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Title: The Twenty-Seventh City by Jonathan Franzen ISBN: 0312420145 Publisher: Picador Pub. Date: 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.78
Rating: 5
Summary: Beautiful Losers
Comment: I began this book intrigued by it's premise but with my guard most definitely up. I've seen my lovely hometown of Saint Louis become the butt of jokes and, in the eyes of many condescending east coasters, the epitomy on middle-american banality. I didn't want to experience yet another misguided characterization of my beautiful, beautiful city.
These fears where quickly allayed as I was drawn deeply into Frazen's intelligent and graceful prose. The author seems to care passionately about the fate of St.Louis and cities like it all across the U.S. The city's faded aspirations work wonderfully as the backdrop of one of the most involving, funniest, smartest contemporary novels I've read in the last decade. One needn't be from St.Louis to be thoroughly seduced by The Twenty-Seventh City. As for my hometown, there is a chapter early on in which Mr.Frazen describes St.Lou's rise, brief realization, and stunning decline. I have never read an account the captures the city's history so succinctly and with such heart-breaking honesty. I only wish all St. Louisan's and citizens of cities like it, read Frazen's book. Perhaps we can still salvage these wonderful urban places before it's too late.
Rating: 5
Summary: A must-read
Comment: I'm not good at writing reviews, but I'm writing this because there are no reviews of this book and people need to know how compelling it is. I read The Corrections first, and loved it, so I sought out Franzen's other two novels, The Twenty-Seventh City and Strong Motion. Once I started reading The Twenty-Seventh City, I couldn't stop.
The story is set in St. Louis in the mid-'80s. When the position of Chief of Police becomes vacant, somehow the Police Commissioner of Bombay, India, a woman named S. Jammu, gets the job. Once she is installed, she and her henchman set about achieving their goals (which never really become clear, so if you're not comfortable with unanswered questions, you should probably avoid this book) by any means necessary, including electronic snooping, murder, and terrorist attacks. None of Jammu's many supporters is aware of the connection between her and all the violent events that happen after she is installed as Chief of Police. The story centers on Jammu's efforts to persuade Martin Probst, a prominent St. Louisan and the last holdout to her agenda, to approve her plan to merge the city of St. Louis with the West County. Her campaign is a lot more complicated, suspenseful and dramatic than you might expect.
Jonathan Franzen's writing is wonderful in this book, though not at the level of art that he reaches in The Corrections. Franzen's writing combined with a suspenseful and mysterious story results in a book that you simply can't stop reading. I was sorry when it ended.
Rating: 2
Summary: an over-ambitious mess...
Comment: 'The Twenty-Seventh City' is my first experience of Jonathan Franzen. Suffice to say it did not make me a fan. While I can understand where some amazon.com reviewers found it to be a panoramic story of greed and corruption, I share the views of most reviewers who feel this effort was WAY over-blown, chaotic, and a depressing reading experience. I was glad I finished it, and would have been happier not to have started it!
Okay, the story is about a corrupt police official in St Louis. She comes from Bombay and brings along a host of criminals, junkies, and other misfits. Naturally she is corrupt and terribly ambitious. Challenging her are an assortment of St Louisans who are, well, only modestly corrupt but rather inept... this book has probably a dozen major characters with at least twice as many minor characters. It's all very tiresome to keep track who is who, especially since many of the characters seem to have little impact on the story.
This book was not published in the UK for over a dozen years, not until Franzen became popular because of his 'The Corrections' ... I can understand completely why UK publishers didn't bother with 'The Twenty-Seventh City' for so long, and I don't expect it will be reprinted here any time soon.
Bottom line: some decent prose but overall a dreadful reading experience.
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Title: Strong Motion: A Novel by Jonathan Franzen ISBN: 031242051X Publisher: Picador Pub. Date: 2001 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: How to Be Alone: Essays by Jonathan Franzen ISBN: 0374173273 Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux Pub. Date: 01 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
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Title: The Corrections: A Novel by Jonathan Franzen ISBN: 0312421273 Publisher: Picador Pub. Date: 27 August, 2002 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Desperate Characters: A Novel by Paula Fox, Jonathan Franzen ISBN: 039331894X Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: 01 May, 1999 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Nobody's Fool (Vintage Contemporaries) by Richard Russo ISBN: 0679753338 Publisher: Vintage Books Pub. Date: 1994 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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