Greed: A Novel [Paperback]

Elfriede Jelinek (Author), Martin Chalmers (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 4, 2008

Greed is the story of Kurt Janisch, an ambitious but frustrated country policeman, and the lonely women he seduces. It is a thriller set amid the mountains and small towns of southern Austria, where the investigation of a dead girl’s body in a lake leads to the discovery of more than a single crime. In
her signature style, Jelinek chronicles the exploitative nature of relations between men and women, and the cruelties of everyday life.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

One of Austria's most prominent and controversial writers, Jelinek won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2004; film aficionados will recognize her as the author of The Piano Teacher (1983; Eng. trans., 1988), which inspired Michael Haneke's darkly intense film of the same name. Here, Jelinek tells the story of a debt-ridden, small-town policeman who cynically seduces lonely women to separate them from their real estate, violating them emotionally and sexually in the process; when a teenage girl turns up dead, the policeman's scheme unravels, and the true depth of his all-encompassing, life-denying greed emerges. Sandblasting her characters with a relentless stream of linguistically sophisticated contempt, Jelinek again explores some of her perennial themes, including pervasive loneliness, the ubiquitous ugliness of sexual relationships, and the tragedy of environmental destruction. But she also steps outside of her narrative, implying that textual relationships may also be complicit in the web of exploitation. An original and provocative condemnation of much that other novelists deem sacred, it may also attract Pynchon and Barthelme fans looking for a new challenge. Brendan Driscoll
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

"'A portrait of repressed female sexuality and a damaged psyche, The Piano Teacher glitters dangerously' Observer 'In this demented love story the hunter is the hunted, pain is pleasure, and spite and self-contempt seep from every pore' Guardian (on The Piano Teacher) 'There's no denying the chilly confrontational power of [The Piano Teacher]' Herald 'With all the stark immediacy of Burgess's A Clockwork Orange, Jelinek weaves a spell that is both enchanting and terrifying' Blitz (on Wonderful, Wonderful Times) 'Lust is intricately written with a tumbling pace, sustained and effective word-play and plenty of sharp, cynical authorial observation. More than good' The List" --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Seven Stories Press (November 4, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 158322842X
• ISBN-13: 978-1583228425
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.9 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #362,713 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Impenetrable and Densely Wrought Analysis of Sordid Austria, June 27, 2009

By 

Feanor (London, UK) - See all my reviews

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

Yet another Nobel Prizewinner's book. Elfriede Jelinek's Greed is supposedly her most accessible work. At least, it says on the blurb. If this is accessible, I don't know what her other novels are like. It completely defeated me. Jelinek's prose is dense, long (paragraphs extending for pages), frequently unpunctuated; it roars in places, quivers with ferocious disdain for its characters (many of whom are unnamed). Nominally, this is about a country policeman who wants to amass property and so seduces every middle-aged landowning woman in his village; there is much furious and seedy coupling and complete lack of understanding between men and women; there is a murdered girl and her mother who is often terrified by her absence and at other times relieved. I could make neither head nor tail of this novel. Perhaps it is one to be grappled with, treated as an adversary? A reviewer in the Guardian, who has no patience with people demanding easy reads, called it daredevil, risk-taking prose ("What is killing the novel is people's growing dependence on feel-good fiction, fantasy and non-fiction. With this comes an inability or unwillingness to tolerate any irregularities of form, a prissy quibbling over capital letters, punctiliousness about punctuation. They act like we're still at school! Real writing is not about rules. It's about electrifying prose, it's about play.") But I made no headway. If any of you read it and understand it, please be sure to explain it all to me.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars cumbersome writing style, February 7, 2009

By 

Alison Ruttan "alison" (chicago) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Greed: A Novel (Paperback)

Please, someone inform me why I should slog through this. I read the description and it sounded great but I can't get past the writing style. I consider myself to be someone with a long history of reading critically but I am lost here. The run on sentences and lack of paragraphs are cumbersome. So far I can't tell what it's about, the ADD description in the earlier review seems apt in describing what the writing feels like. I really wanted to like this.

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Like being in the mind of someone with ADD, January 3, 2009

By 

Arsenyc (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Greed: A Novel (Paperback)

I read this book for my book club and boy was I disappointed. I don't know if it was the translation, or just the author, but this book is the worse book I've ever read. There is no character development or dialog. The sentences go on for miles without any complete thought. And just when you finish a chapter and you think you finally might understand what the heck is going on, the next chapter is about something completely different, like from an entirely different book. I would classify this style of writing as being in the mind of someone attention deficit meets narcotic addiction with a splash of Turrets. In other words, read this book if you really feel like bashing it, because that's all we did in our book club meeting :-\