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Loading... To Sail Beyond the Sunsetby Robert A. Heinlein
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Read this but don't remember it, I need to re-read it. Another reread, and another book as part of my 2015 reading challenge (I'm trying to read and finish more of Heinlein's books, one of my favorite authors) Not my favorite one I've read by Heinlein, it's about Maureen Long, and you definitely need to read some of the other books by Heinlein before tackling this one, if you want to "get" the whole story I attempted to find interest in this one five times but it's just not my think. I really wanted to soldier through since it was a book club selection but that didn't happen. Maybe I will try again - doubtful. I wish there were an audio version because I did enjoy most of the dialogue. It was the parts in between that gave me trouble.
f the subtitle, "Being the Memoirs of a Somewhat Irregular Lady," evokes Fanny Hill, it's no accident. For although there's a science fiction story here, involving time travel, alternate history and super-longevity, the true subject of the book is sex. As the heroine, Maureen Johnson Long, says after one of many incestuous encounters: "What the world needs is more loving, sweaty and friendly and unashamed." One way or another this idea is endlessly repeated, out of the mouths of any number of the absurd characters populating this novel. The heroine, born in 1882, engages in what Heinlein imagines to be clever, iconoclastic conversation with her father before the turn of the 20th century, and later with husbands, friends and offspring; they are all so smug and self-righteous it sets the teeth on edge. While spewing out homilies on the proper conduct of life, they are generally engaging in activities more appropriate to a tale involving the Jukes or the Kallikaks. Heinlein seems to be on a mission, but he has made his message unpalatable. And far from being admirable, his characters are virtually moronsthey are totally closed, the world can teach them nothing. Not surprising: they're all inbred. Publication date is Heinlein's 80th birthday. AwardsDistinctions
Maureen Johnson, the somewhat irregular mother of Lazarus Long, wakes up in bed with a man and a cat. The cat is Pixel, well-known to fans of the New York Times bestseller The Cat Who Walks through Walls. The man is a stranger to her, and besides that, he is dead. So begins Robert A. Heinlein's To Sail beyond the Sunset. Filled with the master's most beloved characters, this compelling work broadens and enriches his epic vision of time and space, life and death, love and desire. It is also an autobiographical masterpiece--and a wondrous return to the alternate universes that all Heinlein fans have come to know and love. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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