Asa, as I Knew Him [Paperback]

Susanna Kaysen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 19, 1994

Dinah Sachs and Asa Thayer have had a love affair, conducted in afternoons stolen from the office of the magazine where they work. But now that the affair is over, Dinah, in an act of lingering passion, invents a narrative of Asa's youth, imagining the events that shaped the "happy, handsome man" who, in her words, "was born to stomp on my heart."

Witty and sexy, funny and immediate, Asa, As I Knew Him is a a seductive dialogue between love and memory, obsession and illusion.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This is an exceptionally well-written, polished, curious novel, ostensibly about the love affair between the passionate Jewish narrator, Dinah Sachs, and her WASPish boss, Asa Thayer, a blond, soulless man whose people "think their great-great-grandfathers sprang fully evolved on these shores, products of the Mayflower's timber and New Hampshire rock." The account of the actual affair is sketchy and intriguing, and almost two-thirds of the book is devoted to a description of Asa's teenaged friendship with and attraction to Reuben Sola, a handsome, daredevil, Jewish esthete who dies by accident while climbing a bridge for the thrill of it. For all the author's observations about Asa and the attempt to use Reuben's life and death to explain Asa's distance from others, Asa remains a blurred figure. This is unfortunate: the reader would like to understand him beyond cultural cliches, and the author might have offered a more effective portrait had she focused on Dinah and Asa rather than Reuben and Asa.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"Profound, surprising, and ultimately enlightening . . . Kaysen is a gifted and potent author." --Los Angeles Times

"Susanna Kaysen possesses a lyrical wryness that splendidly evokes . . . all the scents and unnamed sadnesses that lay claim to memory and give us reason to go on." --Boston Globe

"It is a tribute to Kaysen's considerable talent that we easily believe in all her inventions." --The New York Times Book Review

"Luminous." --San Francisco Chronicle

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (April 19, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 067975377X
• ISBN-13: 978-0679753773
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.5 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,527,030 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Obsession tells an intriguing tale, October 12, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Asa, as I Knew Him (Paperback)

You loved him. You wanted to know everything about him. He loved you too...and then he didn't.

Asa, As I Knew Him, is the story told by Dinah, still in love and still struggling to understand her failed love affair with Asa. Unable to share the details of his life, she creates her own history of him: how he grew up from privileged teenagerhood into the man "who was born to stomp on [her] heart." But Dinah is not pathetic or full of self-pity; her rendering of Asa is compelling and intelligent.

Unrequited love is a topic that I usually skip over -- too often the author mistakes pathos for depth of feeling. Kaysen's heroine is utterly believable: I couldn't put the book down.

15 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars a melancholy dream, January 6, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: ASA, AS I KNEW HIM (Paperback)

I am only dropping a star because I couldn't get into this the first time I started it. This time around I couldn't put it down. I really enjoy Susanna Kaysen's writing style. This was a well told story, and just the right book to read if you want something to keep you company in a lost-in-a-daydream sort of way.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Two books in one, August 17, 2004

By 

Nancy E. Patton "Goodlookbooks" (Mornington Australia) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Asa, as I Knew Him (Paperback)

The coming-of-age section was incongruous. I'd rather have known more about Dinah and Asa as grown-ups instead of wading through adolescent shenanigans in the middle. But the beginning and the end were beautifully written, and painfully true. Worth reading to get a feel for all of Kaysen's fine work.