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Title: Garden State: A Novel by Rick Moody ISBN: 0-316-55763-3 Publisher: Back Bay Books Pub. Date: 02 April, 1997 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.18 (17 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: The Garden State:Beautiful scenery, but cold
Comment: Upon picking up Rick Moody's Garden State,one might think it to be representative of the current trend of hip fiction: rife with drugs, sex, profane dialogue,and stark prose. As it happens it has all of these but the last; Moody's writing is dense and wordy, more so than the subject matter seems to merit. At times I had to read passages two or three times to understand what was going on- sticky metaphors are used in places where a more straightforward narrative might have been more elegant.
Moody spins a trendily downbeat tale, with angstful and interchangeable twenty-somethings desperately spinning through prettily rendered New Jersey wastelands, going nowhere in particular. Characters drift in and out of the different plots- among them the saga of a floundering rock band and the homecoming of an unbalanced prodigal son- which always seem about to converge but never quite do. Three-quarters of the way through the book I was unsure where the book was going, and by the end I didn't care. Vivid imagery can only go so far: Rick Moody can write, but in Garden State he has written something I didn't care to read
Rating: 5
Summary: My Favourite
Comment: I have only recently discovered Rick Moody & in a short period have read almost all of his books - this is my favourite. The stories here are reasonably varied in content, & he has a lot of fun taking liberties with form & style & content (what a story should be). These are not necessarily just straight narratives, but play around with ideas of meaningful coincedence & circles of happenings. It's always good to see a writer unafraid of taking risks in order to get at some sort of truth - it's what great artistry is all about (I think anyway). I too, along with the other person who has written a review, like the stories 'Phrase Book' (the girl who took a massive hit of acid) and 'The Apocalypse of Bob Paisner' (a term paper in which a guy flunking out of school relates his life to the Bible). One thing about Moody, apart from everything else, is that his characters here are always wholly believeable. Even if the situations are sometimes extreme, the characters ring true - they are created with a great deal of empathy, & if the reaction to them isn't always empathetic, at least it's with understanding. This, to me, is the most important feature. The last story in the book is quite self-revelatory. It's a neat idea - Moody uses a selection of books from his bookshelf as a 'Bibliography' & footnotes occasional ones in order to explain certain parts of his life. I think it takes a person a lot of courage to expose themselves implicitly like this (but it sure beats a publishers blurb on the back cover). Rick Moody is a very good writer & you don't get too much better in contemporary writing than Ring of the Brightest Angels Around Heaven.
Rating: 2
Summary: Ummm...What was the Point again?
Comment: In "Garden State", Rick Moody tries to pull off Bret Easton Ellis by way of Haledon, NJ and either succeeds brilliantly or fails horribly depending on your viewpoint. The novel has a lot going for it, but ultimately I finished the book out of inertia rather than actually caring about the outcome or any of the characters in it. Like Bon Jovi's ode to the state, I wanted to like this book, but it just wasn't my cup of tea.
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Title: Purple America: A Novel by Rick Moody ISBN: 0316559776 Publisher: Back Bay Books Pub. Date: 04 May, 1998 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Demonology: Stories by Rick Moody ISBN: 0316592102 Publisher: Back Bay Books Pub. Date: 10 April, 2002 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: The Ice Storm: A Novel by Rick Moody ISBN: 0316706000 Publisher: Back Bay Books Pub. Date: 10 April, 2002 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: The Black Veil by Rick Moody ISBN: 0316739014 Publisher: Back Bay Books Pub. Date: 12 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: My Life in Heavy Metal by Steve Almond ISBN: 0802140130 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: March, 2003 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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