|
Loading... Man Gone Down: A Novelby Michael Thomas
LibraryThing recommendationsMember recommendationsLoading...
won't like
will probably not like
will probably like
will like
will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. I'm had some difficultly trying to review this. In the early going, over about 100 pages or so, this book was an out and out wow. The narrators is broke, jobless, homeless but living in a wealthy friends house in Brooklyn, and alone having just watched his kids and wife leave town to stay with his mother-in-law. He begins to break down; as he does so he goes into trances pondering the consequences of being black, of a troubled childhood, of his white wife and mixed children, all of which are fascinating. But then the narrator starts to talk about his day and doesn't stop; it keeps on going and going. I had to change how I read it, actually I had to figure out how to read it. I had the impression the book became something like a musical composition with long wandering passages that come to peaks and pauses when there is a dramatic twist or the scene changes. I'm not sure if that's really accurate, but that's how I read it, trying to find a flow, and following the narrator as he hovers on the brink of collapse. It's interesting and it works in its own way. On the inspiration of the first 100 pages or so, I was able to carry on through and enjoy it. (  ) dchaikin | Jul 10, 2009 |  There are moments of greatness here, but too many tangents to hold it together. I started disliking the narrator but grew to like and care about him. The portrayal of Claire, his wife, is utterly one-dimensional. We never know why she is so blindly devoted. He certainly doesn't seem to warrant that, either in actions or spoken words. I wish there was less politics and more on the characters, as they are all fascinating, Marco, Claire, Edith, Gavin, Shake and the narrator's parents. This author has amazing potential. The racial observations are good, real, but sometimes a little over the top and repetitive, with all of the "brown man" language. I too am in an interracial relationship and find that some of his observations were spot-on, some just confusing, self absorbed and over generalizations of white people. Despite some criticism, I do recommend this one. It's not a fast read and at times you'll wonder when he'll "get back on track" but he always eventually does. (  ) CarolynSchroeder | Jul 26, 2008 | The narrator of "Man Gone Down" is floundering -- separated from his wife and three children, unable to earn the $140K his wife estimates they need to maintain their life in Manhattan, failing to find a professorship and skirting alcoholism. What troubles the narrator more is the sense that his mediocrity flies in the face of what he has been told all his life - that as an intelligent, healthy African-American he should be achieving greatness. This work delves into the tense, yet familiar world of the middle class -- fearful of losing health insurance, scrambling to afford private school for the children, surrounded by the successful, who move through life seemingly without effort. ( ) theageofsilt | May 16, 2008 |  TunstallSummerReads | May 15, 2008 | 
 In its award citation, the five-member Impac Dublin jury called Mr. Thomas “a writer of enthralling voice and startling insight.” It described “Man Gone Down” as a “drama of individual survival set against the myth of an integrated and racially normalized America” and said it “shows, in unsentimental clarity, the way the future can close mercilessly on those marginalized by race and social circumstance.” The scope of Thomas’s project is prodigious, though, and the end result is an impressive success. He has an exceptional eye for detail, and the poetry of his descriptive digressions — “the heaving surface of the water is what the night sky should be — moving and wild, wavering reflections of buildings on both sides, dark and bright, like thin, shimmering clouds” — provides some respite from the knowledge that the city he loves can truly crush a man’s spirit. A Boston-bred African-American writer who lives in Brooklyn with his wife and their three children, Thomas seems to have fully embraced the “write what you know” ethos. And what he knows is how the odds are stacked in America. He knows the unlikelihood of successful black fatherhood. He knows that things are set up to keep the Other poor and the poor in their place. More than anything else, he knows how little but also — fortunately — how much it can take to bring a man down.
Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0802170293, Paperback)Evoking the work of great American masters such as Ralph Ellison, but distinctly original, Michael Thomas’ first novel is a beautifully written, insightful, and devastating account of a young black father of three in a biracial marriage trying to claim a piece of the American Dream. On the eve of the unnamed narrator’s thirty-fifth birthday, he finds himself broke, estranged from his white Boston Brahmin wife and three children, and living in the bedroom of a friend’s six-year-old child. With only four days before he’s due in to pick up his family, he must make some sense out of his life. Alternating between his past—as an inner city child bused to the suburbs in the 1970’s—and a present where he is trying mightily to keep his children in private schools, we learn of his mother’s abuses, his father’s abandonment, and the best and worst intentions of a supposedly integrated America. This is an extraordinary debut about what it feels like to be pre-programmed to fail in life—and the urge to escape that sentence. (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:57:53 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
Popular covers   |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Wikipedia in English (1)
