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Seven Types of Ambiguity [Hardcover]

Elliot Perlman (Author)
4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (84 customer reviews)


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Book Description

December 16, 2004
Elliot Perlman has established himself as one of Australia's most perceptive and accomplished novelists with his critically-acclaimed bestselling novels Three Dollars and Seven Types of Ambiguity (which was shortlisted for Australia's top literary prize, the Miles Franklin Award, alongside J.M. Coetzee, Peter Carey and Shirley Hazzard), and his short story collection, The Reasons I Won't Be Coming.

Following years of unrequited love, an out-of-work schoolteacher decides to take matters into his own hands, triggering a chain of events that neither he nor his psychiatrist could have anticipated. At once a psychological thriller and a social critique, SEVEN TYPES OF AMBIGUITY is a story of obsessive love in an age of obsessive materialism. It's a story of impulse and paralysis, of empty marriages, lovers and a small boy, gambling and the market, of adult children and their parents, of poetry and prostitution, psychiatry and the law. Brimming with emotional, intellectual and moral dilemmas, this page-turning novel-reminiscent of the richest fiction of the nineteenth century in its labyrinthine complexity-unfolds at a rapid-fire pace to reveal the full extent to which these people have been affected by each other and by the insecure and uncertain times in which they live. Our times, now.

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

By copping the title of William Empson's classic of literary criticism, Australian writer Perlman (Three Dollars) sets a high bar for himself, but he justifies his theft with a relentlessly driven story, told from seven perspectives, about the effects of the brief abduction of six-year-old Sam Geraghty by Simon Heywood, his mother Anna's ex-boyfriend. Charismatic, unemployed Simon is still obsessed with Anna nine years after their breakup—to the dismay of his present lover, Angelique, a prostitute. Anna's stockbroker husband, Joe, is one of Angelique's regulars, which feeds Simon's flame. When Angelique turns Simon in to the cops, he claims he had permission to pick Sam up; his fate hinges on whether Anna will back up his lie. Most of the perspectives are linked to Simon's shrink, Alex Klima, who writes to Anna and counsels Simon, Angelique and Joe's co-worker, Dennis. The most successful voices belong to Joe, who's spent his career on the edge of panic, and Dennis, whose bitter rants provide a corrective to Klima's unctuous psychological omniscience. Perlman, a lawyer, aims for a literary legal novel—think Grisham by way of Franzen—and the ambition is admirable though the product somewhat uneven. Simon's obsessions, his self-righteousness and his psychological blackmail, give him a perhaps unintended creepiness, and the novel, as big and juicy as it is, may not offer sufficient closure.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The New Yorker

Cheekily swiping the title of William Empson's seminal work of literary criticism, this second novel by Perlman, an Australian writer, presents seven first-person narrators—whose lives are all nudged off course by a man's abduction of his ex-girlfriend's young son—in a compulsively readable tangle. At the center is a psychiatrist who treats several of the characters, and whose narrative provides some basis for assessing the partial perspectives of the six others. The abductor's self-justifying rants about truth, literature, and poststructuralist theory win over his shrink and, it seems, everyone else. Still, if the individual stories of these characters are compelling, their attempts at Empsonian hermeneutics are less so.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 640 pages
  • Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover (December 16, 2004)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 157322281X
  • ISBN-13: 978-1573222815
  • Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.4 x 2.1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (84 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #442,631 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

84 Reviews
5 star:
 (54)
4 star:
 (13)
3 star:
 (8)
2 star:
 (8)
1 star:
 (1)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.3 out of 5 stars (84 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

53 of 56 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Bound Brilliance, February 2, 2005
By 
Brett Benner (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Seven Types of Ambiguity (Hardcover)
I think the last time I was so impressed with a novel was when I read David Mitchell's "Ghostwritten". This was published at the very end of 2004 and for me it's the best of last year and probably this year as well. Billed as "an epic novel about obsessive love in an age of obsessive materialsim", the basic thrust of the story is about a man who never having gotten over a woman who left him ten years before, kidnaps her son.
The brilliance of the novel is in it's construction. The book is segmented in seven parts, each narrated by a different player in the unfolding drama with sections and scenes overlapping in a 'Rashomon' like narrative. The only criticism I have with the book echos other reviewers, that many of the characters voices are similar. They all seem cut from the same Mensa cloth,being incredibly insightful,bright,and in tune with the human condition regardless of age, sex, or social standing.However as criticisms go, it's a small one, and one that doesn't detract from the awesome magnitude or scope of what I think is a phenomenal piece of literature.
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48 of 52 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Best novel of 2004, January 3, 2005
By 
This review is from: Seven Types of Ambiguity (Hardcover)
This daring and intriguing novel was my favorite of 2004. Australian author Elliot Perlman has chosen to tell his story from seven different points of view-not a new idea, but one that seems completely fresh and surprising in Perlman's hands. The characters he chooses as his narrators and the voices he gives them are what propels "Seven Types" ahead to an end that comes all too soon for the besotted reader. The publisher's tag line deeming this "an epic novel about obsessive love in an age of obsessive materialism" does not do it any sort of justice. This novel is about much more than that and should not be missed.

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27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars No Ambiguity: This Is A Masterpiece, January 10, 2005
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This review is from: Seven Types of Ambiguity (Hardcover)
Every now and then, a novel comes along that is so masterful, so breathtaking in scope, that everything you read afterwards pales in comparison. This is such a book.

The author employs seven narrators, all of whom ultimately impact each others' lives. Each character is fleshed out so that the reader knows him or her through and through...right down to interior thoughts. One can only imagine the research Mr. Perlman had to go through to "get it right" -- from investment banking to gambling...from prostitution to literary matters...from psychiatry to research analyst. If there is a false note in any of these narratives, I wasn't able to detect it.

The novel, seemingly, is about the trial of Simon, an unemployed teacher who, in a fit of obsessive love, kidnaps the son of Anna, the woman he has worshiped for many years. In reality, each character in this novel is going through his or her own trial. Each will end up in a different place than when the narration began. Each will go through the harshest judge of all -- himself or herself; some will make it, some will not.

There is, indeed, ambiguity in literature, as there is in relationships and life in general. This novel can be read as a pure page-turner or it can be read for deeper meaning. I closed the book understanding a little more about myself. It is a rare book that allows the reader to do that.
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Inside This Book (learn more)
First Sentence:
He nearly called you again last night. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
fairground attendant, mainstream section, committal hearing, son from school, risk committee, corporate retreat, second detective
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Joe Geraghty, Sid Graeme, Donald Sheere, Simon Heywood, Health National, Billie Holiday, Anna Geraghty, Alex Klima, Joseph Geraghty, Terry Brabet, Legal Aid, Dennis Mitchell, Nazim Hikmet, Jesus Christ, Abe Meeropol, David Buchanan, Diane Osborne, Melbourne Assessment Prison, Michael Gardiner, Detective Staszic, Nepean Highway, Sam Geraghty, Samuel Geraghty, Terry Pratchett, Gina Serkin
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