Customer Reviews

The Voice Imitator

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

 

 

I'm pleased that this book is finally in print by a serious publisher. These are amazingly everyday stories, like we hear on the 11:00 news. A bus of school children goes off the road and into a ravine. What event years later would make a town recall this event?Two men look through a telescope over a glacier. One of them drops dead, and the other one lives after having looked through the same lens.On and one, these 104 short stories work on you, as the language grows more complex and compelling.

these stories stick like a long, thin, glass splinter in your core. bernhard tools scenes from the everyday, but they're not simply everyday occurences. he seems to tap into the same magical realm that garcia lorca does in his ability to write terse, packed prose that somehow floats above its literal meaning. they are tiny details and instances set briefly side-by-side as if in a complex still-life whose parts are disparate but make sense together, somehow.
in The Voice Imitator, bernhard gets to you. you can take it in little doses or all at once, but in the end, you'll be grinning and you won't know why.

In Thomas Bernhard's most capable hands, the 104 stories that comprise "The Voice Imitator" are succinct, often mesmerizing, tales recounted from genuine newspaper headlines and articles. These tales are quite literally, prose haiku, miniature essays recounting foibles of artists, politicians, scientists, and others from all walks of life. They may also seem like brief outlines for some as yet unpublished great novel, but Bernhard has packed so much detail that readers will recognize these as stories, not as outlines of novels. While this is a book best suited for those most familiar with Bernhard's work, others willing to take a chance on such brief tales will be richly rewarded by the elegant prose often pregnant in detail, as rendered in a fine English translation.

Peter Filkins has never ever written a review that did not carry some outrageous assertion refuted by the content of the books by the author that he is supposed to have read

Thomas Bernhard has a very dark and cynical view on the human condition, yet the very short (each contained by a single page) stories of The Voice Imitator are engrossing; and, this book is impossible to put down until you finish the entirety of the collection.

The Voice Imitator is not for everyone (depressives should steer clear by a few miles), but it is also more than a pessimistic trail of Bernhard's moldy breadcrumbs. The skill that he demonstrates in telling a complete story in as few of words as possible is masterful. Devoid of plot, these stories are more like voyeuristic glimpses into the intimate and horrible moments of a life. This book will do more than satisfy your morbid curiosity, it will turn you to introspection and to examine your soul.

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A Guide to my Book Rating System:

1 star = The wood pulp would have been better utilized as toilet paper.
2 stars = Don't bother, clean your bathroom instead.
3 stars = Wasn't a waste of time, but it was time wasted.
4 stars = Good book, but not life altering.
5 stars = This book changed my world in at least some small way.