Customer Reviews

John Lennon and the Mercy Street Café

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I loved this book! It was a great read for a rainy week-end snuggled on my couch with, dare I say, a cup of tea. It was a fantastic journey that I didn't want to end...maybe one we all want to take...to look inside ourselves and redo or undo some of our own past...or maybe just to see why we do the things we do...or maybe just to enjoy a few hours with a music legend.

Although I was never a huge Beatles fan, this is an incredibly fun book. If you are a Beatles fan you'll likely enjoy it even more. John Lennon comes back from the dead and at first only a woman named Amy can see him. From the moment she does a wild surreal ride begins involving time travel, the Great Depression, Woody Guthrie, a road trip from New York City to California and back, folk and blues music, and lots of inside information about Lennon and his times. It's the closest thing to going on tour with John Lennon. Highly recommended.

I just finished reading this book and was truly impressed. Not only is this a fun read and a real page-turner; it also has a deep and compelling message for the reader to contemplate, throughout.

John Lennon spoke for and to a generation: "give peace a chance", "imagine", "strange days indeed" . William Hammett has captured Lennon's charisma and character so well.

The story takes the reader on a journey that has many a twist and turn along the way and is indeed,magical and mysterious.

This is a novel that will appeal to anyone who enjoys a great read, Lennon fan or not. Buy it, read it, pass it along to a friend. A book you will truly enjoy and want to share.

You can also read my updated review at my new review blog:

myreallifereviews.com/2011/05/john-lennon-and-mercy-street-cafe.html

This was one of the most delightful books I've read all year. The story is set in present day New York City and begins with an encounter with John Lennon, playing guitar in a small Greenwich Village Café. It is humor and magical realism at its best. If you like Kurt Vonnegut, Tom Robbins, and if you loved "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", you'll want to read this book. William Hammett did several things that surprised me. His lead character is a woman, and I will give him his propers - I was convinced. He incorporates all kinds of Beatles lore, historical events, current events and time travel and he does it with simple,lovely prose. If you've read his poetry, you know what a talented writer he is. Underneath this seemingly simple tale, there are some profound ideas and themes that will keep you thinking long after you've read the last page.

John Lennon is one of the most important and conflicted figures of a troubled decade. This well written spiritual journey takes it's readers on a wonderful trip into the realm of the what if.

The specter of John Lennon takes on the sins of the generation for whom he was an icon in this mystical journey of revelations and atonement. If quantum physics is your cup of tea, step into Billy Acres' Tae & Verse, where Hammett brews his own special blend of music, poetry, recent history, and metaphysics, served hot with a touch of honey and a dollop of nostalgia. A fun and thought-provoking read -- one of those stories in which each successive reading reveals new angles.

JOHN LENNON AND THE MERCY STREET CAFÉ by William Hammett is indeed a good read. Imagining Lennon's return today, combined with his meeting other great people in history, echoes some of the great biographies and autobiographies from our Western heritage even though this is fiction with bits of reality spliced in. Lennon brings his message of peace to countless people in a most unexpected way and in the process finds his own deeper meaning and inner peace. In this book of "magical realism," Hammett is able to articulate some of the deeper, forgotten truths about human life. A great read.


PE

If you have an imagination then this is awesome as it brings Lennon to life and that makes me feel great. Very well written and interesting.

This delightful book introduces the reader into the world of "consciousness" where synchronicity is recognized as valid form of communication and intuition is given its rightful place in the hierarchy of intellectualism; a world that recognizes that what passes for REAL (ie Newtonian physical materialism) is but a hologram, a reflection.

I have often wondered what happened to the "Cultural Revolution" and its promise of a new story that humanity could live into. What would it be like to live in a world that is not afraid to "Imagine" or to "Give Peace a Chance" ---- a world that is the creation of a new cultural mythology based upon cooperation as opposed to competition?


William Hammett's magical mystical journey is a tale of hope that suggests the beginning of these possibilities. Well written and intriguing, it was a tale that captured my attention so completely that I was unable to put it down.