Customer Reviews

Answer as a Man

5 star:		(4)
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

Although there's no dearth here of Caldwell's portable sermonettes on such evils as soft living, this turn-of-the-century Pennsylvania tale of rags-to-riches and love tangles has the ease and zip of the author's earlier period. The hero and true M-A-N of the title is Jason Garrity, only approved kin of his grandfather, Bernard. Bernard is another true M-A-N, plumping for solid male strength and putting a fist in the face of the flabby, whining, slimy world. As for wimmin: ""they should niver have the rearing of men children."" So Jason has enough gumption to survive childhood and youth in a shantytown house with his widowed mother, his fatuously religious brother John, his dazzlingly beautiful, crippled, vindictive sister Joan; and then, through shrewd business sense and hard work, he begins to stake out his territory, profit-wise. Eventually he'll even be manager of a Pocono summer hotel, the Ipswich House, and he'll use his inheritance of some land to demand shares in the business. But Jason flunks the mating test, marrying whiny, snobbish, slightly stupid Patricia Mulligan by whom he has (he thinks) three children: son Sebastian is really the offspring of wily, charming chum Lionel Nolan. Then Lionel marries Joan; and Molly, the spirited, sensible girl Jason should have married, marries agreeable lawyer Daniel Dugan, nephew of Jason's genial father-in-law Pat. So it takes some years of domestic and fiscal turmoil before Molly and Jason at last entwine hearts: Patricia drinks and is exceedingly nasty to Sebastian, whom she hates; a local madam and a slicker named Chauncey (aided by ""friend"" Lionel) attempt to squeeze Jason out of Ipswich House and another choice hotel venture; Jason pursues youthful criminals (""Jason felt the atavistic male lust to. . . murder""); and he politicks against the US entry into World War I. Finally Patricia and Daniel conveniently expire, and there's a happy fade-out. Still the old Rand-wagon, but less preachment than usual and more gossipy goin's on--so the always-solid-selling Caldwell should really climb the charts with this one.