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nesetzengin's review against another edition
3.0
Nailles, Nellie ve Tony'den oluşan ailenin absürd günlük hallerinin anlatıldığı ilk bölüm iyiydi. Yetenekli Bay Ripley'e benzeyen Hammer'ın anlatıldığı ikinci bölüm yordu biraz. Günlerce yataktan çıkmayan Tony'nin hastalığının bir şaman tarafından iyileşmesi, Nailles'in banliyodeki bir yolculuk arkadaşının tren rayları tarafından yutulduğu/çekildiği sahne tam Cheever beklenecek ayrıntılar. Bir de Hammer sosyopatının cimri ninesinin eve davet ettiği arkadaşını kandırmak için istiridyenin içine Wallmart'tan aldığı inciyi koyması ve adamı şaşırtmasına uzun süre güldüm.
Güzel ayrıntılara rağmen Cheever'ın motivasyonunu, neden bu hikayeyi roman olarak tasarladığını anlamadım. Eğer banliyödeki aileleri incelemekse zaten öykülerinin çoğu zaten bu temaya dair. Bu roman büyük meseleler hakkında değil, bir sosyopatı oluşturan koşullar hakkında, sosyal tırmanış halinde olan bir ailenin tuhaf gündelik hikayeleri hakkında. Daha fazlası değil. Cheever öykülerini okumamış okurlar bu kitaptan başlamasın.
Güzel ayrıntılara rağmen Cheever'ın motivasyonunu, neden bu hikayeyi roman olarak tasarladığını anlamadım. Eğer banliyödeki aileleri incelemekse zaten öykülerinin çoğu zaten bu temaya dair. Bu roman büyük meseleler hakkında değil, bir sosyopatı oluşturan koşullar hakkında, sosyal tırmanış halinde olan bir ailenin tuhaf gündelik hikayeleri hakkında. Daha fazlası değil. Cheever öykülerini okumamış okurlar bu kitaptan başlamasın.
kate_in_a_book's review against another edition
4.0
This is a comedy, poking fun at suburbia, but it’s a dark, subtle kind of comedy. I certainly didn’t laugh out loud. The story is that of Eliot Nailles, sensible middle-class long-term resident of Bullet Park, a New York suburb, and his recently arrived neighbour Paul Hammer. At first glance Nailles is hard working, happily married, blessed with a perfect teenage son and admired by all around him, while Hammer is somehow mysterious, with a wife who says things she shouldn’t after a few drinks.
The first half of the book, perhaps predictably, cuts through that façade of suburbia and looks behind the closed doors at the details of Nailles’ life. His love for his wife Nellie borders on obsession but does she feel anything like the same loyalty for him? And his son Tony seems to have been struck down suddenly with some form of bedridden depression, which Nailles is trying desperately to both understand and find a cure for.
What I found interesting was that Cheever doesn’t entirely subvert the prevalent view of suburbia, because overall the picture painted is one of dreariness and predictability. Not that the writing is at all dreary, but if this section had gone on much longer I think I would soon have become bored.
My full review: http://www.noseinabook.co.uk/2014/01/22/we-seem-to-have-strayed-into-a-timeless-moral-vortex/
The first half of the book, perhaps predictably, cuts through that façade of suburbia and looks behind the closed doors at the details of Nailles’ life. His love for his wife Nellie borders on obsession but does she feel anything like the same loyalty for him? And his son Tony seems to have been struck down suddenly with some form of bedridden depression, which Nailles is trying desperately to both understand and find a cure for.
What I found interesting was that Cheever doesn’t entirely subvert the prevalent view of suburbia, because overall the picture painted is one of dreariness and predictability. Not that the writing is at all dreary, but if this section had gone on much longer I think I would soon have become bored.
My full review: http://www.noseinabook.co.uk/2014/01/22/we-seem-to-have-strayed-into-a-timeless-moral-vortex/
donmarrr's review against another edition
3.0
Bullet Park is de naam van een typisch Amerikaanse slaapstad waar zich het eerste deel van de roman afspeelt. Elliot Nailles, zijn vrouw Nellie en hun zoon Tony leiden er hun leven als schijnbaar gelukkig gezin in een mooi huis met elk weekend een party. Het tweede deel beschrijft de levensloop van Paul Hammer die een alles behalve 'gesettled' leven leidt en daar geestelijk aan ten onder gaat. In deel drie brengt het lot Hammer en Nailles samen. Hammer ziet in Tony het offer dat gebracht moet worden om zijn zielenrust te hervinden. Boeiend beeld van het naoorlogse Amerika. Vergelijkbaar met het beste werk van Updike. Kleine druk.
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John Cheever (1912-1982) wordt gezien als een van de grootste Amerikaanse schrijvers van de twintigste eeuw. Hij ontving onder andere de Pulitzer Prize for Fiction en kort voor hij in 1982 overleed, werd hem nog de National Medal for Literature uitgereikt.
