Customer Reviews

The Salesman: A Novel

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

 

 

Written as a diary, this is a brilliant novel of suspense, love, loneliness, alcoholism, fatherhood, redemption and of course, tragedy. The salesman of the title is a dumpy middle-aged satellite dish salesman who pissed away his family and life as an alcoholic. He's been sober for years, trying to raise his daughter by himself when she is attacked and put into a coma. One of the defendants escapes, and the salesman is left frustrated and angry.When he happens to see the escapee on the street one day he daydreams of revenge. The suspense builds and builds as he follows the criminal and plots his revenge. Interspersed with this is his recounting of meeting his wife and their life together, which he tries to explain to his daughter. Outstanding.

There's a fine line between love and hate. There's also a fine line between friend and enemy in this book.
The author does a great job of conveying the emotions of his characters, from the anguish of a middle aged man who finds himself without his family to the rage of a young man who never really had a family at all.The evolving relationship between the two men forms the heart of the story but it is not like any relationship you've ever experienced before.The book explores the loneliness of all the characters but mainly the 2 men. The irony of these people befriending each other shows how deep the need for companionship can be.
Even so. I doubt I would have the change of heart that comes over Sweeney given his situation. Then again sometimes we find friendship and redemption where we least expect to. That's what maks this such a moving book

BRILLIANT! I was transported into the psyche of Liam. O'Connor is brilliant in explaining the tormented thoughts of the characters in rich detail. He allows us to enter their minds, yet while telling the story from the character's point of view, they leave out details they know to be true, but don't necessarily pertain to the story at hand. I know I'll read it again.

After capturing relationships in a truly beautiful way, O'Connor had to go and spoil everything by going all Tarantino. What could have been a truly great book sacrificied to fashion.

A much darker book that his other novels and his travelogues, The Salesman is an enjoyable semi-departure for O'Connor. While it's a darkly funny book, it's not quite as side-splitting as his other work. Definitely worth a read, although not if the world's getting you down.

Tautly written, with the kind of wry, dark humor that brings you just to edge of acceptance and never lets you go. This is a smashing work, and one of the best "Irish novels" I've read in awhile. Highly recommended. (By the way, does everyone know that the author, Joseph O'Connor, is none other than the brother of the famous Sinead O'Connor Herself! )

Joseph O'Connor's offering is a little slow to start but once the action hots up, so does the pace.

Contemporary Dublin in all of its rain-numbing ordinariness is the backdrop for a moral tale with an extraordinary twist. How far would you go to avenge the loss of a loved one? Through his journal, Billy Sweeney, the salesman reflects on his sometimes wasted life as he contemplates the waste of the life of his daughter lying in a coma. For once, it is a story set in Ireland that does not dwell on the political troubles of the North. For anyone who has visited Dublin, the everyday portrait of the city, including Sweeney's numbing winter swims, make the action more personal, more compelling. You can easily see yourself sitting in Sweeney's front room, writing his journal.

The last half of the book with the frightening and sometimes hilarious encounter between Sweeney and Quinn is a tribute to O'Connor's appreciation of both the rough side of Dublin and the power of storytelling which lies at the heart of every Irishman's soul.

This author is new for me. I found it to be a marvelous tale, keeping the people interesting, the places fascinating and the intrigue excellent.

One of the few Irish tellings not wallowing in self-pity, the "salesman" regales us with his life, his loves, and his hates (which turn out to not be so far from his loves). I enjoyed the meter of past memories and current events as they unfold, twisting in and around the central desire on the part of the "salesman" for retribution against one of the perpetrators who hospitalized his youngest daughter. Even that turns out differently than he plans.

Truly a great story!

This Joseph O'Connor is an Irish novelist, NOT the NLP trainer and author of the same name.