Perfect Man [Hardcover]

Naeem Murr (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 429 pages
• Publisher: HEINEMANN GROUP LTD (April 6, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0434011142
• ISBN-13: 978-0434011148
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.4 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,856,141 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Under the influence of Truman Capote, May 23, 2007

By 

Christopher Enzi (San Francisco) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Perfect Man: A Novel (Paperback)

This is an AMAZING book! If schoolchildren all read "Other Voices, Other Rooms" we might see more work of this quality. As it is, this book is a one off, a unique vision, a real original. How do you fit into a strange world that keeps changing as fast as you can? How can you love despite abandonment and betrayal? How can you find a way into other people's hearts when your own is still a mystery to you? Naeem Murr adresses these big questions among others in this passionate, literate and deeply satisfying novel. I can't recommend it highly enough.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Two ways to tie yourself to a place: fall in love or commit a crime, assimilate or violate.", April 8, 2008

By 

Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews
(COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Perfect Man: A Novel (Paperback)

(4.5 stars) Rajiv Travers, the son of Gerard Travers and an Indian woman whom Gerard claims to have bought for twenty pounds, finds himself "orphaned" and uprooted at the age of five, when he is sent from India to London to live with his father, a man he does not know. By the age of twelve he has been abandoned several more times, both physically and emotionally, and has been sent to Pisgah, Missouri, to live with Ruth Winters, the romance-writing mistress of one of his uncles. A "black" child living in a white world, Rajiv becomes close friends with Annie and Lew, who often include Alvin and Nora in their activities. Each child, suffering from some personal trauma, is trying to make sense of the past and the often tumultuous and threatening present.

Pisgah, Missouri, provides a Southern Gothic setting in which author Naeem Murr explores the essence of selfhood. The sense of isolation, the difficulties (or, sometimes, impossibilities) of communication, the role of sex, and issues of power and control, perennial problems for teenagers, are also problems for the adults in Pisgah as well. Everyone has secrets, some of them secrets which are guaranteed to be kept because they include evil activities in which an entire group has participated.

Murr, who has previously focused on dark psychological aberrations in his novel The Boy, creates a cauldron of activity here in which the adolescents try to survive the perils they face on a daily basis. The characters, while darker and, in many cases, more damaged than what we usually call "normal," come to life as their individual backgrounds and the backgrounds of their families are revealed. Rajiv, the main character, has no past in Pisgah, and his reactions to what he is seeing, hearing, feeling, and guessing guide the reader to an understanding of Murr's themes.

As the narrative switches back and forth in time, horrors unfold and mysteries get solved. Pisgah reveals itself to be a microcosm of life's trials, almost on a par with Dante's nine circles of hell. Filled with mystery and the traumas of adolescence, the book has a broader focus than a mere coming-of-age. In a sense, all of humanity is on trial in Pisgah. Remarkably, some of the teenagers manage to put their lives in order and triumph, despite having faced seemingly insuperable odds, and the book is ultimately a celebration of the human spirit. n Mary Whipple

The Genius of the Sea : A Novel
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars thrilling, mysterious, disturbing, beautiful, May 10, 2007

By 

A. Keesey - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Perfect Man: A Novel (Paperback)

I just read "The Perfect Man" on the recommendation of a friend from the UK (it came out there last year). I sat on the couch for hours and hours, unable to put it down. You're introduced to this forlorn, unwanted child who is dragged from India to Britain to the small-town U.S., and as he gets to know the complexities of this little Missouri backwater (its crimes and sexual secrets and interrelationships and rumors and histories), you get to know them, too. You end up longing for the happiness of some characters and the downfall of others, and wanting desperately to know WHAT HAPPENED to a little boy who died years before. There are many twining stories over the course of many years, but you never get lost or bored. The people all have such vividness, with so much at stake--especially the survival of vulnerable children through pain, neglect, confusion and love. And there's such a rich sense of the cycle of life. I was tearful a number times while reading. I highly recommend it.