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Banana Rose [Paperback]

Natalie Goldberg (Author)
3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)

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Book Description

March 1, 1997
The bestselling novel from the beloved author of Writing Down the Bones, Wild Mind, and Long Quiet Highway is now available in paperback for the first time.  With a half-million copies in print of her three remarkable books of nonfiction, Natalie Goldberg has inspired a generation of writers with her insight, humor, and empathy.  Subtly hilarious and achingly raw, her first novel Banana Rose has rewarded her devoted fans while attracting a whole new readership to her work.

Banana Rose is the story of Nell Schwartz, a Brooklyn-born Jewish girl who moves to the Taos of communes and sweet cedar smoke, transforms herself into Banana Rose (because she's "bananas"), falls in love with a horn player named Gauguin, and believes they can stop time if they just love hard enough.  It's also about Nell and Anna, a strange-eyed writer as lonely as the Nebraska farm where she grew up, whose kisses taste like raspberries and who teaches Nell what it means to be an artist.  But most of all, Banana Rose is about Nell's struggle with her own wild heart, with the demands of canvas and paint, with her family and faith, and with her irrepressible longing for home.

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

That the art of writing has many facets, some slippery, is demonstrated by this first novel from writing guru Goldberg (Writing Down the Bones), which turns out to be a rambling, rather indulgent memoir of marriage and friendship in an age of post-hippie adjustment. "I thought the hippie years would last forever," reflects Nell Schwartz from Brooklyn, aka "Banana Rose," who's living in a Taos commune, painting the awesome New Mexico landscape, when a sexy red-haired musician known as "Gauguin" blows into Taos with his brass saxophone. Soon ardent lovers, Nell and Gauguin depart for life in cities (including New York and its Jewish deli delights). But passion cools with marriage, ridiculous in-laws and the prospect of daily reality in "Minneapolis, for good." Gauguin turns unconvincingly bossy and square, annoyed by Nell's cafe art show, her carefree "women's libber" ways and her Jewishness, which she fiercely protects amid the alien Midwestern corn. For solace, Nell turns to Anna Gates, whose mountaintop funeral opens and closes the novel as a frame and comment on the Gauguin/Nell relationship. In life, Anna was willowy and fair, a writer of guileless little sketches and "a six-foot-one-inch lesbian" whom Nell had tenderly loved but slept with only once. Finally, Nell's painful losses spur her to redemptive literary activity. Sentence by sentence, Goldberg's writing is, not surprisingly, sensitive and quick, but her plot meanders like a sleepy bee, settling down now and then for a scene as sweet as nectar but too often simply buzzing around in the air. Major ad/promo; author tour.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

In this tedious coming-of-age story, 29-year-old Nell, transplanted from New York to a Taos commune, takes the name Banana Rose, fancies herself a painter, and falls for an itinerant musician named Gauguin. She leaves her beloved Southwest to marry him in Minnesota. Things predictably fall apart, and Nell returns full circle to Taos. The central character's self-absorption does not make for a correspondingly absorbing narrative. Even with the pivotal Nell, no apparent focus forms from day-to-day occurrences that are itemized in monotonous detail. Too much of the novel reads like a dull adolescent's diary. If the characters were as interesting as their names, the reader might care what happens to them. Although this is Goldberg's first novel, she has-amazingly, given the quality of Banana Rose-written two nonfiction guides to writing (e.g., Wild Mind: Living the Writer's Life, LJ 10/1/90). Not recommended.
Sheila Riley, Smithsonian Inst. Libs., Washington, D.C.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

  • Paperback: 384 pages
  • Publisher: Bantam; Reprint edition (March 1, 1997)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 055337513X
  • ISBN-13: 978-0553375138
  • Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 1 x 8.3 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #672,603 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Natalie Goldberg lived in Brooklyn until she was six, when her family moved out to Farmingdale, Long Island, where her father owned the bar the Aero Tavern. From a young age, Goldberg was mad for books and reading, and especially loved Carson McCullers's The Ballad of the Sad Cafe, which she read in ninth grade. She thinks that single book led her eventually to put pen to paper when she was twenty-four years old. She received a BA in English literature from George Washington University and an MA in humanities from St. John's University.

Goldberg has painted for as long as she has written, and her paintings can be seen in Living Color: A Writer Paints Her World and Top of My Lungs: Poems and Paintings. They can also be viewed at the Ernesto Mayans Gallery on Canyon Road in Sante Fe.

A dedicated teacher, Goldberg has taught writing and literature for the last thirty-five years. She also leads national workshops and retreats, and her schedule can be accessed via her website: nataliegoldberg.com

In 2006, she completed with the filmmaker Mary Feidt a one-hour documentary, Tangled Up in Bob, about Bob Dylan's childhood on the Iron Range in Northern Minnesota. The film can be obtained on Amazon or the website tangledupinbob.com.

Goldberg has been a serious Zen practitioner since 1974 and studied with Katagiri Roshi from 1978 to 1984.

 

Customer Reviews

26 Reviews
5 star:
 (11)
4 star:
 (5)
3 star:
 (3)
2 star:
 (3)
1 star:
 (4)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
3.6 out of 5 stars (26 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing, August 27, 2000
By 
This review is from: Banana Rose (Paperback)
I think Natalie is wonderful, so I'll try not to be too harsh. I just never warmed up to the characters. Perhaps if the sixties was more like this experience for you, you would enjoy it more. But by the end, I just didn't care what happened to Banana Rose. I thought she was nuts for not rushing into her female lover's arms and staying there. And she does whine, on & on, while refusing to face facts. Like all of us, I suppose. I'd rather enjoy Natalie on writing, and her wonderful voice.
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars Not much here!, March 1, 2000
This review is from: Banana Rose (Paperback)
Unless you particularly enjoy reading about life in a commune, drugs, free love and what everyone is eating, you probably won't like this book. The characters were so strange that I couldn't really like them or care what happened to them. I thought about not finishing the book several times, but I decided to stick it out. There was no great revelation here for me.

I can see, however, that people living this lifestyle or who are artists may enjoy the book more. There is a lot of banter about whether Banana Rose is motivated to paint or not..whether Gauguin can write songs or not..whether Anna can write stories or not...and so on.

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16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars One of my all time favourites, January 14, 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: Banana Rose (Paperback)
Banana Rose is one of those books that make me glad to know that writers like Natalie Goldberg are in the world. I first took this book out of the library, and immediately fell in love with it. I took it out of the library a few more times, and then finally got my own copy. Anytime I want to remember Taos, or the dreams of what could have been in a believable character's life - or in my own, for that matter - I read Banana Rose. The book just makes me feel better; no small feat in this world. Goldberg also does a good job of making all of the other characters - besides Banana Rose, Gauguin and Anna - very much alive. Blue is one of my favourites. I can "see" all these people. The book rambles a bit here and there, but it's worth hanging in through those parts, for the magic of the whole.

I can't recommend this book highly enough.

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Inside This Book (learn more)
First Sentence:
"The first time I saw him, he was standing in a corral." Read the first page
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
New Mexico, Banana Rose, New York, Betsy Boop, Nell Schwartz, Taos Mountain, North Dakota, Red Willow, Dixie Sue, Elephant House, George Howard, Kit Carson, Las Vegas, Willa Cather, Dodge City, Heart Lake, South Dakota, Twin Cities, Clarks Grove, Cousin Sarah, Grandpa George, House of Taos, New Orleans, Rio Grande, Steven's Kitchen
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