Customer Reviews

Giovanni's Gift

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

 

 

I read about this book and thought it couldn't be as good as they said it was. It is! I grew up in the West, and the author's way with painting images of the Western landscape just kept sending these little shocks through me, it was so true. Plus there's really good, deep writing about families and a love-story that breaks your heart. It's been a long time since a novel has kept me up at night and caused me to wake in the morning with a sore neck, but Giovanni's Gift did. It's the kind of book you want to give to friends

I loved Mr. Morrow's writing style and prose. Some people say it was boring, but I thought it was just enough to pull you into the book. I found it very suspenseful towards the end, and was somewhat surprised by the ending. I enjoyed the book immensely.

I would have rated this book a ten except for the fact that at times it is overdescriptive and slows the tension of the story. That said I must admit as a writer that I was a little green with envy at Morrow's gift of prose. This is a facinating mystery as well as just a well written narrative. This is the first in its genre that I did not feel compelled to try to figure it out until the end, I just let the reading come and enjoyed it a lot

I've never read a book before that so handily blends literary conventions and ends up trumping all of them--part mystery, part travelogue, part gothic, part pedigreed post-modern novel, the book gently draws you in and then snaps shut around you like a bear trap. The author, Brad Morrow, writes like a dream with a beguiling delicacy and precision that belie how deep and dark is the path he's leading you along. I don't want to get any more explicit about the book and give away the plot. I just want to say that I've never read anything like it, and you'll feel the same way, I'm sure. Giovanni's Gift is that rare thing, a book with literary horsepower and a rocking plot. READ THIS BOOK

I hate to give a book a bad review, but after noting the high praise other reviewers have given this book, I have to reply. I bought the book solely because I read the cover story article in New York magazine on the making of this book and Mr. Morrow's six figure advance for it ("How to Make a Bestseller" 2/10/97.) Needless to say, I was very disappointed. I think I read a little over the first one hundred pages before I had to put the book down. The story was almost melodramatic, and at times the writing so veered towards the sentimental, that I couldn't believe this was coming from the same man who edits Conjunctions, which is primarily known for its experimental use of language. Trust the NY Times Review of Books on this one. Maybe some of Mr. Morrow's other books are better, but I would think twice before picking up a copy of this book. And the fact that this book earned a six-figure advance, while I certainly think 99% of writers of literary fiction are underpaid and am all for sizeable advancements, the amount spent on this book and marketing it can only take away money that could otherwise be spent on more deserving books.

What I find most successful about Giovanni's Gift is Morrow's ability to write a work that is incredibly approachable but which still offers the more literary reader many levels of complexity and allusion: from references to the Pandora myth to reappropriating with Herman Melville's description of reading of Hawthorne. Readers can choose how much to take away--Giovanni's Gift satisfies as story, as a character study, and as a finely constructed structure of language. Morrow's prose contains the only descriptions of Colorado I know of that genuinely take me back there, and he's not afraid to embrace a lyricism that makes these descriptions shimmer and resonate. The sentences are carefully patterned, and Morrow moves with precision and control from the pastoral and the bucolic to playing with conventions of mystery, myth, the gothic, the meditation and other genres, employing a narrator who reveals himself as much by the way he tells his story as by what he tells. Giovanni's Gift is a fine novel, well worth reading.

Set in a richly described but unnamed Western town, the lead character, Grant, comes home to visit his aunt and uncle who live there. He is in his early thirties, divorcing his wife, and looking for a place he can call home. His aunt and uncle have been receiving mysterious night visits by someone setting out to intimidate them, and the book's intention is to unravel this mystery.

The title, Giovanni's Gift, refers to a cigar box full of mementos that Giovanni, a friend of the uncle, leaves behind when he dies. The reader immediately suspects there was a murder.

The box is an allegory to Pandora's box and as Grant discovers the meaning of each item in the box, the story becomes more complex, especially since Grant falls in love with Giovanni's daughter.

The preservation of the land is another subplot and the author constantly veers off the story with poetic metaphorical language to make this point over and over again. I do have to applaud the author though for his skill with words and for having whatever it took to be recognized in the publishing world. I think he says a few important things about the environment. But I just couldn't stay awake.

I appreciate good writing, particularly since it's becoming harder and harder to find. Turning a lyrical phrase effectively in a piece of prose is a skill not every writer can muster. Such is the case here. Aside from the lack of a compelling plot (how long did it take you to figure out our boy was dating a relative? - certainly a lot sooner than he did)Morrow doesn't know when to turn off the stylist in himself. I once heard a critic call Robert James Waller's writing style "gaseous". That critic obviously hasn't opened this book. I'll go one step further and call Morrow's style gastric (as in distress).