Pagina principaleGruppiConversazioniAltroStatistiche
Cerca nel Sito
Questo sito utilizza i cookies per fornire i nostri servizi, per migliorare le prestazioni, per analisi, e (per gli utenti che accedono senza fare login) per la pubblicità. Usando LibraryThing confermi di aver letto e capito le nostre condizioni di servizio e la politica sulla privacy. Il tuo uso del sito e dei servizi è soggetto a tali politiche e condizioni.

Risultati da Google Ricerca Libri

Fai clic su di un'immagine per andare a Google Ricerca Libri.

Sto caricando le informazioni...

Gabriel's Gift

di Hanif Kureishi

UtentiRecensioniPopolaritàMedia votiCitazioni
503648,279 (3.15)37
"Gabriel's father, a washed-up rock musician, has been chucked out of the house. His mother works nights in a pub and sleeps days. Navigating his way through the shattered world of his parents' generation, Gabriel dreams of being an artist. He finds solace and guidance through a mysterious connection to his deceased twin brother, Archie, and his own knack for producing real objects simply by drawing them." "A chance visit with mega-millionaire rock star Lester Jones, his father's former band mate, provides Gabriel with the means to heal the rift within his family. Kureishi portrays Gabriel's naive hope and artistic aspirations with the same insight and searing honesty that he brought to the Indian-Anglo experience in The Buddha of Suburbia and to infidelity in Intimacy. Gabriel's Gift is a humorous and tender meditation on failure, redemption, the nature of talent, the power of imagination - and a generation that never wanted to grow up, seen through the eyes of their children."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved… (altro)
Nessuno
Sto caricando le informazioni...

Iscriviti per consentire a LibraryThing di scoprire se ti piacerà questo libro.

Attualmente non vi sono conversazioni su questo libro.

» Vedi le 37 citazioni

A child's view of the world makes ordinary occurances and typical family drama seem new and exciting, and it is clear that Kureishi has drawn upon this technique to drive his story of a torn family. The parental figures are typical washouts from 1960s-era London whose surprise at finding how mundane and unsuccessful their lives are makes them bitter and self-loathing, but through Gabiel's eyes they are just his parents. He may not fully grasp why they are such children, but he knows that he must not be like them at all costs. He must find his passion and utilize his talent so that his life doesn't default to somewhere boring and unfulfilling. Overall, this was a very interesting read, but I'm still not quite sure how old Gabriel is, since people treat him like a young child, but he acts and thinks like a much older teenager. ( )
  JaimieRiella | Feb 25, 2021 |
Oh my… but this was so profoundly awful on every level that I can hardly believe I read it, let alone that for some unfathomable and criminal reason, it was once placed on the 1001 list.

Badly written with flat characters who say and do entirely predictable things, this has a plot that, if Kureishi could actually write, might not be half bad. But he can’t write and the novel thus turns out wholly bad.

Gabriel’s parents separate and his father, a failed musician, attempts to salvage something for his future by reconnecting with Lester Jones, a famous rock musician he once played with in the 1970s. This results in Gabriel receiving a gift of a drawing from Lester. To protect his possession from his money-grubbing relatives, Gabriel duplicates the drawing and passes his own copies off as originals to more than one member of the cast. This ploy soon lands him in a dilemma, and this is where a good writer would have tied the plot in farcical knots. Kureishi’s simple attempt unravels at the first step with no surprises, and in the end everything resolves itself as if he was writing a screenplay for Disney.

Waste. Of. Time.

The eponymous Gabriel is supposedly 15, but you wouldn’t know it from some of the situations Kureishi puts him in:

At work [his mother] was like a woman he used to know.

This must mean he’s experienced enough to not only know a range of women but to have moved on from a few of them and achieved some kind of history with the opposite sex. More experienced than I was at 15 that’s for sure.

Not only does this 15-year-old understand avant gardism without any context or explanation, he dedicates his life to it:

‘At night even the most conservative of us becomes an avant gardist,’ his mother had said.
Gabriel was very interested in this. ‘I want to be an avant gardist all the time,’ he said.

The banality doesn’t stop there. I could have quoted swathes of the text for badly constructed writing that defines contrivance, but instead, I’ll just give one example of when Gabriel is sketching a pair of his boots alone in his room late one night:

In the centre of the page was a boot-shaped hole. As he turned the page, the boots were sucked back onto it, and everything returned to normal.
Or did it?

I expected the next line to read “duh duuuuuuuhhhhhh” and to hear 1950s gothic horror film music at this point, but everything just carried on as normal.

