Customer Reviews

A Book of Common Prayer

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In this uncommonly excellent prose, Ms. Didion describes an incredible scenario of a revolution in a Caribbean country. The country is dirt poor. There is no good water, there are no proper sewers and there are few good roads, except the one highway that leads to the house of El Presidente.

The people live in squalor and there are only a few people in this island of the damned who are in fact solvent. The story tells of the tale of an American lady, norteamericana, who comes to the island, for reasons even she herself does not know. Her life has been tragic and strange. Her child becomes an American revolutionary and is involved in the hijacking of a plan from California to Utah. She lives an underground life and has no connection to her parents, whom she rejects socially and economically.

Didion's reporting style writing is almost a perfect match for telling the story of this obscure countries political corruption and the insurgency that exists within. She uses her incredible ability to turn a phrase and then to use it multiple times for an emphasis that is extraordinary in painting the picture of the world about her. Charlotte Douglas has come here to figure out something, but what it is hard to tell. She seems to be adrift in the impoverished lands of Boca Grande which translates to "Big Bay" or also as Didion points out to "Big Mouth."

Those in charge do have big mouths and talk out of both sides of it. There is constantly a strange dance performed by the few landowning ruling class that is constantly trying to shift the balance of power on the island to accommodate their own personal purposes. In the ensuing revolutionary action, Charlotte is actually killed. She could have easily avoided this fate by leaving the country, but instead, she insists on staying and ends up shot and left for dead on the lawn of the abandoned American Embassy.

The beauty of the story is in the writing more than the events. With pure journalist style mixed with incredible fictional reality, Didion creates what could be typical of the Central American/Caribbean countries and their constant revolutions. Many get caught up in them and never emerge. Charlotte is one who does not emerge.

As modern fiction, the book has a style that is unique to Didion. The smoothness of the writing and the deadpan descriptiveness is purely hers. It is the one book that she has written that is truly appropriate for all Americans to read. The book is highly recommended for those looking to see great fiction encompass the horror of revolution.

Didion's liturgical language is absolutely captivating. I read this book in one day and have re-read it at least five times. Her female characters, called shallow by some critics, are extremely interesting and what is left unsaid is what the novel is about. Didon isn't an easy read, but her images stay with you, puzzle you and haunt you

Arguably, this is one of a handful of great modern american novels from the last quarter of the 20th century. from its remarkable opening chapter, it weaves a hypnotic spell, with didion's characteristic romanticizing of despair and existential angst. this is a novel of sentences. sentences to be savored, and read aloud. sentences without one extraneous word; as balanced as poetry, and utterly perfect from the first syllable to the last. didion remains one of the few writers who can comment on a scene by way of description. the details she focusses upon serve to illustrate her vision in a manner only a small handful of authors can manage. it is the mark of a master, and this is, without question, her masterpiece. it is didion's reportage and essays that have made her reputation, but this very challenging and utterly flawless novel is the equal to her non fiction prose. it is not a novel for the casual reader. however, for any student of delusion, and any admirer of serious literature of the highest order, a book of common prayer is an essential text.

This is a book that is hard to wrap your mind around. Didion does not tell you a clear story with well-defined characters and a plot-without-holes. Instead, the reader must do a little work here. It is what is not told in the story that is so fascinating. Didion appears to be making a comment on the impossibility of truly knowing other people's motivations, inner thoughts, and who they are at the core. All we can do as humans, and therefore in a sense informal anthropologists, is make assumptions from what we see, hear, and perceive. Sometimes we are correct; sometimes we are very wrong. But, that's okay. If you are the type of person who likes things neat and tidy, you will probably be disappointed. If you like books that make you draw your own conclusions, and perhaps feel ambivalent about most of the characters even to the end, then you will like this one. I tend to be the latter, so I did enjoy it.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. As with all of Ms. Didion's books, I take my time with them, to truly cherish her writing style. I am a huge fan of her use of characterization, as well as her use of grammer. (Besides this book, I regularly recommend Play It As It Lays and Miami, two other great books by Ms. Didion.) Everytime I think of this book, I think of how the brave narrator, in the course of the developments of the novel, regrets, with the last line in the book, the opening statement she made in the book's lead. One of the all-time best books I've ever read, you have got to give this book a read, too.

I may be too much of a lover of Didion's non-fiction works to take her fiction seriously. This being the third novel following detached and deluded female protagonists (after Run River and Play It As It Lays) into the extremes of their antipathy, it seems clear that, simply, her stories are too much work. A great Didion essay states its facts with such brutal lucidity, you barely notice the incisive, enraged, impassioned consciousness at their center. Her fiction makes you all too aware of the artifice behind the words, and though I believe A Book Of Common Prayer to be the best of the Didion novels I've read, I don't know that I fully bought the whole thing.

It begins strangely framed, like Didion's take on Cat's Cradle, an expatriate telling stories of other expatriates in Central America. Charlotte Douglass, the detached and deluded protagonist at its center, has details of great speculation - in the syntax of her storytelling and the odd personal attributes that get her, initially, under the investigation of a revolutionary government. But it's not until we visit her past in San Francisco, about her elusive daughter and two failed marriages, that the character really begins to come alive. Attached as Douglas's narrative is to the backdrop of a small revolutionary country, the story finds itself headed in an entirely different direction, quite successfully - it turns into Didion's That Obscure Object Of Desire rather than Didion's Cat's Cradle. There's a number of Didion's tendencies that still, I think, don't quite work in her fiction - her surprising leap into synopsis, her repetitive intrusion of key phrases, even her attempt to bookend the story in the same line seems a little (to be perfectly honest) stupid. But A Book of Common Prayer has undeniably more narrative verve than any of her previous fictional works - you may, in a sense, not enjoy watching a clueless protagonist amidst a quietly revolutionary backdrop, but you begin to need to see it play out.

My first Joan Didion fiction. The story is told by a friend of Charlotte. Charlotte's daughter is missing having joined revolutionary forces in a fictional Caribbean country. Charlotte seems to be in stupor while searching for her daughter. Charlotte is harassed by her ex-husband. Didion's writing doesn't follow a chronological frame. As a result, I felt as lost as Charlotte in a foreign country. Her writing style took an adjustment on my part, but I look forward to re-reading this work or reading other novels by Ms. Didion.

This book has become one of my personal favorites. I found myself going back to the first chapter repeatedly to measure facts. A wonderful book to get lost in.

This book really didn't do anything for me. It is the story of a woman on a search for her child in an alien environment, where she amazes people by killing a running chicken by grabbing its neck, allowing herself to be seduced by an ex-husband, and finally putting herself in danger. While what is happening is under-stated, it adds up to a bunch of scenes that I just found confusing and not too interesting. Didion's writing style also didn't click for me, which is perhaps personal taste.

Not recommended.

Didion's opening line ... "I shall be her witness" says it all.