No Star is Lost [Paperback]

James T. Farrell (Author), Charles Fanning (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 5, 2007 | ISBN-10: 025207422X | ISBN-13: 978-0252074226

The second novel in Farrell's pentalogy picks up where A World I Never Made left off in the ongoing saga of the O'Neill and O'Flaherty families. Continuing on the theme of poverty's effect on children, we return to scenes of Danny O'Neill's life in Chicago, where the schism between his life in public and his private experiences at home begins to create in him a tension and bewilderment suggestive of the problems he will face in his future.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"James T. Farrell's five novels about the O'Neill and O'Flaherty families are among the incontestable masterworks of American culture. The series provides a panorama of first and second generation immigrant experience that is indispensable reading for anyone who wishes to understand life in the twentieth-century United States." Alan Wald, professor of English and American culture, University of Michigan "The influence of James Farrell's work has been pervasive and accumulative as generation after generation of American writers continue to explore the urban subjects that Farrell so forcefully defined." Stuart Dybek, author of The Coast of Chicago, I Sailed with Magellan, and other fiction

Product Details

• Paperback: 544 pages
• Publisher: University of Illinois Press (November 5, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 025207422X
• ISBN-13: 978-0252074226
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,016,018 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Star's Nearly Been Lost, March 2, 2008

By 

Alexander M. Hicks "Alex Hicks" (Atlanta, GA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: No Star is Lost (Paperback)

The Danny O'Neill books are, at once, one of the great evocations of childhood, the great coming of age novels, and the great works of naturalism. Although they were, for me, utterly enthralling, as well as enlightening, reading throughout, some have found that the full quartet gets repetitive as one goes forward through nearly twenty years, and 2,000 pages of Danny's life and times. "Studs Lonigan" may be better because it's a more integrated and cumulatively effective - indeed a tragic--work. Still, Farrell's artistry is, chapter by chapter and volume by volume, at a high peak in the O'Neill books. For those inclined to make the journey, "A World I Never Made," is the best introduction to the series on the conventional grounds that it comes first chronologically, and as a fine book. However, for those looking for the best of the O'Neill series, I'd recommend "No Star is Lost" - best, at once, as Penrod-like entertainment, as social chronicle and as drama. My reading of both "A World I Never Made" and "No Star is Lost" and their reviews convinces me that the former got somewhat better reviews not because it was in fact judged a better stand-alone work but because the latter was regarded as repetitive following "World." Indeed, had Farrell written "No Star is Lost" as a sole Danny O'Neill novel, I suspect that he would be regarded as author of two masterpieces "Lonigan" and "Lost," - instead of one. As things are, "Lost" gets lost in the shuffle, and the structure of the O'Neill books - like say that of Dreiser's three Cowperwood novels too diffuse for the whole to stand as a masterpiece. Yet "No Star is Lost" can stand powerfully alongside "Studs Lonigan." Indeed, it is the more socially and emotionally wide-ranging work, a more finely crafted one, a powerful tragic expression of a whole family (and generation's) plight, and a work with an unforgettable tie-in to "Studs Lonigan" in its final pages.