Customer Reviews

Gertrude of Stony Island Avenue (US)

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

 

 

I liked Gertrude of Stony Island Avenue very much. It is my first exposure to Purdy.Stony Island Avenue is the western boundary of the University of Chicago, my alma mater. This book catches the flavor of the area authentically, especially the style of the narrator, Carrie with her perfect-pitch dialogue and antique vocabulary. The time and place are beautifully evoked.The characters are all unreal but the mosaic is effective.

I have no idea why I loved this book, but I did. Maybe because the language, though stiff and formal, is beautiful, like a preserved rose. There's also something wonderfully pre-Freudian about the characters. True, just about everyone in the book is half cracked, but in this universe, they're allowed to be. What a delight to be reminded that there was a time, before Oprah's tele-shrink ministry, and mass prozac-taking, and the proliferation of bad shrinks, when eccentrics were tolerated. Now, they're cured. Purdy's novel is eccentric to beat the band, but great fun.

I was delighted by this slim elegant novel and plan to read others books by JP whom I have just discovered. I would like to see a picture of him or go to his web-site???? or fan club, etc.

"Gertrude of Stony Island Avenue" is a hypnotic tale in which the boundary between the strange and the normal seems forever blurred. I was captivated by Purdy's highly distinctive style, which feels authentically "old-timey" yet also perpetually "off-balance." Carrie's search for her daughter constitutes one of the strangest yet ultimately moving quests for selfhood I have ever read.

(...) Suffice it to say that this is one of the worst books that i have ever read (and i am an avid reader). It is completly unrealistic, which would be alright because fantasy is a respected genre. But nothing interesting happens. So let's consider it as a novel then. Does it have interesting characters that one can empathize with? No-they're all hysterical, repugnant, self-absorbed, emotionally stunted, selfish, and neurotic (and I don't mean that in a good way). This book is supposed to be "moving", sort of a tale of rebirth and redemption. But I disliked the characters so much that I actually wanted something awful to happen to most of them. And I am NOT a malevolent person. Do you see how much I hated this book? Enough time wasted on this dreck. (...)