Academic satire by National Book Circle nominee. _<"Savagely funny."_DS Kirkus Reviews (starred)
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Kraven Images is a slapstick romp that follows the affairs and conquests of Nicholas Marcus Kraven, a Jewish Englishman and lecturer at Mosholu College in New York City. With his amorous sights set on--among others--his enemy's girlfriend Naomi (for whose poetry he professes enough enthusiasm to warrant a private conference on his bed), his married upstairs neighbor, Stella, and Stella's sister, Candida (alias Candy Peaches), who is stripping her way through graduate school, Kraven's social life is full, to say the least. When Stella's husband begins production of the Bardic Follies, a striptease rendition of Shakespeare starring Ms. Peaches, Nicholas finds himself entangled in a web of sexual liaisons and pillow-talk commitments from which escape seems impossible.
From Publishers Weekly
Though good-natured, Nicholas Marcus Kraven, a visiting lecturer in English at a Bronx college, is a compulsive liar, a lustful cad and a would-be seducer of students. He's an imposter as well, posing as his dead English cousin, whom "Nicholas" secretly helped through London University by writing all his papers. Yet Kraven is also a man haunted by his past-by the death of his father 33 years ago, in 1941 England, where their family of Polish Jews had emigrated to escape the Nazis; and by family demons of self-destructiveness and relentless womanizing. Isler-whose first novel, The Prince of West End Avenue, won the 1994 National Jewish Book Award (and was a National Book Critics Circle Award nominee)-combines a raucous send-up of the lit-crit industry with a serious tale of one man's quest for identity. Much of the satire is obvious, however, and it's difficult to care enough about Nicholas to sustain interest in his coincidence-laden trip to his boyhood English home, where he learns about the circumstances of his birth. Still, there's delicious irony in Isler's wry portrait of a man who devotes his life to the pursuit of truth even as he lives a lie. Paperback rights sold to Penguin; simultaneous U.K. publication by Random House/Jonathan Cape UK; foreign rights sold to Germany, Netherlands, France, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Finland.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Kraven Images not as clear as The Prince's,
By A Customer
This review is from: Kraven Images: A Novel (Hardcover)
Alan Isler's first novel, Prince of West End Avenue, was a phenomenal work of fiction that had the reader laughing and crying at the same time. The "Prince" was masterful in its attention to literary allusion, symbolic inuendo and a unique sense of where simple story telling ends and great literature begins. But Isler seems to have abandoned the beautifully woven Prufrock and Hamletian character of Otto Korner, for Kraven, the slime ball professor of Kraven Images. Though humorous and witty at times, I had little sympathy or patience for Kraven and his "problems." He gets deeper and deeper into a web of frenzied plot entanglements that eventually come crashing down on him all at once. In the end, I tired of the "miraculous" coincidences that tied some of the sub-plots together until the novel became predictable and ponderous. I loved Prince of West End Avenue so much that Kraven Images didn't seem to be authored by the same genius who caused me to read his first novel four times in one month. I hope "Prince" is the REAL Alan Isler and that Kraven was the image of what Isler does NOT want a novelist to become
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Compared to Isler's earlier work as well as other satirists.,
By A Customer
This review is from: Kraven Images (Mass Market Paperback)
Alan Isler's latest book, Kraven Images, is a farcical recounting of the life experiences of Professor Kraven. It appears that the Professor's name suits him well. As the story unfolds we find that Kraven's life has been a sham, a distortion, and an outright disgrace. There is some pathos in the description, which threads through the entire work, of the destruction of his Jewish family's life by the horrors of the holocaust which explains his constant searching for answers which he never finds. The character starts out as a Woody Allen type self-absorbed intellectual professor at Moshulu College on Long Island. His frequent sexual exploits are reminiscent of Allen's early writings, especially the short story The Kugelmass Episode (in the book Side Effects). However the book does not have the subtleties of Allen's short story and as it approaches the ending, appears to escalate beyond any belief, or any interest for the reader. This is unfortunate, because Isler's earlier writing, The Bacon Fancier, was outstanding in literary skill and depiction of Jewish life across a span of four centuries. This reader found the book derivative of Nabakov's Pale Fire, a richer and fuller character study of an intellectual who did not see himself as he was seen by others. In spite of my disappointment with this particular work, I recommend the book to those interested in following the career of this writer as he continues to explore and expand his talents as an artist.
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