Customer Reviews

City

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

 

 

I made the mistake of holding off on reading this because the critics didn't seem to like it. But the criticisms are injust. It is more like Ocean Sea than it is like Silk. I would suggest that it is a little more mature than Ocean Sea. It is vast and surreal, yet cohesive and holds your attention. It is a wonderful book -- touching and funny and depressing, blah blah blah. Difficult to describe. But absolutely worth reading.

Barrico's 'City' seems, in all its fragmented splendour, a thoroughly modern book. Yet, at the same time it casts a long glance back to the origins of the novel as a Western cultural invention, emulating the picaresque models of Cervantes and Rabelais, or the 'sentimental' journeys of Laurence Sterne. Barrico says he has conceived of the book as the plan of a (European) town, with its irregular, organically grown quarters, streets, buildings. Reading the book then amounts to an exploratory ramble through this city, with sudden twists and overlaps in the narrative as you turn a corner and an unexpected vista opens onto a different neighbourhood. It takes a few pages to get used to, but once one has adjusted to Barrico's pace, the experience becomes utterly engrossing. Barrico has real talent as a story teller; his prose has the directness and vivacity to keep you very involved.

It is difficult to say what this book is 'about'. Given the heterogeneous and evolving nature of a city it would be against the spirit of Baricco's undertaking to outline the see-it-all-in-one-hour tour. A few important themes that emerged from my reading - as the major arteries in this sprawling town - are the importance of personal authenticity and the nature of mentorship. Ultimately, the city becomes a metaphor for human life, which is also a crooked, haphazard affair with many unexpected twists and turns. But at each crossing, we are free to choose our direction, if we really want to. Even the predicament of being a 'genius' doesn't liberate one from making these tough choices, time and again. To understand why that is you'll need to read this book ...

... I really enjoyed this book. It tells you about the day dreams of a boy, who could not live his childhood to the full because it happened to him to be a genius. You will love the stories he tells himself, like the one about the famous boxer, because they're written in the "typical" magical Baricco's style.
You will feel pity for the genius kid and you will be amazed at the young girl , who can reach his hearth and teach him how to be free. Two scenes you won't forget: the fast food experience, and the lesson about the porch. I keep on reading it loud and being touched.

Not even the saddnes you may feel or perhaps some tracts of joy, can ever prepare you for the impact this book'll have on you. You will feel it, you will feel every word, every imaginary friend that you might have had trought out your lifetime will emerge again and you'll have a pleasant chat with him again, after a long time, you will try to change the world after this book, or you will try to dream about how can it be done if you have forgotten for some reason.
Baricco is great novelist, whose words spread trough out the pages like leaves on the wind, leaving as much trace as they can possibly could.

I strongly disagree with the Publishers Weekly review which describes Gould as "buckling." He acted out of intellectual honesty and the discovery of a real childhood, a real relationship to the physical. On the other hand, I lack the enthusiasm other reviewers have for the book. It is the first book by Barrico that I could easily put down, over and over - it never succeeded in drawing me sufficiently into the story to hold my attention. I never cared about the characters.

On the other hand, some of the academic / philosophical lectures were delightful and thought-provoking. None more so than the "Essay on Intellectual Honesty," an essay for which the reader is well prepared by lectures on curves and porches.

The inner-lives and the evolution of the two main characters are shown in a taped Western and the imagined world of a heroic boxer. The book is very successful in shown how people shape their lives through narrative while narrative shapes their lives.

Brilliant idea, satisfactorily executed, but ultimately unsatisfying to this reader because the author never hooked me into the book's world.

This is a really interesting book, to say the least. The style of writing is exciting and keeps the pages turning. I'm not sure it makes very much sense, by the end. It skips around a bit, and there are two main stories within the story: a western, and a story about a boxer. Both of those stories are actually more interesting than the actual story, and I kept waiting to get back to those, which I'm not sure is good or bad. It's a good read, but really only if you have a lot of time. By the end, you're just thinking that there must have been a point in there somewhere.

A guy from NZ gave this to me at a hostel. In general, a waste of time & paper. Possibly a wonderous subtext exists in the original Italian, but it lacks purpose in English. I gave it to a Canadian guy after finishing it.

the only reason that i give this book 3 stars instead of 2 is because i was so inspired by this novel that i wrote the best poem of my life! i do not know why, but for some reason, (even though i did not understand how quickly the characters & the stories changed) i read 200 pages the first day. mon dieu! i just love how the man is so poetic, but the book really makes little sense..oh well. do not get this if you are not a fan of poetic writing.