Or did it?

Actually, yeah, it did. I couldn’t wait for it to end. He writes so badly that at times I thought I was reading the first draft he’d put together when he’d had aspirations of being a writer at primary school. I honestly don’t think anyone would be worse off not having read this. ( )
  arukiyomi | Oct 14, 2016 |
Absolutely loved Kureishi's writing. In a matter of a few sentences the reader is whisked into the mind and heart of an adolescent boy trying to understand the rollercoaster which is life. At the core of this novella is the question of how to hold onto imagination? How to hold onto losses...a twin, a marriage, the truth, ideals? Wonderfully crafted, this book is a gem! ( )
  hemlokgang | Nov 19, 2012 |
small book about some london's family, no recommendet
  yevgenb | May 11, 2010 |
Gabriel er 15 år da moren hans kaster ut faren. Hun er fed up av mannens tiltaksløshet og mangel på retning i livet sitt. Faren må ta til takke med en heller trist hybeltilværelse, og han er konstant blakk. Det lille han har går stort sett til øl, og han skylder penger i øst og vest. Samtidig flytter den øst-europeiske au pairen Hannah inn hos Gabriel og moren. Hannah har to store interesser i livet; å spise og se på TV. Moren har ansatt henne for å hindre at Gabriel havner på skråplanet. Selv er hun nemlig aldri hjemme.

Faren er en avdanket rocker som aldri ble berømt, noe han egentlig aldri har klart å avfinne seg med. Karrieren som bassist i Lester Jones´ band tok en brå slutt da han datt ned fra platåskoene sine en gang på 70-tallet, og ødela ankelen. Nå er han dypt deprimert og om mulig enda mer tiltaksløs.

Gabriel blir stående mellom foreldrene sine, og alle skilsmissebarn vil kjenne seg godt igjen i den kommunikasjonen som foregår mellom foreldrene via barnet. Gabriel får ikke tid til sitt eget liv fordi han må støtte foreldrene sine, og planene om å lage film legges på is.

En dag får han være med faren på besøk hos Lester Jones, og dette møtet blir vendepunktet ikke bare i Gabriels liv, men også i farens og etter hvert morens liv.

Dette er en herlig og morsom roman som jeg anbefaler på det varmeste! ( )
  Rose-Marie | Sep 12, 2008 |
nessuna recensione | aggiungi una recensione
Devi effettuare l'accesso per contribuire alle Informazioni generali.
Per maggiori spiegazioni, vedi la pagina di aiuto delle informazioni generali.
Titolo canonico
Dati dalle informazioni generali inglesi. Modifica per tradurlo nella tua lingua.
Titolo originale
Titoli alternativi
Data della prima edizione
Personaggi
Luoghi significativi
Eventi significativi
Film correlati
Epigrafe
Dedica
Incipit
Citazioni
Ultime parole
Nota di disambiguazione
Redattore editoriale
Elogi
Lingua originale
DDC/MDS Canonico
LCC canonico

Risorse esterne che parlano di questo libro

Wikipedia in inglese (1)

"Gabriel's father, a washed-up rock musician, has been chucked out of the house. His mother works nights in a pub and sleeps days. Navigating his way through the shattered world of his parents' generation, Gabriel dreams of being an artist. He finds solace and guidance through a mysterious connection to his deceased twin brother, Archie, and his own knack for producing real objects simply by drawing them." "A chance visit with mega-millionaire rock star Lester Jones, his father's former band mate, provides Gabriel with the means to heal the rift within his family. Kureishi portrays Gabriel's naive hope and artistic aspirations with the same insight and searing honesty that he brought to the Indian-Anglo experience in The Buddha of Suburbia and to infidelity in Intimacy. Gabriel's Gift is a humorous and tender meditation on failure, redemption, the nature of talent, the power of imagination - and a generation that never wanted to grow up, seen through the eyes of their children."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Non sono state trovate descrizioni di biblioteche

Descrizione del libro
Riassunto haiku

Discussioni correnti

Nessuno

Copertine popolari

Link rapidi

Voto

Media: (3.15)
0.5 1
1 3
1.5
2 11
2.5 2
3 31
3.5 10
4 23
4.5 1
5 2

Sei tu?

Diventa un autore di LibraryThing.

 

A proposito di | Contatto | LibraryThing.com | Privacy/Condizioni d'uso | Guida/FAQ | Blog | Negozio | APIs | TinyCat | Biblioteche di personaggi celebri | Recensori in anteprima | Informazioni generali | 203,195,237 libri! | Barra superiore: Sempre visibile