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Sto caricando le informazioni... A Trip to the Stars: A Novel (originale 2011; edizione 2001)di Nicholas Christopher (Autore)
Informazioni sull'operaA Trip To The Stars: A Novel di Nicholas Christopher (2011)
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Iscriviti per consentire a LibraryThing di scoprire se ti piacerà questo libro. Attualmente non vi sono conversazioni su questo libro. Joy's review: Beautiful language, vivid descriptions, and a very inventive plot. The coincidences abound, but for some reason, I didn't mind this at all; maybe because despite the very realistic descriptions, it felt like a dream. The plot's rather hard to describe, so I won't even try. Christopher needs to do better research when describing particular places and events; he gets quite a bit wrong (and he has way too many female characters whose name starts with a 'D'. But if you can let that go, this is a thought-provoking book. I really wanted to love this book. At first I was enchanted by all the star and spider references, the magical realism, the underlying theme of the search for lost things…. but after a couple of hundred pages it just seemed to fizzle out. I think it was the overly detailed descriptions of the inhabitants of The Hotel Canopus. I couldn’t keep straight the convoluted relationships of 3 generations of women, all of whom had names which started with the letter “D”. I just kept wondering why I should care about these minor characters, and the hundreds of pages spent on them made very little difference in the plot. And Mala’s temporary career as a clairvoyant was just bizarre and unnecessary. I gritted my teeth and finished, but I’m kind of sorry I did. Update: while I was dissatisfied overall with this book, I am haunted by some of the images of Vietnam and the Cook Islands and every time I hear a lot of classic rock songs from this era I picture the stars over the South Pacific. Christopher's work is always hypnotic, but in this case, the work is nothing short of intoxicating. Woven of a labyrinthine hotel, exotic jungles, and ordinary passions, it moves forward with a sort of supernatural momentum that has the potential for leaving readers breathless and out of touch with their own realities, lost in the novel's passages and grace. Beginning with the separation of two unique characters, A Trip to the Stars works as a web of personalities and subplots, all as frighteningly believable as they are fascinating. The novel's unique tandem of science and fantasy is entrancing, a masterful journey of passion and hope in every guise imaginable. While Christopher's writing is poetic and clever, the story here is, in itself, worth falling into over and over again. This isn't a book so much as a journey, and it is wonderful.
If you were looking to write a crossover fantasy novel — one whose audience extended beyond sci-fi enthusiasts and aging Tolkienistas — you could hardly do better than to study “A Trip to the Stars.” With this zestful riff on an enduring genre, Nicholas Christopher should easily satisfy the admirers of his previous novel, “Veronica.” He is also likely to gain new readers, including those who foray reluctantly into so-called imaginative literature. ''A Trip to the Stars'' is on the whole a strongly written novel; I point to these uncharacteristically slack phrases merely to indicate that the rendering of the subtleties of emotional life is not Christopher's goal. Though set in the modern world (the story takes place against the backdrop of events like the Apollo moon landings and the Vietnam War), ''A Trip to the Stars'' is best read as a contribution to the literature of the fantastic -- an American descendant of ''The Arabian Nights'' -- and as such it's thoroughly satisfying, an erudite and artful entertainment. Breathtaking coincidences, magical occurrences, dramatic confrontations, mystical beliefs, the influence of astronomical phenomenon and the intriguing confluence of fate and chance are plot elements that bubble like champagne in Christopher's (Veronica) brilliantly labyrinthine new novel.
"A large, lavishly inventive novel . . . an American descendant of The Arabian Nights . . . erudite and artful entertainment."--The New York Times Book Review At a Manhattan planetarium in 1965, ten-year-old Enzo is whisked away from his young adoptive aunt, Mala. His abductor turns out to be a blood relative: his great-uncle Junius Samax, a wealthy former gambler who lives in a converted Las Vegas hotel surrounded by a priceless art collection and a host of fascinating, idiosyncratic guests. In Samax's magical world, Enzo receives a unique education and pieces together the mystery of his mother's life and the complicated history of his adoption. Back in New York, Mala only knows that Enzo has disappeared. After a yearlong search proves fruitless, she enlists in the Navy Nursing Corps and on a hospital ship off Vietnam falls in love with a wounded B-52 navigator, who disappears on his next mission. Devastated again, Mala embarks on a restless, adventurous journey around the world, hoping to overcome the losses that have transformed her life. Fusing imagination, scholarship, and suspense with remarkable narrative skill, Nicholas Christopher builds a story of tremendous scope, an epic tale of love and destiny, as he traces the intricate latticework of Mala's and Enzo's lives. Each remains separate from each other but tied in ways they cannot imagine--until the final miraculous chapter of this extraordinary novel. "A writer of remarkable gifts."--The Washington Post Book World "This labyrinthine novel . . . is animated by an encompassing lust for beauty."--The New Yorker "[Nicholas] Christopher is North America's García Márquez; Borges with emotional weight. . . . This is one of those rare books that, by connecting the stars, catches you in its web."--The Globe and Mail Includes an excerpt of Nicholas Christopher's Tiger Rag Non sono state trovate descrizioni di biblioteche |
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Google Books — Sto caricando le informazioni... GeneriSistema Decimale Melvil (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999Classificazione LCVotoMedia:
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But the super powers part isn't what made me put this book down, it's the writing. The author does a lot of telling and very little showing, it's like reading a Wikipedia article. Super disappointing, pass.