Customer Reviews

An Unfortunate Woman: A Journey

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Whereas the first-time Brautigan reader would not want to start here, fans of the man will find both uplifting and sad insight running through this quirky memoir in which death hovers over Brautigan's every thought like an oddly comforting cloud. He makes little, if any, connection between death and himself (he would commit suicide shortly after writing the book), instead approaching it in his typical playful and quirky manner. The title character, unnamed, is referred to throughout as a suicide victim whose circumstances Brautigan would prefer to not know. For its bulk, the structure of the book remains uncertain to both the reader and the author -- until it becomes apparent that it's a journal of a few weeks in the man as much as his work. His rampant use of metaphors is toned down considerably, as are the open-ended quasi-Zen statements. Their absence leaves room for Brautigan to show his abilities as a compelling story-teller rather than magician. The story of his uneventful travels, however, and his insistence on letting events (and availability of notebook space) shape the story -- rather than his imagination -- is a far cry from the wizardry of "Willard" or "Watermelon Sugar." At the same time, it provides an insight to the author -- mention of his daughter is heartbreaking -- that none of his works has included, and for that his loyal readers will enjoy this work immensely. END

As the first book of Brautigan's to read, An Unfortunate Woman may not be the best place to start. But as a coda for his marvelous career, this is a book not to be missed. The importance of the book is not so much its subject or its undetectable plot, as for the facination of its musings and the unmistakable Brautigan style. I always feel refreshed by the simple sentence structures and child-like observations when I read his work. This book is no different. I found an elegant bittersweet feel to the way life slips away, how our best intentions are diverted by life, and how we seem to accomplish a portion of that which we intend. The sadness and lonliness that permeates the work is in counterpoint to the sense of wonder we get from Brautigan's style. Sadly, the posthumous publication of the work points to the real ending of the book. Richard Brautigan was unique as an author, one who will probably be underestimated in stature for a time, but one who touches our hearts as few others can and makes us set the world on its ear to see what's inside. If you've read other of Brautigan's work, don't fail to see how the story ends...

Richard Brautigan's dark side is everywhere evident in this short novel about how marginalized he felt when a woman hanged herself while another was dying of cancer. This is not Brautigan's best, no matter what some of the other reviewers claim. It is best read as a companion piece to his daughter's memoir. Ianthe Brautigan wonders why her father committed suicide and explores a number of reasons. They are all here in the last book by Brautigan, written a couple of years before he shot himself. It's sad. America should take better care of its writers. There are hints, in this novel, of Brautigan at his best, and it makes you wish -- more than ever -- he was still in the land of the living, cranking out more Brautigan originals.

In AN UNFORTUNATE WOMAN, Richard Brautigan, icon of the 60's, bids farewell to the world. Within two years of this book being written, the author is dead of an apparent suicide. Now years later, the book has published by his daughter Ianthe. For those who have enjoyed Brautigan's writing in the past, here is a gem to be relished. For those unfamiliar with his writing, it might be best avoided.

The story, a travelogue of a 47-year-old writer, revolves around the deaths of two women

friends, one by suicide and the other by cancer, of which the details of neither are revealed. Throughout the disjointed ramblings of the writer, run veins of wry humor, snippets of nature, travel, melancholy, regret, alcoholic stupor, lonliness, and the shadow of death. The dated journal is a running commentary on everything from the minutiae of day-to-day living to the meaning of life--all told in only the sardonic way that Richard Brautigan can tell it--with gems to be savored hidden within.

Maybe I just prefer candid spontaneous writing, but I thought this was a great book -- right up there with Brautigan's best. I don't think of it as "posthumous" in the sense of being inferior to his other work, but in the sense that we are lucky to have it at all.

This book made me laugh out loud 3 or 4 times. Very few books have made me laugh out loud even once. Brautigan's "Confederate General From Big Sur" is the only other book I can think of that's made me laugh. So I'd say this is a very funny book, and at the same time a book about death, disease, suicide, depression.

It is, as Brautigan says, "a freefall calendar map." I feel that the theme of the book was stated in the section about the Japanese cemetery -- he felt like the exhumed dead people: he was just being moved around by life without much say in the matter. This book is a prolonged meditation on the aimless, meaningless nature of life that throws us from one predicament into the next.

It is a book about traveling by a man who does not like to travel. It is a book about things that happen to you that no one else cares about. It is a book about all of the little daily events that happen regardless of great personal tragedies, death and dying.

I would not emphasize the fact that this book was written "shortly before his death." This was finished, if we are to believe his dates, in summer of 1982, and he committed suicide in 1984. So at the very least a year and a half had passed (I don't know the exact date of his death).

This is a must-read for all Brautigan fans and for anyone who appreciates autobiographical, non-linear novels. We are very lucky to have this book.

The world has become more bearable with the publishing of An Unfortunate Woman.Old Brautigan is like a good friend, dependable, reliable and just good fun. An Unfortunate Woman is like breathing fresh oxygen into the fire of an old and dear friendship. This book is just plain fantastic; right from the get go. And it never lets up. It is Richard Brautigan at his clearest, wittiest and possibly most revealing. A true treasure. Thank god Brautigan had a child who saw this book as something to share with the world.

As a rule, I always avoid the flyleaf of a book.

