The Village: A Novel [Paperback]

David Mamet (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1996

One of America's most explosively talented playwrights offers a forceful novel, full of incisive dialogue and striking interior monologues, about life in a secluded, mysterious, and complex New England town. A first novel. 25,000 first printing. Tour.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The first novel from Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Mamet is about a year in the life of a small, troubled New England town.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

The small New England village conjured by Mamet in this first novel (he is, of course, one of America's most renowned playwrights) provides an ideal setting in which to explore the complexities of human relationships. As we follow, in snatches, the lives of several village inhabitants over the course of a year, we encounter a tangled web of boredom and lust, love and its ebbing, resignation and hope, fear and death. The rounds of daily life are exposed as not so simple; the meetings and partings are fodder for a whole array of feelings and fantasies. Told in a rather disjointed manner and making heavy use of fractured dialog and interior monolog, the tale may seem a bit jarring at times. However, this approach lends power to the work; it is definitely a case of the sum being much more than a total of its parts. This is not "popular" fiction, but given Mamet's status, it is sure to arouse more than casual interest and deserves a place on the shelves of most academic and public libraries.--.
David W. Henderson, Eckerd Coll. Lib., St. Petersburg, Fla.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Little Brown & Co (P) (April 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316543381
• ISBN-13: 978-0316543385
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,606,242 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Prose is sparse, so is the action and character development., June 3, 2008

By 

C Willeford "hokemosely" (Miami, Florida) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Village: A Novel (Hardcover)

Lifeless and purposefully opaque. So much distance is put between the characters and their empty lives and the reader that ultimately there is no emotional connection with the reader. I admire David Mamet so much as a playwright and movie director that I slogged through 121 pages before I gave up completely. I'm bugged by critics who admire crap like this. Just because it was written by a genius doesn't mean the book is genius. It's a failure on a genius scale.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Mind-numbingly dull., November 19, 2006

By 

Michael G. "mikefromrochester" (Rochester, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Village: A Novel (Hardcover)

The Village by David Mamet is a disjointed compendeum of slice of life scenarios. In it the inner lives of a number of taciturn, stoic New Englanders are revealed through detailed introspection and minimalist dialogue. The characters themselves are presented as ghost-like beings, full of inwardly directed thought but with little else to flesh out their personas. This book is unsatisfying and pretentious. Not recommended.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great style, good story, September 10, 2004

By 

J. Bosiljevac (san fran, ca) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Village: A Novel (Paperback)

This is the first novel by Mamet, one of America's best playwrights, and a good screenwriter. It has a lot in common with Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, which is one of my favorite books. The Village delivers a slice of life in a quiet, anonymous village somewhere in the eastern U.S. The chapters jump around from person to person, playing out how their lives intertwine. Mamet's writing is fascinating. His dialogue is masterful, giving the reader just enough to get the gist of what someone says. Likewise, his narration is distant, noticeably so in many parts. He often goes through most of a chapter referring to a person as "The Man" or "The Soldier," giving the novel an everyman quality, but also driving home the theme of the book: that even a small town, where everyone knows everyone else by name, can be a very lonely place. Overall, I didn't like The Village as much as Winesburg, but it left me with the same calm, melancholy feeling. A good and, from a writing craft standpoint, educational read.