| ||||||||||||||||||
Frequently Bought Together
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Meet Ruth Puttermesser,
By A Customer
This review is from: Levitation (Hardcover)
This book, a collection of five stories, introduces us to Ruth Puttermesser, the overly-intellectual, overly-contemplative heroine of Cynthia Ozick's most recent novel, "The Puttermesser Papers." In the first story, Puttermesser is a down-and-out NYC lawyer hauled from firm to firm without much hope of success. When she's not working, she's daydreaming...rather, when she's not daydreaming, she's working. Puttermesser's most meaningful, most invigorating experiences occur inside her own head. She gets pep talks from a dead uncle, she creates a golem who serves as a housekeeper and campaign manager when she runs for city office. What's real, what isn't? The sentences twist and surprise; each passage is dense and filled with comic irony. The title story, "Levitation," is about two writers, married to each other, who vow never to write about writers ("the forbidden act") or write about NYC ("the forbidden city"). A wonderful irony in itself. At a cocktail party they've thrown, Jewish guests levitate in the air; everyone else remains grounded, including the main character, who, up until that point, considered herself a convert to the faith. All of these stories are stories of ideas: the characters don't chatter mindlessly; rather, they possess, unlike many other literary characters, a high degree of self-awareness. What really shines in this book, though, is Ozick's love of L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E. You'll find no minimalism here. Like James and Nabokov, Ozick is dead-set on compressing as much detail as possible into a single sentence. The result is a narrative style of such elegance and originality, you'll be compelled to read these fictions allowed.
3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
OZICK AT HER BEST,
By
This review is from: Levitation: Five Fictions (Library of Modern Jewish Literature) (Paperback)
The title story itself is worth the price of admission. This book illustrates Ozick's imaginative use of language more than perhaps any other of hers. It's to the mouth what wine is.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not my favorite,
This review is from: Levitation (Hardcover)
A strange book and a bit hard to follow. The four stories about Puttermesser were a bit more intriguing than Levitation, but a very odd thread wound throughout the book. I enjoyed the character development and the story of the Golom, but overall, this book was not one of my favorites.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
