The Hundred Brothers [Hardcover]

Donald Antrim (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 28, 1997

A comic novel by the critically acclaimed author of Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World. Doug and 98 of his 99 brothers (George has run off with embezzled funds and a girl named Jane) gather in the huge family library for dinner, drinking, and some late-night football. Throughout the evening, the chaos grows into a complex web of conflicting memories, hurt feelings, rivalries, alliances, and shared awareness. 208 pp. Author tour. National publicity. Print ads. 20,000 print.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

There are, as the title says, one hundred brothers in Donald Antrim's novel. This sprawling fraternity has gathered in the family library for a dinner and over the course of a few hours, the author serves up sibling rivalry, revelry, and mayhem in meticulous, unflappable style.

For the most part, The Hundred Brothers skates along on the strength of its comic ingenuity. Yet Antrim has some serious points to make about masculine pride, vanity, and terror--not by invoking them directly, but by inflating them to monstrous (and mirthful) proportions. And the narrator's comments about his rampaging kin often have a larger, melancholic resonance to them. Indeed, when he points out "the complexities of our interdependence and the sorry indignities that pass as currency between us in lieu of gentler tender," he might be talking about any family--even one in the single-digit range.

From Library Journal

In this unconventional novel, 99 of 100 brothers meet in the decaying library of their deceased father's estate to locate and bury the old man's ashes. The brothers range in age from 25 to 93, and their idiosyncracies vary even more widely. Doug, the narrator and family genealogist, navigates the winding road of relations, as well as the labyrinthine stacks of the huge library, the organization of which would send Dewey spinning in his casket. Antrim (Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World, LJ 9/15/93) crafts a comic nightmare of a family reunion, in which old hostilities renew themselves, cliques form and disintegrate with lightning speed, and the lines for the bar and buffet are so alarmingly long it's difficult to get a drink, let alone dinner. The search for the missing urn functions as a device to showcase Doug's delusions of his father's ghost, his (well-founded) fears about his character and worth, and his desire to share with his brothers the true meaning of dread?a favor they happily return. Recommended.?Adam Mazmanian, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 206 pages
• Publisher: Crown; 1st edition (January 28, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0517703106
• ISBN-13: 978-0517703106
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,363,953 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Antrim's best, so far, June 28, 2004

By 

E. A. Jamieson "ericjamieson" (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Hundred Brothers (Paperback)

Most reviewers seem to focus on whether or not this book exemplifies post-modernism and whether or not that's good or bad. Unfortunately, I've never been able to figure out what postmodernism is, so I can't help ya there.

All I know is Pynchon and Delillo just confuse me, Vollman makes me laugh but I can't figure out what the hell he's driving at, but Antrim just makes me feel good all over.

Maybe it's the way he introduces all 100 brothers, in order, in about 5 pages, and then blithely writes the rest of the book as if you're going to remember who they all are. Which is a good hook, because, who hasn't been to a social function where you get introduced to a few dozen people within 5 minutes, after which you're supposed to remember everybody?

Maybe I just identify with the hapless, socially retarded dope of a narrator who just wants everyone to get along but ends up, well, no spoilers, in a unique and singularly undignified situation.

But it's not simplistic comedy - it's a bit like one of those Borges stories where you think, "ok, this is gonna be a quick read, only 12 pages" and then you find it takes a good 2 hours to make a bit of sense of it.

Well, you could compare it to a lot of things, but that wouldn't do it justice, because the best part is, it just ain't quite like anything you've read before.

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A New Star is Born., June 8, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: The Hundred Brothers (Hardcover)

Donald Antrim is perhaps the most unique and brilliant voice in surreal tragi-humor (if such a category does indeed exist). With The Hundred Brothers, a ridiculous premise is set; a family of a hundred brothers, but wholly acceptable through the rational eyes of our narrarator. But then ensues a masterful literary roller coaster ride through bizarre and surreal landscapes. And Antrim never leaves one room! Brilliant! In his novels, Antrim has a way of establishing a simple and rational universe, then subtly and ironically, disseminating it bit by bit, gradually revealing an entirely new surreal and ridiculous world that lay beneath its original carapace. Antrim's writing indeed can twist one's mind and warp any sense of reality that may have managed to linger a few pages into the novel. His allegories are both ellusive and mischevious. His humor is deep. It is infectuous and possesive. It may not make you snicker or giggle on the spot, but it will take seed and infest your thought processes, and cause episodes of deep pondering on the depth and subtext of Mr. Antrim's subtle hillarities. It is the type of Monty Pythonesque multi-textual humor that can quite possibly change your life. The short length of Antrim's mono-chapteric novels fit his narrative perfectly; sprawling, circuituous, seguatious, a uniform current of brilliance that blends vignettes and episodes like an early Pink Floyd album. Still, at the close of an Antrim, novel, one can only thrist for more. The solution to this problem is only obvious: MORE NOVELS BY DONALD ANTRIM!

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A modern classic: Exaggeration causes comedy and horror., July 16, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Hundred Brothers (Paperback)

"A collision between 'The Brothers Karamazov' and the Brothers Marx," as the publisher suggests? I think it is an episode of "Seinfeld" written by Edgar Allan Poe! We have a collection of neurotic people, repulsive yet oddly attractive, who overdo everything. We also have a gradual crescendo of horror. Every brother, including the narrator, has glaring faults in which we recognize our own, or at least our neighbors' lesser faults and self-deceptions. The setting, obeying the Aristotelian unities of time and place, seems to grow and evolve in nightmare fashion. The love and hatred between the brothers is searing. All brothers fight, in my experience, except for one pair because of the saintly character of the elder brother. Many years ago, the two shared a bedroom, and the younger brother had a drum set. No harsh word ever passed between them. I believe a hair from the elder brother's beard has already cured several persons of leprosy.