dipping every day on Hampstead Heath; for Isabel, a failed Oxford student (presumably a writer, if only ofThere are books that are the right ones at the right time. This one was a book at a certain time, maybe not just right, but with rough hewn edges that generally fit, squint the eyes a little, hold a thumb sideways, good enough. Life has thrown me from a moving vehicle and since I wasn't wearing my seat belt, the resulting scrape has left all these exposed nerve endings to be once again scraped by this book.It wasn't the best read to have on the commute, the jerking of the bus and other people
If you are looking for a light and simple story where there's a plot developed in the classic structure, this is not your book.This is a tough novel, it requires guessing and work on your part, it's like a puzzle that somehow the reader has to put together. And for me, what makes it a great reading, is that you are not conscious of getting close to solving that puzzle, but when you turn the last page everything makes sense in a strange and singular way, like remembering your own memories,
Moments of soaring, heart-shattering prose. Krauss has the ability with one sentence - the gaps between the words, really (what you're expecting, more than what you are reading) - to imply and evoke the depth of emotion from the tragedies of life. It doesn't hurt that her characters have undergone or are experiencing the greatest contemporary tragedies of our times - the Holocaust, war, political persecution, sickness, death, deep and unreconciled domestic splits. Much of this is about writing
This is the worst book I've read in years! The narratives are incredibly disjointed and confusing. None of the characters is interesting enough to warrant the energy required of the reader to piece together their stories in a meaningful way. The writing itself is trite and one gets the feeling that one has read similar stories by better writers. By far the worst flaw of the book is the lack of propulsion. I'm amazed that I read the entire book as there was nothing driving the book forward.
After reading The History of Love, I promised myself to read something else by Nicole Krauss when I had the chance. I found Great House at a local thrift store for $1, and it was one of the best dollars I ever spent. There are several narratives to follow and they are tied together by a desk, a desk that was part of the stolen property of Jews displaced by the Third Reich. Each of the narratives is a story in itself, a glimpse into the lives of people who struggle with their humanity and how
I almost made it to page 100. I was thinking that the narrative was quite loose, plot developments subtle with a heavy focus on the characters' inner lives, a bit more intellectual than I typically choose, but I was soldiering on, trying to prove my literary merit as a reader. Hey guys, wait for me, I could have been an English major too! But when I read the following sentence, which occupies half of page 95, I gave myself permission to hang it up:"But they didn't come, and so I continued to sit
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