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John Cheever (1912-1982) wordt gezien als een van de grootste Amerikaanse schrijvers van de twintigste eeuw. Hij ontving onder andere de Pulitzer Prize for Fiction en kort voor hij in 1982 overleed, werd hem nog de National Medal for Literature uitgereikt.
lavina_l's review against another edition
4.0
The short story is absolutely Cheever's strength, but this was still so entertaining and fun to read (I read more than half the book in one sitting). It's nice to get slightly more fleshed-out characters in the forms of Eliot Nailles and his son, Tony. Cheever gets right to the bone of people — their sentimentality and secrets and hopes and terribly mundane and hilarious thoughts — and somehow manages, wonderfully, to be both disdainful and sympathetic of them at the same time.
toddwe's review against another edition
The structure of this book reminded me of Franny & Zooey (Salinger), in that there were sections in different styles and from different perspectives. I wonder if the author thought through the entire book before writing, though, since the last 100 pages just barely necessitate the first 100. The writing is more modern than I expected, having never read Cheever before. I wish the author had spent more time with the story as opposed to 85% on character background / development, but it wasn't a terribly long book, and the quality of the writing--and what I can imagine it effected when it was published--makes up for the continual thought of 'so, when is there going to be something that actually happens?'
beccajdb's review against another edition
dark
funny
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Percipient, darkly comic, compelling and brilliantly written. A study of suburban America and the everyday oddness of living. A pared-down, chiselled-edge Franzen-type story.
blackoxford's review against another edition
2.0
So Very Sixties
A bizarre book full of absurdities and unfathomable details of travel and personal description.
An upper middle class New York suburb is chosen by an apparent psychopath for the location of a senseless murder. The target is the son of a local resident, undistinguished except for his smug racism, boredom and moderate alcohol and drug dependency. The motive appears to derive from a suggestion by the murderer's estranged mother that "...nothing less than a crucifixion..." will wake the world.
A metaphor for the perceived attack on or deterioration of middle class values during the 1960's? Possibly but then why would Cheever put such an attack in the mind and hands of another middle class nutcase? And what do the repeating tropes, like the white threads on clothing, the yellow room, allusions to homosexual panic, and the unaccounted for drowsiness of both would-be murderer and his victim, signify?
Locations - Rome, the Italian Alps, Switzerland, Cleveland - come and go without need or apparent purpose. Historical events - a political assassination, the translation of an Italian poet - are mentioned without context or consequence.
If this book had been written 30 years later, I would have pegged it as authored by an experimental AI programme. Perhaps Cheever was prescient enough to anticipate the technology. But I'm doubtful. Clearly I need someone to give me a skeleton key to Bullet Park.
A bizarre book full of absurdities and unfathomable details of travel and personal description.
An upper middle class New York suburb is chosen by an apparent psychopath for the location of a senseless murder. The target is the son of a local resident, undistinguished except for his smug racism, boredom and moderate alcohol and drug dependency. The motive appears to derive from a suggestion by the murderer's estranged mother that "...nothing less than a crucifixion..." will wake the world.
A metaphor for the perceived attack on or deterioration of middle class values during the 1960's? Possibly but then why would Cheever put such an attack in the mind and hands of another middle class nutcase? And what do the repeating tropes, like the white threads on clothing, the yellow room, allusions to homosexual panic, and the unaccounted for drowsiness of both would-be murderer and his victim, signify?
Locations - Rome, the Italian Alps, Switzerland, Cleveland - come and go without need or apparent purpose. Historical events - a political assassination, the translation of an Italian poet - are mentioned without context or consequence.
If this book had been written 30 years later, I would have pegged it as authored by an experimental AI programme. Perhaps Cheever was prescient enough to anticipate the technology. But I'm doubtful. Clearly I need someone to give me a skeleton key to Bullet Park.
ryan_lieske's review against another edition
3.0
Actual review: three and a half stars.
This is an odd, odd book, and probably won't be to everyone's taste. I imagine most readers might grow a bit frustrated with it during the first fifty pages or so. However, if you surrender yourself to the (admittedly off-kilter) narrative, you will soon find yourself swept up in a mordant, and at times shocking peek at the American psyche in the middle of the 20th century.
I don't want to give anything away, but the book follows three characters, whose fates are all intertwined in very bizarre ways. A sick, depressed teenager, his prosaic and benumbed father, and the man who plans to kill one of them.
This is a book that strips bare the facade of normalcy, and roots around in the befuddled, protean minds of these men to try and get at what makes them tick. It's rarely pretty. Or sympathetic.
Others on here have analyzed this book more efficiently than I, so check out the other reviews. I can only say that I enjoyed this dark, sometimes funny, sometimes melancholy novel about humans searching for solace and reason, and rarely finding either. I don't think it's the masterpiece that some do, but that isn't to say it's not still worth your time.
This is an odd, odd book, and probably won't be to everyone's taste. I imagine most readers might grow a bit frustrated with it during the first fifty pages or so. However, if you surrender yourself to the (admittedly off-kilter) narrative, you will soon find yourself swept up in a mordant, and at times shocking peek at the American psyche in the middle of the 20th century.
I don't want to give anything away, but the book follows three characters, whose fates are all intertwined in very bizarre ways. A sick, depressed teenager, his prosaic and benumbed father, and the man who plans to kill one of them.
This is a book that strips bare the facade of normalcy, and roots around in the befuddled, protean minds of these men to try and get at what makes them tick. It's rarely pretty. Or sympathetic.
Others on here have analyzed this book more efficiently than I, so check out the other reviews. I can only say that I enjoyed this dark, sometimes funny, sometimes melancholy novel about humans searching for solace and reason, and rarely finding either. I don't think it's the masterpiece that some do, but that isn't to say it's not still worth your time.
fedelikeslego's review
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
Mi è piaciuto molto leggerlo, rimasta molto delusa dal finale però. Tutto così inutile e improvviso.
podcast_buecherreich's review against another edition
3.0
Ausufernde Nebenstories, der große Knall wird auf den letzten 10 Seiten abgehandelt & die Motivation bleibt im Unklaren. Aber gut geschrieben