Seven Types of Ambiguity (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "He nearly called you again last night..." (more)
Key Phrases: fairground attendant, mainstream section, committal hearing, Joe Geraghty, Sid Graeme, Donald Sheere (more...)

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.
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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

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 640 pages
• Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover; First U.S. Edition edition (December 16, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 157322281X
• ISBN-13: 978-1573222815
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.4 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (71 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #691,123 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

45 of 47 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 (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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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.

46 of 49 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best novel of 2004, January 3, 2005

By	Candace "thepageturner" (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

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.

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars No Ambiguity: This Is A Masterpiece, January 10, 2005

By	Jill I. Shtulman (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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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.