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Loading... Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse (1998)by Anne Carson
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Most reviews are by people who really liked this book. I did not like this book. So it goes. Some of the individual pieces of the book are really quite good as you'd expect from an accomplished poet writing a novel in verse. But the overall story annoyed and bored me. Geryon, the red winged monster of ancient myth, is re-imagined as a sad, pushed-around modern boy/adolescent/young adult. Herakles is his first love. Rather than slay him as in myth, Herakles merely breaks his sad young heart and Geryon meekly goes back to his mother's house. Years later, they hook up one more time. Geryon cries, Herakles says Modern myth never looked like such weak brew next to the ancient. ( ) There are lot of beautiful moments in here, lots of bittersweet which is my weak spot. I wish I could have taken my time with it, but I have a pile of books from the library and had to rush a bit. I think I was expecting/hoping for more of a story arc and was disappointed when it ended up being pretty slice-of-life. Still, very good. Video review: https://youtu.be/jnoRFBoTcnE
...Carson writes in language any poet would kill for: sensuous and funny, poignant, musical and tender, brilliantly lighted. It is a novel, all right; a story which creates characters that are surprising but credible, involves them in an action that works to what seems an appropriate if somewhat mysterious end and, in this case, leaves the reader with a feeling that it contains depths which only rereading and reflection will sound. But the reader cannot help wondering: Was the decision to tell the story in verse justified? Is contained in
The award-winning poet reinvents a genre in a stunning work that is both a novel and a poem, both an unconventional re-creation of an ancient Greek myth and a wholly original coming-of-age story set in the present. Geryon, a young boy who is also a winged red monster, reveals the volcanic terrain of his fragile, tormented soul in an autobiography he begins at the age of five. As he grows older, Geryon escapes his abusive brother and affectionate but ineffectual mother, finding solace behind the lens of his camera and in the arms of a young man named Herakles, a cavalier drifter who leaves him at the peak of infatuation. When Herakles reappears years later, Geryon confronts again the pain of his desire and embarks on a journey that will unleash his creative imagination to its fullest extent. By turns whimsical and haunting, erudite and accessible, richly layered and deceptively simple, Autobiography of Red is a profoundly moving portrait of an artist coming to terms with the fantastic accident of who he is. A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist "Anne Carson is, for me, the most exciting poet writing in English today." --Michael Ondaatje "This book is amazing--I haven't discovered any writing in years so marvelously disturbing." --Alice Munro "A profound love story . . . sensuous and funny, poignant, musical and tender." --The New York Times Book Review "A deeply odd and immensely engaging book. . . . [Carson] exposes with passionate force the mythic underlying the explosive everyday." --The Village Voice No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)811.54Literature English (North America) American poetry 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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