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NEW YORK TIMESBESTSELLER A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW Notable Book "So funny, so sage and above all so incandescently intelligent" (The Chicago Tribune), the New York Times bestseller Purityis a grand story of youthful idealism, extreme fidelity, and murder, a daring and penetrating book from "the most intelligent novelist of [his] generation" (The New Republic), Jonathan Franzen Young Pip Tyler doesn't know who she is. She knows that her real name is Purity, that she's saddled with $130,000 in student debt, that she's squatting with anarchists in Oakland, and that her relationship with her mother??her only family??is hazardous. But she doesn't have a clue who her father is, why her mother chose to live as a recluse with an invented name, or how she'll ever have a normal life. Enter the Germans. A glancing encounter with a German peace activist leads Pip to an internship in South America with The Sunlight Project, an organization that traffics in all the secrets of the world??including, Pip hopes, the secret of her origins. TSP is the brainchild of Andreas Wolf, a charismatic provocateur who rose to fame in the chaos following the fall of the Berlin Wall. Now on the lam in Bolivia, Andreas is drawn to Pip for reasons she doesn't understand, and the intensity of her response to him upends her conventional ideas of right and wrong. Purity is a grand story of youthful idealism, extreme fidelity, and murder. The author of The Corrections and Freedom has imagined a world of vividly original characters??Californians and East Germans, good parents and bad parents, journalists and leakers??and he follows their intertwining paths through landscapes as contemporary as the omnipresent Internet and as ancient as the war between the sexes. Purity is the most daring and penetrating book yet by one of the major writers of… (more)
Did Franzen live up to the expectations? No way. Is it a bad book? Nope. Should the book have been a lot shorter? Yes. Did the writer get lost in his own creation? Yep.
The first chapter is strong and introduces a really interesting character, the next 3oo or so pages are a real drag. Good luck with those! Then the books get going and at times Franzen's brilliance shines through, but dear publishers let him do something else please. He didn't have the material for another great American novel, yet.
A novel about a girl called Purity would have been great. ( )
Vacillating between 3 stars and 4 stars. This is a book that requires the reader to pay close attention. There are many viewpoints and the story jumps around in time with no warning. A dense, complex story--lots of navel gazing. I hated the ending, otherwise I would have had no problem giving it 4 stars. ( )
"Oh pussycat, I'm so glad to hear your voice," the girl's mother said on the telephone.
Quotations
Information from the Italian Common Knowledge. Edit to localize it to your language.
E forse la pazzia era proprio questo: una valvola di emergenza per alleviare la pressione di un'ansia intollerabile.
Non vedeva alcun rischio razionale nell'accendere la luce sopra il fornello, ma avere una mente complicata significava anche comprenderne i limiti, comprendere che non poteva pensare a tutto. La stupidità scambiava se stessa per intelligenza, mentre l'intelligenza riconosceva la propria stupidità. Un paradosso interessante. Ma non rispondeva alla domanda se accendere la luce o no.
Il mondo era sovrappopolato di parlatori e sottopopolato di ascoltatori, e molte delle su fonti le davano l'impressione di essere la prima persona che le avesse mai davvero ascoltate.
– Ecco due verità sulla fama … Una è che ti rende solo. L'altra è che tutti quelli che ti circondano proiettano i loro sentimenti su di te. Anche per questo ti rende solo. È come se tu, come persona, non esistessi nemmeno. Sei solo un oggetto sul quale gli altri proiettano l'idealismo, la rabbia e così via.
Lo scopo di internet e delle tecnologie connesse era «liberare» l'umanità dai compiti – fabbricare cose, imparare cose, ricordare cose – che prima davano significato alla vita e perciò ne costituivano l'essenza. Ora sembrava che l'unico compito significativo fosse l'ottimizzazione per i motori di ricerca.
La nebbia … era la lenta canzone in tonalità minore che veniva scacciata dal rock and roll del sole.
Avevano la bellezza della seconda occhiata, la bellezza che si rivelava solo con l'intimità.
Last words
Only when the skies opened again, the rain from the immense dark western ocean pounding on the car roof, the sound of love drowning out the other sound, did she believe that she might.
NEW YORK TIMESBESTSELLER A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW Notable Book "So funny, so sage and above all so incandescently intelligent" (The Chicago Tribune), the New York Times bestseller Purity is a grand story of youthful idealism, extreme fidelity, and murder, a daring and penetrating book from "the most intelligent novelist of [his] generation" (The New Republic), Jonathan Franzen Young Pip Tyler doesn't know who she is. She knows that her real name is Purity, that she's saddled with $130,000 in student debt, that she's squatting with anarchists in Oakland, and that her relationship with her mother??her only family??is hazardous. But she doesn't have a clue who her father is, why her mother chose to live as a recluse with an invented name, or how she'll ever have a normal life. Enter the Germans. A glancing encounter with a German peace activist leads Pip to an internship in South America with The Sunlight Project, an organization that traffics in all the secrets of the world??including, Pip hopes, the secret of her origins. TSP is the brainchild of Andreas Wolf, a charismatic provocateur who rose to fame in the chaos following the fall of the Berlin Wall. Now on the lam in Bolivia, Andreas is drawn to Pip for reasons she doesn't understand, and the intensity of her response to him upends her conventional ideas of right and wrong. Purity is a grand story of youthful idealism, extreme fidelity, and murder. The author of The Corrections and Freedom has imagined a world of vividly original characters??Californians and East Germans, good parents and bad parents, journalists and leakers??and he follows their intertwining paths through landscapes as contemporary as the omnipresent Internet and as ancient as the war between the sexes. Purity is the most daring and penetrating book yet by one of the major writers of
Is it a bad book? Nope.
Should the book have been a lot shorter? Yes.
Did the writer get lost in his own creation? Yep.
The first chapter is strong and introduces a really interesting character, the next 3oo or so pages are a real drag. Good luck with those! Then the books get going and at times Franzen's brilliance shines through, but dear publishers let him do something else please. He didn't have the material for another great American novel, yet.
A novel about a girl called Purity would have been great. ( )