Lots of different reasons (sometimes the flyleaf gives away some of the story; sometimes the flyleaf puts me off a book I would otherwise enjoy - that's happened a few times now, it takes a reliable friend's recommendation to send me back; sometimes the flyleaf peddles a kind of tired apocrypha - stories about the author's life, stories about the author's stories; and, sometimes, you get force-fed a whole lot of corn - odd sentences extracted from reviews, comments from people who think they know stuff, all that guff telling you why this is the greatest book ever yada yada yada).

For this book, though, for Richard Brautigan's "An Unfortunate Woman", the flyleaf rule goes out the window. I read the flyleaf the way a kid licks a cake-mix spoon.

Now, this could all get a bit AA but, yes, hand on heart, I am a devoted fan of the late and great Mister Richard Brautigan. I've read pretty much everything I could get my hands on (which is most of the novels and some of the poetry) and avoided all of the biographies (with the exception of his daughter Ianthe's sweet-sad book, "You Can't Catch Death"). I - uhm - eagerly anticipated this book (in the same way that I eagerly anticipated, say, Jeff Buckley's "Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk") because it is one more thing snatched from the jaws of an undeserved end. Same thing with John Kennedy Toole's "The Neon Bible".

I mentioned Jeff Buckley and that's useful to bear in mind if you're thinking of licking the cake-mix spoon. You know that CD right? "Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk"? You know that was released after his death. You know it would not have been released - at least in that state - if Jeff Buckley had not disappeared beneath the Mississippi waves. Same here. "An Unfortunate Woman" was a 160 page notebook filled with reminiscences. In lots of ways, we're doing something bad reading this. Maybe. It's sort of like reading over a corpse's shoulder.

And yet, and yet. Peter Fonda said "How fortunate we are to have another book by our friend Richard Brautigan . . ." A sentence into the book and that's how you feel. A book by a friend.

Brautigan books fall into two camps (I've always felt). You get the comedy, the silly (I'm thinking of, say, "The Hawkline Monster" or "The Abortion"), and you get the sweet-sad (say, "In Watermelon Sugar" and "So the Wind Won't Blow it All Away"). "An Unfortunate Woman" falls into the second camp. The messier more grown-up second camp. In lots of ways, "An Unfortunate Woman" reads like the wreck of "In Watermelon Sugar" and "So the Wind . . ." Margaret - the woman who hangs herself at the climax of "...Watermelon" - haunts "An Unfortunate Woman". The narrator is fleeing the memory of the unnamed woman who hung herself in his apartment. He wanders around and thinks about stuff. He wanders around a whole lot of different places, the intention being to write some kind of mind-map. He comes home. That's about that.

Your old friend - the one you'd lost touch with, the one you thought you wouldn't be hearing from anytime soon - is there, telling you stories. It's just like it always was. There is no sense of time having passed. There is no sense of a gap in your knowledge (although you can't help but feel sad when he gets melancholy).

You're just sharing some stories and drinking some liquor and wondering why all books don't feel this - what?

I've been sitting here staring at that sentence for about ten minutes. The book feels good, the book is enjoyable and the book is this, that and the other. If I had my way, I'd end the sentence with the word "wise" (because reading "An Unfortunate Woman", you do conclude that Brautigan could be wise).

With this being Brautigan, though, and with this being the last time:

You're just sharing some stories and drinking some liquor and wondering why all books don't feel this mayonaise (I've always wanted to end a review with the word mayonaise).

As a novelist with my debut novel in its initial release, I am fascinated by this glimpse of one of my all-time favorite authors nearing the end of his career. Richard Brautigan's suicide nearly two decades ago haunts American literature almost as darkly as Hemingway's does from four decades ago. In AN UNFORTUNATE WOMAN, the reader can see where its author is heading. I'm glad this book has finally found print, but I'm sad knowing full well how the life of one of my literary heroes will soon end. Brautigan's final work tells, in journal form, of a man's journey following the hanging death of a friend. In some ways, it's a typical, rambling, fun Brautigan book. At certain points the man shines like he did at his best. It's the Sixties and Seventies all over again. At other points, sadness takes over, as one can see a magnificent talent fading. AN UNFORTUNATE WOMAN is a book I'm glad I read, and I would freely recommend it to everyone.

This was the last book Richard Brautigan wrote before he committed suicide. Reading with that in mind, this book takes on an eeriness and relevance otherwise missing. It is written in the form of a travel journal, a real journal, with long periods of missing entries. But the crux of this book lies in the narrator's attempt to understand death. The house he currently rents was previously owned by a woman who killed herself there. The narrator also has a good friend who is losing her battle with cancer. It's as if Brautigan was wrestling with the idea of death. Whether his suicide means he figured it out, or failed to, is unknown. This book is a better look into his final years than a good story, but it's full of typical Brautigan humor and wonderful writing.

When was the last time that I read Brautigan's books or read about him. It was probably when Jan Kerouac's "Trainsong" was translated into Japanese almost ten years ago. Jack Kerouac's daughter described Brautigan's lecture in Amsterdam a year before he died. Jan Kerouac passed away too in mid-nineties.

Now this Brautigan's posthumous book reminds me of an atmosphere of early eighties; not too much industrialization and 'do it ourselves.' But this book is not so simple. The narrator went to cemeteries everywhere. And every time he tried to talk about an "unfortunate woman" who hung herself, he got off the subject. Hatred for LA-style cities, the sound of a woman making love in Berkeley, a photograph of him and a chicken in Hawaii, etc. These episodes are funny but, on the other hand, somewhat depressing.

Nostalgic, witty and a little sad. It's unmistakably a Brautigan.