Customer Reviews

Free Live Free

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

 

 

Wolfe's fans probably admire most the books in which he demonstrates his ability to create believable (and yet unbelievably complex) fictional settings. In this novel, Wolfe has placed the strange events of his plotline right in the middle of a run-down and rather seedy neighborhood in Chicago, with forays into a nearby luxury hotel and an insane asylum. It's remarkable how well this works. Wolfe demonstrates that he's just as good at listening to how people actually talk to each other in the real world as he is at imagining how they would talk in particularly baroque and distant futures. The conversations between the many characters who make up this book are its biggest pleasure. It's pointless, however, to attempt to explain why the conversations leave such a lasting impression in the mind, because the dialogue derives its effectiveness from the way that it reveals the psyches of some extremely well-drawn characters. If you don't know the characters, you can't understand the appeal. A part of it is that the main characters are all, in one way or another, the type of people that our culture regards as losers. Wolfe manages to make you root for them, but not by idealizing them. Instead, he shows you all of their many flaws...and pretty serious flaws they are, from an ethical viewpoint. Then he shows you their small virtues and talents. And then you begin to realize how hard they have to struggle, because of their poverty, just to get through life. This is a remarkable science-fiction novel for a lot of reasons, but mainly for being populated with protagonists who are neither fearless heroes nor nihilistic violent cretins.

In the novel, a group of four down on their luck strangers answer an add and soon move in with the eccentric elderly owner, Ben Free, of a house that is to be knocked down in just a few days. His only requirement of them is that they help him to try to delay the destruction of the house. From there, the story unfolds...

I'm not quite sure how to set about reviewing this book. On the one hand, the portrayal of the actions and motivations of the main characters involved was very good. Quite a few scenes were downright hilarious. The ending was somewhat of a surprise (a rarity) - but then, I had been warned of that before reading the book. Yet, somehow, the book as a whole seemed like something was somewhat lacking. I think that the reason for this feeling is my extremely high expectations from anything that Wolfe writes.

I would still recommend this book, as it is a good read. But if you have yet to read anything else of Wolfe's I would suggest Peace, the "New Sun" series, or The Fifth Head of Cerberus.

You will see elsewhere on this page a few words which mention the characters and plot of this remarkable book. They are but shadows casting shadows... how can a spattering of words capture the magic of the work as a whole? You simply have to read the book itself to discover the intricate art of it, the unexpected and delightful revalations that make you laugh and weep.

My first exposure to Gene Wolfe was through his Book of the New Sun (consisting of four books, with a few related titles - it was a pleasure to read them all.) The Book of the New Sun impressed me enough to count Gene Wolfe as one of my favourite authors. Free Live Free has pushed the man into a seemingly unassailable first place position. If another author ever manages to displace him, I fear I may perish from sheer joy of reading.

More of a gently creeping horror tale, four ordinary people are given
residence in a building, and all is of course not what it seems. The
residents slowly discover, via an odd Madame, that maybe they are not
actually descending into something scary, but something that is a lot
different to that. In general, not that interesting, this book.

From the first page Wolfe grabs you and pulls you into the world of 4 forlorn individuals. With nothing else to go on but a witch's promise of treasure, the characters fan out in search of something each hopes will bring an end to their disappointment. They find comedy, pathos, terror. Without sentimentality, Wolfe draws each character with compassion, and it's a shame at the end he feels compelled (or perhaps was contracted) to tack on such a clunker of a science fiction device. It wasn't necessary (especially something as shopworn and silly as a time travel "gizmo") and detracts from what would otherwise be hailed as a masterpiece. Of course--it's still worth reading!

In "Free Live Free," Gene Wolfe again displays his rare ability to present what appears to be a straight-forward, almost cliched plot (four characters in search of their heart's desires) and gently nudges it towards something much deeper and haunting. Do the characters find what they are looking for? Well, yes. And no.
This book is a must for Wolfe fans--hunt it down. (My local library had a copy.) It's also not a bad introduction to Wolfe for new readers. Anyone who likes David Lynch movies or the X Files will like this book. Its reality-based fantasy makes you wonder about all those assumptions you've been carrying around.

This book attempts to adapt the quintessential Gene Wolfe formula by positing several interesting characters around a central mystery. Unforutantely, this is restricted to our world, unlike the fabulous worlds of his varied 'Sun' novels, so his imagiantion is not given free play. Equally unfortunately, he fully explains his vitae idea, a general time traveling back to a pereptually flying ship (which by the way was probably the msot origianl thing in teh book, of using the 300 mph jet stream to glide on. Also includes a tie in to howard hughes.)
In brief, this is a book to read after you've finished your Pynchon and Eco.

I will have to re-read the last few chapters of this book but there is no getting around the fact that the plot ends with an unsatisfying and unnecessary red herring. It is as if Wolfe had a manuscript lying around unfinished and some cohort of his said "I dare you to end it using [X] plot device," and Wolfe took up the challenge.

Nor did I find his characterizations really compelling. "Mr Barnes" is the most fully fleshed out of the four protagonists, but all four seem like facets of a single individual, not four distinct people driven by their individual motivations.

That all said, it was an interesting read, and more accessible than Gene Wolfe's heavier fiction. It is atypical among Wolfe's work for its lightness and clarity of prose.

Every novice writer should be force to read this novel to see how characterization should be done right. The book is also at times wickedly funny, particularly a seen during a black out in an insane asylum. The plot seems to be disjointed but Wolfe pulls every thing togethar at the end.

Free Live Free has some brilliant moments, and some very well drawn characters. Unfortunately, the reading experience for me was badly damaged by the ending. Without writing any spoilers, let me simply say that Wolfe seems to have sidestepped the obvious choice by picking another one, one that instead of working well, what he did seemed entirely out of keeping with the rest of the novel. Still worth reading.