Customer Reviews

Answer As a Man

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book offers a sense of what it was like back in the 1900s. The story, a marvelous written book, shares the feelings and hardships of a boy, who in this ploit eventulally shares it as a man. This tale of a stong Irish man stuggiling to suceed is meant to be big. It lives up to any readers expectations in my opinion.

I agreed with some of the reviewers at first--I couldn't figure out why so many awful things could keep happening to this poor protagonist, nonstop--until it dawned on me that this was a retelling of the book of Job from the Bible. Ha! I should have figured it out from the title, which is a quote from Job. I believe there is even a part where he thinks about the temptation to "curse God and die," another quotation from the Biblical book. Once I figured out the connection, the book made a lot more sense. It's a rough read, though--not a happy story. But well written and interesting.

READ THIS BOOK! Totally gripping! The book had been recommended to me to be one of the most interesting novels Taylor Caldwell has wirtten. I had heard the author writes with influence from the spirit world and enjoyed the historical details.

Taylor Caldwell's last novel (published 1980) opens in the year 1900, in a small Pennsylvania town, with its hero Jason Garrity as a 14-year-old child struggling to earn a living to help support his widowed mother, brother and sister. Jason's grandfather, Bernard, is a wonderful character: hardworking; tough and pragmatic, yet tender when people are deserving of tenderness. The setting among the Irish working class and the other immigrants in the neighborhood is well described. There are several interesting subcharacters who appear briefly, such as a vignette of the Mother Superior at Jason's school, and Mr. Maggiotti, the poor Italian grocer who is a friend to Jason's family. And Fr. Sweeney, the parish priest, who thanks to insight gained from Bernard, evolves away from an unyielding letter-of-the-law Catholic faith (as practiced by Jason's cold-hearted brother) into a more sympathetic and helpful priest to the people of his parish. I liked this first part of the novel, which took place before Jason's rise to fortune, much more than what followed.

The next part of the book began to drag; it also verged on soap opera. Jason makes an unhappy marriage to an awful woman (who doesn't love Jason, but loved his best friend and bore his child). He realizes too late that he really loves his best friend's sister, Molly. Jason's wife slides into alcoholism in her wretchedness over bearing the child of her affair, and not only treats Jason miserably but treats her little son miserably too. The story somewhat redeems itself during the last third of the book, when Jason takes charge of certain events in his life and has to struggle against a power play. Jason gains, loses and regains his faith in God during the course of his life, and while elements of belief and a man's struggle for spirituality are somewhat simply presented, they add flavor to this story.

After several good opening chapters, this novel becomes weak and loses steam in the middle due to melodramatic elements, but if the reader can get through that, ANSWER AS A MAN has just enough heart to recommend it, even if it's not exactly five-star memorable.

This novel follows a traditional theme. A poor, but ambitious young man (who is of course honest and good) pulls himself up by his bootstaps, etc... It is a good formula, which is why I read these types of books so often. this isn't the best of them, though. It is the first Taylor Caldwell book I have read, and from what others had told me, I was expecting better. The characters are very one dimensional and predicitable (with the possible exceptions of Joan and Lionel). The children are completely unbelievable (if they had only been presented as older, then maybe...). The book isn't bad, but really Kane and Abel by Jeffrey Archer, anything by John Jakes and East of Eden by John Steinbeck are better.

Throughout the book the main character appears to be a whimp. He seems to let everyone walk all over him. You want to scream at him to do something and when he does you are totally surprised at the action he takes