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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Perhaps the Surest Thing Yet,
By Joe English (Atlanta, GA USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Martin Bauman: or, A Sure Thing (Hardcover)
David Leavitt writes with a kind of honesty that is both bracing and luminous. His characters are so vividly and accurately drawn that their loves, desires, and aches are palpable. Behind and around these lives, he weaves a fabric of the near past, his New York (and surrounding) settings carefully depicted, and lends an uncanny familiarity to the places his characters inhabit. While the various plots hinge on, or at least draw from, aspiring writer Martin Bauman's interaction with the (not so) uber-professor and editor Stanley Flint, there is much else to experience here. The compassion with which the author delivers Martin's coming out (both to himself and to his friends and family), the confusion and fear of isolation that shadow him in these pages, ring painfully true and add an inexorable weight to his thoughts and actions. Leavitt's handling of the publishing world of the 1980s is deft: if reserved at first, it opens into whimsy and rage later. (Because I work in today's publishing arena, I found particular delight in several of these thinly-disguised scenes.) Martin Bauman; or, A Sure Thing is masterfully composed, and I savored every word. It was such a pleasure to read that I already, only hours from finishing it, long to be back in its depths again. While Leavitt's first novel, The Lost Language of Cranes, has always been a favorite of mine, this latest novel confirms his agility and maturity and is, I think, the most rewarding of all his published work.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
disappointing,
By erik Mouthaan (Utrecht, the Netherlands) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Martin Bauman: or, A Sure Thing (Hardcover)
It took me great perseverence to get through this book. At times I found it utterly uninteresting - this self-obsessed whining about relationships that are going the wrong way, the details about boring parties, all the repeats when describing the characters. I suppose it's a good thing Leavitt didn't make his own life and character look better- but maybe he should have. I don't really like Martin Baumann, nor his friends, nor anyone. Which should not be a problem if you feel that the person is experiencing mental growth. Here, none of that happens. Leavitt used to be good for his pointed, measured sentences. Now he's blabbing along for much too long. The earlier books may have been as he admits here - untrue and gloating - at least they were a better read.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Successful characterstudy & portrait of the 1980s,
By A Customer
This review is from: Martin Bauman: or, A Sure Thing (Hardcover)
I can't beliefe how rude and unfair most reviewers have been so far with this graceful novel, maybe not Mr. Leavitt's best (arguably 'The lost language of crains'), but still high above most brainwash & mediocre literature produced for the masses. And I have seldom seen such an interesting and vivid portrait of the 1980s, specially the growing media coverage of sudden success - and oblivion - as well as coming to terms with being gay in NY during the beginning of the AIDS crisis.Martin BAUMAN is a great character and a very sharp novel, full of wisdom, insight and tenderness towards its main characters - as well as fierce, when displaying how the media create their own darlings or devils, which very seldom has to do with quality. Please read this very persuasive and amusing novel and think how 20 years do make a difference about perceptions and society - and how little has really changed about accepting such a small and harmless difference like being gay. And enjoy its pages as much as I did devouring it!
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