Customer Reviews

The Perfect Man: A Novel

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

(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
Boy, The

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.

I knew nothing of the book nor had I ever heard of the author. I picked up and read this book based solely on the title. Being fairly frequently reminded that I am not a perfect man, and that I have a long way to go to get there, I was curious to find what this unknown author might have to say about "the perfect man." Alas, I didn't find the answer to perfection, but I did find a wonderful story.

As I jumped into this one, the story came alive with great characters, beginning in post-war London and moving quickly to, of all places, 1950s very small-town America, Pisgah, Missouri, which lies essentially near the center of the state, deep in America's heartland, and along the banks of the Missouri River; certainly neither a place nor a time that would willingly accept a dark-skinned foreigner with a name like "Rajiv". It made for a great story, for sure worthy of a strong four-star rating. However, at the very end of the book, I found the final chapter to be so strong, so engaging and so optimistic that this strong four-star story was pushed over the brink to a five-star gem of a story.

I think the story of Raj, the Indian-born boy who ends up in Missouri by way of London, is a story of many, many levels - levels that deserve to be given an in-depth analysis by people much more capable of such analysis than I. However, I do opine that Murr is outstanding at creating the atmosphere of this small town, displaying to the reader the town's eccentricities and prejudices, the dark secrets of its families and social cliques, the love that bound its young characters, and the love-turned-to-hate, spite and despair that embroiled many of the adults and decayed marital, familial and community relationships. Murr intertwines and juxtaposes not only love and hate through the characters and the small community, but also vanity and humility, selfishness and charity, fidelity and infidelity, trust and distrust, hope and despair, bravery and cowardice. As I read deeper into the story, and the secrets of the community continually unfolded - sometimes shockingly - I was totally engaged.

A final aspect I found particularly of interest in this book were the sections after the final chapter: a conversation with the author, who had himself spent some portion of his life living in Columbia, Missouri, and the "Questions and Topics for Discussion" section. Reading the author's perspectives and occasionally reviewing the questions/topics section helped me keep in mind some of the objectives of the story and recognize different levels and focal points of the story's characters, plot and subplots.

The only warning I can give is that the story does not unfold chronologically. Each chapter begins with a year, and the reader should pay attention to which year is about to be exposed, else you might find yourself temporarily confused as to where in the chronology of the story the events are unfolding.

In summary, I really enjoyed this book; found it very engrossing and would recommend it to anyone who desires good depth to a story and great characters.

I read all the amazing reviews of this book and thought the premise was very interesting: young unwanted boy from India winding up in small Missouri town. The writing is excellent, but I just could not really connect with the characters and found some of the lesser characters simply unbelievable. I tried very hard to "get into" this book, but it just didn't click.

Raj's transformation from a naive young boy to a professional man who seems to know exactly who he is and what he wants is interesting but I don't find it extraordinatry. I'm pretty familiar with small Missouri towns having grown up there, and I never felt that the town with its rather strange assortment of people was realistic; some of the events bordered on "soap-operaish." And the switching back and forth between time frames was confusing although I can see how it did add to the suspense of the story.

Still, the concept of the book is engaging and I'm glad I read it. I would recommend it just because I do think it is a book that can envoke a variety of responses.

As a high school Librarian I read a lot of books. One of our English teacher's recommended this and I was blown away. It is a very rich story of an ensemble of different types of people.

The Perfect Man introduces a cast of characters simultaneously realistic and fantastic. Their flaws--some serious, some deadly, some amusing--and foibles clearly resonate, and their actions and encounters--some mundane, some outrageous--are always true to character. This is an ambitious work and a must for any reader who enjoys clever plot development as well as witty, sensitive description.

This is a beautiful novel about a small town and the lives of its inhabitants. Murr lets us into the deep inner workings of his characters' minds, contrasting their outward, seemingly happy and normal existence with the conflict and, at times, profound misery of their true thoughts and feelings. The novel revolves around the arrival of Raj, by way of London and India, to the rural town of Pisgah, Missouri, and the impact his presence has on Pisgah's various residents. Though Raj remains a central, if not the central, figure in Murr's novel, Murr chooses to tell the story from the points of view of Pisgah's residents, leaving us to interpret Raj's true feelings from the responses, expressions, and actions the other characters see. As Murr brings us deeper into the minds of each character, we are exposed to a terribly dysfunctional society in which people are repressed to the point of suffocation, in which characters struggle in desperation to find an escape from their miserable existence, yet without any real solution in sight. While Raj provides hope and change to the lives of many characters, his presence also leads to a great many complications and conflict in the lives of others. Murr brings his characters to life so expertly that the reader becomes a member of Pisgah's society and lives and breathes with its inhabitants. Alternating between the present day and glimpses from the past, Murr's narrative enfolds the reader completely in the life, history, and tragedies of his town and characters. This is a touching, heart-breaking, and masterfully written novel; one of the best I have read and an experience not to be missed.

I love to read and am always in search of a book that is well written and hard to put down. This is one of those rare finds. My only regret is that it wasn't ten times longer so it would have lasted several more days.

This is quite an absorbing book. I'm surprised to see so few reviews. For me it started off slowly, but I gradually was drawn into the intimate stories of the people in this town. I love the way the author details the sometimes shocking secrets of these seemingly ordinary characters, and also the ways mysteries are ultimately revealed. Excellent writing.