Forgery [Paperback]

Sabina Murray (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Grove Press, New York (2007)
• ASIN: B000V5QAUI
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars you should read this book!, December 13, 2007

By 

Patricia R. Hennessy "Patty H." (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Forgery: A Novel (Hardcover)

I read this book last spring when I was starting a very new experience in my life. I had just moved to Manhattan and I took the subway to work in a school in a very economically challeged neighborhood in Brooklyn. The school was amazing, but the trip was long and I often found myself getting sad when the train emptied out at Wall Street, which marked the halfway mark of my commute. But luckily for me, I was never alone because I had Rupert and Nikos, and the rest of the wonderful characters in this most brilliantly written novel. Beyond the characters, Murray's writing style in general made me feel curious about art and the Greek culture in general. Sabina Murray's writing style (that got me with Carnivore's Inquiry) just makes me hungry for more!!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Starred Review from Booklist, September 5, 2007

By 

Reader (Boston) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Forgery: A Novel (Hardcover)

In his starred review for Booklist, David Pitt puts it best:
(starred review) Forgery.
Murray, Sabina (author).
June 2007. 272p. Grove, hardcover, $24 (0-8021-1844-5).
REVIEW. First published June 1, 2007 (Booklist).

Murray's latest novel tells the story of Rupert Briggs, a recently divorced man who, in the summer of 1963, heads off to Greece to find new items for his uncle's art collection. But, like quite a few things in this beautifully written book, the title is deceiving; although it does refer to dubious works of art, it also (and primarily) refers to Rupert himself, a man who isn't quite what he appears to be. There's also friendly Steve Kelly, who may not be merely the journalist he claims to be. In fact, the story itself is something of a forgery, a psychological thriller posing as a gentle travelogue, a fairly dark voyage of self-discovery posing as a relatively light story of comic misadventure. Rupert is an intricately designed, intriguingly presented character: we know we like him, but we also know there are plenty of things about himself he isn't telling us (including, perhaps, the truth about the death of his young son). Murray does a lovely job of transporting us to mid-1960s Greece, a country teetering on the edge of political upheaval; unlike the people, this place, which no longer exists, feels entirely genuine. Forgery is a deeply complex, emotionally and intellectually rewarding novel about the lengths people can go to to make themselves into the people they wish they were.
-- David Pitt

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Mood & conversation strong; plot week plot in Murray's latest, June 16, 2007

By 

Roy E. Perry "amateur philosopher" (Nolensville, Tennessee) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Forgery: A Novel (Hardcover)

An accomplished stylist, Sabina Murray (Slow Burn, The Caprices, and A Carnivore's Inquiry), currently a member of the MFA faculty at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, has written, in Forgery, a novel strong on aesthetic mood and weak on plot.

The story is told in the first person by Rupert Brigg, 30, an American plagued by guilt and grief over the death of his son Michael and a divorce from his wife Hester.

Rupert travels to Athens, Delphi, and the Greek archipelago, in search of classical artifacts unearthed by archaeological digs. He travels to Aspros and other islands of the Cyclades, encountering a menage of donkeys, sheep, and goats along the narrow streets.

The conversationalists who populate this novel are akin to the avant-garde artists and French existentialists of West Bank cafes. There's a lot of cigarette smoking, imbibing of alcohol, and, oddly, consumption of eggplants. One wonders where all the chatter and wandering hither and thither is leading.

Picaresque? Peripatetic? Pathetic? One struggles to describe this strange novel, and to arrive at some "justification" (a big word in this story) for its publication.

Rupert Brigg is not a bad man; he's just amoral. He doesn't believe in right and wrong, good and evil. Even when he learns of a murder, he responds with a curious shrugging-off, apathetic, "whatever" fatalism.

The ancient Greek philosophers sought the meaning of the true, the good, and the beautiful. Sabina Murray's Forgery is a similar examination of the meaning (if there is such) and the relationship (if such exists) of these qualities.

Forgery is an artsy, subtle, and sophisticated work. Its postmodern skepticism casts suspicion on naive interpretations of reality and warns us that people are often not who we think they are and things are often not what they seem.