Join Amazon Prime and ship Two-Day for free and Overnight for $3.99. Already a member? Sign in.
|
|||||||||
Frequently Bought Together
Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought
The Sleeping Father (Today Show Book Club #20) by Matthew Sharpe  (33)
|
Jamestown by Matthew Sharpe  (12)
$9.22
|
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier  (477)
|
Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding  (1,077)
|
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Grotesquely comic and resolutely strange, short story writer and journalist Sharpe's first novel involves an androgynous, precocious girl named Mary White, who accidentally causes her twin brother Paul's death and is redeemed in love by her blonde and beautiful sixth-grade teacher. Upon the death of their parents in a car accident, 10-year-old Mary and her brother are left in the care of their mean-tempered uncle and simple, silent aunt. Sickly Paul is the philosopher and Mary the energetic implementer of his ideas. After Mary stirs up a bees' nest and Paul dies from their stings, she is left to fend for herself in the suburban school system. She develops what she calls her "ongoing involvement with myself," becoming a small-scale tyrant and musing often on her fate. As she herself remarks to the "dear reader" in Charlotte Brontean fashion: "This Mary character is not very nice." Smitten with the difficult 11-year-old, Teacher of the Year Miss "Skip" Hartman seduces her and literally buys her from her aunt and uncle. Whisked away to Skip's Upper East Side apartment, Mary is schooled in Shakespeare, algebra and the arts of love. But becoming restless, she takes up with a coterie of aimless drug pushers and her second lover, an environmentally sensitive Central Park squatter and ex-classmate named Mittler. Through characters such as Paul and early moments of rare sincerity, Sharpe proves that he can write affectingly. However, he condescends to the reader like an uneasy comedian afraid to bore the audience, relying heavily on his deadpan delivery of grotesque detail. His Mary--unsympathetic, smug and, worst of all for a fictional character, not memorable--is no Jane Eyre. (Mar.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Library Journal
Sharpe follows his witty collection Stories from the Tube with a zany novel of manners that stretches the imagination. A hermaphrodite named Mary White--a self-proclaimed "obnoxious, lonely, self-loathing American orphan"--relates the story of her life between the ages of 11 and 18 in the style of a Jane Austen memoir. In a wildly imaginative twist of circumstances beginning with her parents' death in a car accident, Mary and her twin brother, Paul, are raised by her uncommunicative aunt and cavalier uncle. After her brother's bizarre death, Mary is seduced by her sixth grade teacher, Skip Harman, who is subsequently fired by the school and speeds off with Mary to New York. Skip is an independently wealthy woman who surrounds herself with a cavalcade of eccentric characters who sweep into Mary's life. This debut novel of exaggerations encourages social criticism and is a clever and unpredictable tale of absurdities. Recommended for most collections.
-David A. Beron?, Univ. of New Hampshire, Durham
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
See all Editorial Reviews
Grotesquely comic and resolutely strange, short story writer and journalist Sharpe's first novel involves an androgynous, precocious girl named Mary White, who accidentally causes her twin brother Paul's death and is redeemed in love by her blonde and beautiful sixth-grade teacher. Upon the death of their parents in a car accident, 10-year-old Mary and her brother are left in the care of their mean-tempered uncle and simple, silent aunt. Sickly Paul is the philosopher and Mary the energetic implementer of his ideas. After Mary stirs up a bees' nest and Paul dies from their stings, she is left to fend for herself in the suburban school system. She develops what she calls her "ongoing involvement with myself," becoming a small-scale tyrant and musing often on her fate. As she herself remarks to the "dear reader" in Charlotte Brontean fashion: "This Mary character is not very nice." Smitten with the difficult 11-year-old, Teacher of the Year Miss "Skip" Hartman seduces her and literally buys her from her aunt and uncle. Whisked away to Skip's Upper East Side apartment, Mary is schooled in Shakespeare, algebra and the arts of love. But becoming restless, she takes up with a coterie of aimless drug pushers and her second lover, an environmentally sensitive Central Park squatter and ex-classmate named Mittler. Through characters such as Paul and early moments of rare sincerity, Sharpe proves that he can write affectingly. However, he condescends to the reader like an uneasy comedian afraid to bore the audience, relying heavily on his deadpan delivery of grotesque detail. His Mary--unsympathetic, smug and, worst of all for a fictional character, not memorable--is no Jane Eyre. (Mar.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Library Journal
Sharpe follows his witty collection Stories from the Tube with a zany novel of manners that stretches the imagination. A hermaphrodite named Mary White--a self-proclaimed "obnoxious, lonely, self-loathing American orphan"--relates the story of her life between the ages of 11 and 18 in the style of a Jane Austen memoir. In a wildly imaginative twist of circumstances beginning with her parents' death in a car accident, Mary and her twin brother, Paul, are raised by her uncommunicative aunt and cavalier uncle. After her brother's bizarre death, Mary is seduced by her sixth grade teacher, Skip Harman, who is subsequently fired by the school and speeds off with Mary to New York. Skip is an independently wealthy woman who surrounds herself with a cavalcade of eccentric characters who sweep into Mary's life. This debut novel of exaggerations encourages social criticism and is a clever and unpredictable tale of absurdities. Recommended for most collections.
-David A. Beron?, Univ. of New Hampshire, Durham
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
See all Editorial Reviews
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
Look Inside This Book
Browse Sample Pages:
Fron
Fron