Scan barcode
kainsbird's review against another edition
challenging
dark
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
“The shaved skulls, Farragut thought, will always be with us. They are easily recognised but impossible to alter or cure. Farragut longed fleetingly for a class structures and benighted hierarchies. They could exploit the shaved heads. Marshack was stupid. Stupidity was his greatest usefulness; his vocation. He was very useful. He was indispensable at greasing machinery and splicing BX cables and he would be a courageous and fierce mercenary in some border skirmish if someone more sophisticated gave the orders to attack. There would be some universal goodness in the man. He would give you a match for your cigarette and save you a seat at the movies. But there was no universality to his lack of intelligence. Marshack might respond to the sovereignty of love, but he could not master geometry and he should not be asked to. Farragut put him down as a killer.”
sam12213's review against another edition
3.0
Yeah this took me almost a year to read because it's... not very good. Might be on me for not possessing the presence of mind to follow the very disjointed / stream of consciousness type narrative and I do think there are a lot of elements that do work (mostly the flashbacks highlighting Farragut's relationship with his family) but overall this is kinda hard to get through. Ceaseless blabbering.
alisonjfields's review against another edition
4.0
A rough, beautifully written tale of confinement and/or the WASPiest prison novel of all time. I'm not always objective in my love of John Cheever, but if you're the type to bristle at his well-heeled, ennui-ed New Englanders in other works, you might derive considerable pleasure from watching one of them try to survive after being imprisoned for murder.
barts_books's review against another edition
3.0
A curious and strange prison novel. A lot of Cheever hallmarks are there: the intense sexuality, the struggle with addiction, the fall from social grace. However I didn't find it as an enriching experience as his short stories. Maybe I just feel much empathy for the characters here.
3.5 stars
3.5 stars
anneliehyatt's review against another edition
4.0
I’m not sure that this novel is best understood when compared to other great prison novels, as many reviewers are inclined to do. Cheever’s prose is masterful and stirring in this compact novel, which has an interesting structure as it mainly strings together anecdotes about the other prisoners’ pasts as well as his own struggle to recover from opium withdrawal. This novel is unjustly criticized for not adhering to a gripping plot, or not addressing the issues of the penal system that many other prison works speak toward. This further convinced me that Falcolner is often grievously misread. I will admit that it is a bit confusing at times, and there are moments that are a slog to get through in what is already a short novel. However, I really enjoyed it. Cheever is immensely talented, and his vocabulary so advanced that it’s hard to believe that he never graduated college. Thank you to one of my supervisors for making me aware of his existence and his work.