The Runaway Soul [Paperback]

Harold Brodkey (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 15, 1997

Acclaimed New Yorker writer Brodkey set the literary world ablaze with this much-talked-about debut novel--a literary tour de force about an adopted child in the early 1930s who is raised in the St. Louis household of his cousins. "Impressive. . . . The work of a lifetime. . . . As haunted by love, death, and madness as The Oresteia".--Washington Post Book World.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Exquisitely sensitive and introspective narrator Wiley Silenowicz looks back over a painful childhood and youth in this sometimes brilliant, but more often turgid and self-indulgent novel.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

The most famous unpublished work in America, Brodkey's eagerly anticipated novel has finally arrived--dense, ambitious, and over 800 pages long. Its hero is Wiley Silenowicz, adopted in 1930 and raised by his cousins S.L. and Lila Silenowicz in St. Louis. Not quite as crafty as his name, but possessed of a fiercely observant intelligence that unfolds experience endlessly like a flower, Wiley must abide a glamorous, self-absorbed mother, an obnoxious sister, and a smooth-talking father who says things like, "I won't wear another man's shoes . . . but I'll tell another man's jokes. . . . I'm the father to another man's child." In the course of the novel, Wiley grows up, observes his parents, suffers his sister, experiences sexual longing and then sex. In short, nothing much happens except language--Brodkey's lush, carefully observed antidote to minimalism that will alternately enthrall and exasperate readers. The result? Brilliant, maddening, and essential for readers of good literature everywhere. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 7/91.
- Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 848 pages
• Publisher: Picador (October 15, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805055037
• ISBN-13: 978-0805055030
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 2.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,265,727 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Unreadable, but unignorable, July 28, 2001

By 

Polly-o (Salt Lake City, UT United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Runaway Soul (Paperback)

Like other products of obsession - Henry Darger's work, for example - this novel has a peculiar, rather unwholesome authority. There's no mistaking that every line is "poetry written with a splash of blood", to use Yukio Mishima's phrase. I have to agree with Salman Rushdie when he gallantly claimed that this book was "worth ten safe well-written little novels."

Nonetheless, "The Runaway Soul" has to be shelved alongside other years-in-the-writing would-be masterpieces like "The Rosy Crucifixion" and "Ancient Evenings" as a noble failure. It's possible that Brodkey just chewed his cud a few years too long. (The "sketch versions" of this material collected in "Stories in an Almost Classical Mode" are substantially more rewarding, in my opinion.) Whatever the reason, he fails to transmute his suffering into literature on anything like a consistent basis. Brodkey would have done well to heed the editorial advice of an old Danish queen: "More matter and less art."

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars It's almost too much.....almost., December 16, 2002

By 

Jesse S. Walker "doomjesse" (Huntington, WV USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Runaway Soul (Paperback)

When a novel starts out with a young boy masturbating and his thoughts during(not what you'd imagine) and after, you know something big is coming. Whether it's going to be shocking or if it's going to be something else is hard to tell. But the author's got your attention. And he keeps it for the most part. The novel encompasses the life of Wiley Silenowicz. And it's almost like experiencing every thought, feeling, and sense that he has.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Savory Journey, January 22, 2000

By 

Vanessa (Dallas, TX) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Runaway Soul (Hardcover)

What a book! Brodkey's intimate portrayal of his characters remains true. This streaming-conscious book is a challenging work of prose that begs the reader to take it slowly, savor the words, feel the emotions, understand the characters. Brodkey executes this book beautifully, forming a triumphantly orignial and poignant story. I'd find myself, after reading a few chapters, putting the book down to revel and contemplate the viewpoints of the characters and my own. Time reading this book is time well spent.