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A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall: A Novel…
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A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall: A Novel (P.S. (Paperback)) (original 2014; edition 2014)

by Will Chancellor (Author)

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8111328,939 (3.2)3
A beautiful and compulsively readable literary debut that introduces Owen Burr--an Olympian whose dreams of greatness are dashed and then transformed by an epic journey--and his father, Professor Joseph Burr, who must travel the world to find his son.  After his athletic career ends abruptly, Owen flees the country to become an artist. He lands in Berlin where he meets a group of art monsters living in the Teutonic equivalent of Warhol's Factory. After his son's abrupt disappearance, Burr dusts off his more speculative ideas in a last-ditch effort to command both Owen's and the world's attention.   A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall offers a persuasive vision of faith, ambition, art, family, and the myths we write for ourselves. … (more)
Member:Yardape
Title:A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall: A Novel (P.S. (Paperback))
Authors:Will Chancellor (Author)
Info:Harper (2014), Edition: Reprint, 389 pages
Collections:To read
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A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall: A Novel by Will Chancellor (2014)

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Showing 1-5 of 11 (next | show all)
A tad purple for my taste. ( )
  MaryJeanPhillips | Jun 22, 2022 |
I enjoyed this one a lot and think Chancellor may be somebody to watch. Part of my enjoyment is no doubt because I'm a sucker for books about art, and this one ticks that box. I'm also a sucker for absurdity, paradoxes, and at least a fairly accessible veneer of erudition, and the book has those in varying degrees as well.

I think it could be an interesting book to do a proper study of sometime. There are enough recurring notions (paradoxes, the liminal, the monstrous, exploitation, memory and environment, what it means to be political, the role of things like sport and art in culture, and surely others) that there's plenty to latch onto for study. I'd also be curious to better understand the book's structure; it seems like the sort of book that might be meticulously structured according to some myth cycle, for example, but that's just a shot in the dark with no basis in actual study of the structure.

Chancellor writes good sentences and weaves scenes together reasonably well. The story stretches credibility in a number of ways, especially in the last quarter or so, but I was willing to look past that given the book's other merits.
( )
  dllh | Jan 6, 2021 |
Such a weird book I'm not sure what to think about it. I liked the father-son story, but many of the plot points struck me as warmed-over John Irving. (Kurt the wheelchair-bound artist, I'm looking at you.) Overwritten in parts, but there were a few scenes I really liked. ( )
  GaylaBassham | May 27, 2018 |
Such a weird book I'm not sure what to think about it. I liked the father-son story, but many of the plot points struck me as warmed-over John Irving. (Kurt the wheelchair-bound artist, I'm looking at you.) Overwritten in parts, but there were a few scenes I really liked. ( )
  gayla.bassham | Nov 7, 2016 |
This book had appeared on my radar when the great John Warner wrote about it for the Chicago Tribune in his Biblioracle column but it wasn't until it made the ToB bracket (thanks in no small part to John's advocacy, I'd wager) that I actually picked it up - and it's a testament to how a good book can go unnoticed without a few important activists. For this book is not a groundbreaker, it is not going to change your life - but it is a damn good debut novel; it's like a more serious Where'd You Go, Bernadette, taking that novel's screwball world-travelling tendencies and playing them a little straighter. Chancellor has a lot of thoughts - about art, philosophy, the classics & mythology, international relations, Iceland, probably many others - and we need more novelists who've got thoughts and want to share them. Is it a perfect book? No, but how many first novels really are? Did I enjoy it? Yes, I most certainly did.

Full review at RB: http://ragingbiblioholism.com/2015/02/11/a-brave-man-seven-storeys-tall/

PLUS! An interview with the author on So Many Damn Books! Listen on iTunes: itun.es/i6Bn7DX ( )
  drewsof | Sep 30, 2015 |
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A beautiful and compulsively readable literary debut that introduces Owen Burr--an Olympian whose dreams of greatness are dashed and then transformed by an epic journey--and his father, Professor Joseph Burr, who must travel the world to find his son.  After his athletic career ends abruptly, Owen flees the country to become an artist. He lands in Berlin where he meets a group of art monsters living in the Teutonic equivalent of Warhol's Factory. After his son's abrupt disappearance, Burr dusts off his more speculative ideas in a last-ditch effort to command both Owen's and the world's attention.   A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall offers a persuasive vision of faith, ambition, art, family, and the myths we write for ourselves. 

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