Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.
|
Loading... The Drunken Spelunker's Guide to Platoby Kathy Giuffre
None No current Talk conversations about this book.  pw0327 | Jun 13, 2017 |   Josie, a young woman escapes her Appalachian hill town and by bus finds herself in Waterville, a southern college town. There she finds employment tending bar at a place called, "The Cave." she finds herself part of a hard drinking misfit group of regulars who inhabit the night. Yet, she finds so much more, friends who become her family, love and heartbreak and unconditional acceptance, tragedy and acceptance.. The characters are so wonderful, from Commie Tom who runs the bookstore, "Hammer and Sickle", to Blossom who owns a small diner and is always there when needed with food and solace. So many more, all amazingly real. This was the time before internet, cell phones so there are discussions of books, music, ideas, thoughts, politics, refreshingly nostalgic. Josie is our narrator and her words are always proceeded by a reference to a particular story in Greek mythology or an excerpt of "The Cave." it fit in with what was happening seamlessly. Made me see how many of these older ideas and thoughts can still fit in today's world, how they can be applied to personal situations. These were people I could see myself being friends with, if they were real of course. I will miss everyone of them. And this little book has become one of my favorite reads of this year. (  ) Beamis12 | Dec 28, 2015 | no reviews | add a review
Awards
The Drunken Spelunker's Guide to Plato is based on Plato's Allegory of the Cave fromThe Republic. In this novel, the Cave is a dank basement bar in the small Southern town of Waterville, overflowing with cheap beer, good blues, and local oddballs. There's Vera, the tough but tender owner; Pancho, the philosophical piano tuner; Billy Joe, the former rising star back home after a stop in Memphis; and Commie Tom, the exceedingly generous proprietor of the Hammer and Sickle Bookstore. The newest bartender is whip-smart tomboy Josie, who hopped a bus from the Appalachian backwoods on a quest to discover who she is and where she belongs. What she finds is the Cave and the love of a charming regular named Danny. Armed with lessons from mythology and Plato's philosophy, Josie navigates the ups and downs of first love and begins to understand that something much greater is waiting for her just outside the Cave. With Josie as our brave guide, we are submerged in a rarely explored subculture. Her journey into the Cave and back out is filled with trials and tragedy, but Josie is helped along by her newfound community of large-hearted hard drinkers.The Drunken Spelunker's Guide to Plato is a love letter to the families we build for ourselves and the unexpected ways life can answer the question, "What if?" KATHY GIUFFRE is a professor and sociologist specializing in social networks, cultural sociology, and Polynesian society. Giuffre was invited to present a TED Talk about her research in 2013. She is the author of a memoir,An Afternoon in Summer: My Year in the South Seas (Awa Press, 2010), as well as two academic books covering her areas of expertise. Giuffre received her Ph.D. and M.A. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a B.A. from Harvard University. Currently, she and her family live in Colorado Springs, Colorado, where she is the A.E. and Ethel Irene Carlton Professor of Social Sciences at Colorado College. ". . . [A] novel of love and life that is humorous and delicate. The regulars at the Cavern Tavern in the small southern town of Waterville, located somewhere in the Appalachian Piedmont, partake of all the quirkiness expected of literary denizens of dive bars in the South . . . Passages drawn from Plato's allegory of the cave and Edith Hamilton's Mythology weave through the story, elevating Josie's struggles to the level of the universal. This is warm, sweet, and inviting, like pie fresh from the oven." --Publishers Weekly "A young woman living in a college town in the early 1990s learns about life, love, and ancient Greek philosophy in this episodic, often comic tale. With its evenhanded narrator, this low-key novel succinctly evokes the supportive dynamics of the community at its heart." --Kirkus Reviews Winner: SIBA Summer 2015 Okra Pick Best Book Winner: Seven Sisters Book Award, Fiction Long List: Pat Conroy Award for Southern Fiction, Prince of Tides Award in Literary Fiction Long List: Crook's Corner Book Prize Finalist: Foreword INDIEFAB Book of the Year, Literary Fiction No library descriptions found. |
Current DiscussionsNonePopular covers 
 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyLC ClassificationRatingAverage: (4.17)
Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author. |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Wikipedia in English
1
I must say that I enjoyed this book more than I thought I would, mainly because Kathy Giuffre, while a very good writer, had a hard time setting the stage for herself. I struggled with the characters as they were introduced. I had a hard time staying interested since the characters did not grip me at the very beginning, and she introduced so many of them at once that I kept sneaking back to figure out which characters she was talking about. But. She more than made up for it as she found her groove about half way through the book. The characters became real to me and as the narrative moved along, I started to empathize with the quirkiness of all the characters,
The structure of the book is ambitious. The author interweaves the story of Josie, the narrator, and her life as a bartender at The Cave, a dark and subterranean watering hole; a contemplation of Plato’s fable of prisoners in a cave; and finally a mixture of Greek mythological tales. At first the whole structure seemed to be a pseudo-intellectual exercise in pomposity. But the tapestry works, mainly because of the author’s sense of humor and her easiness with the language and her way with the story. She easily weaves in and out of the three threads and is able to make the story illustrate the mythology and the philosophical ponderings. I found myself being drawn in to the book as the story became more interesting until I was completely captivated and charmed. In the wrong hands, the easy parallel drawn between Plato’s cave and the bar named the Cave could have been a disaster. A lazy writer would have gone for the facile laughs and false profundity; this author never went for the cheap laugh or the fake gravitas. She worked pretty hard, in her research on philosophy and mythology to give us, the reader, a very happy and satisfying read.
The best compliment I can pay a work of fiction is that I was sad and forlorn when I reached the end of a book because I wanted the story to continue and I wanted to be led by the author through her thoughts.
I was sad and forlorn when I reached the end of this book. (