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[a:Leif Enger|13591|Leif Enger|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1534287991p2/13591.jpg] stole my heart with [b:Peace Like a River|227571|Peace Like a River|Leif Enger|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1436139976l/227571._SY75_.jpg|3332231], holding me captive from the first page to the last. I was afraid he could not pull off that trick again, but he did. After the first few chapters, in which I was beginning to doubt, this book took off and sailed, dragging me along in its wake. It is not serious or wrenching like [b:Peace Like a River|227571|Peace Like a River|Leif Enger|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1436139976l/227571._SY75_.jpg|3332231], but it is endlessly entertaining, and who wants an author to write the same book twice?
There are three superb characters, offered up for our enjoyment. They populate the dying West, where the desperados are old, as are the lawmen chasing them. Monte Becket, a man who knows nothing of the West except the imaginings he has put into his surprisingly successful novel; Glendon Hale, a man with a past that he wants to atone for; and Charlie Siringo, a less than scrupulous Pinkerton man, find themselves locked into each other's lives and swept across the rapidly changing 1915 landscape from Minnesota to California . The book is a wild ride, with these three reminding me of the lost art of bronco busting, where winning or losing is always determined by who hangs on the longest.
The West here is a dying culture, where the only cowboys are in wild west shows, and names like Butch Cassidy are beginning to fade with the memories of the men who knew him. It is, also, a tale about redemption; a tale about finding out who you are, or who you can be, before it is too late.
You can’t explain grace, anyway, especially when it arrives almost despite yourself. I didn’t even ask for it, yet somehow it breached and began to work. I suppose grace was pouring over Glendon, who had sought it so hard, and some spilled down on me.
Many of the events of the book would seem ludicrous in isolation and perhaps even in afterthought, but I believed this story and every event in the reading. I was there. I saw it, vividly. I pictured Hale and Siringo with weathered faces and western drawls that identified them as different, as relics, but with a kind of magical character that would be missed in the future from which they would shortly be missing.
I am so glad I took the time out of my planned reading to work in this delightful book. I was sad to relinquish these characters in the end, but I have no problem imagining where they are now, beyond the confines of the book, because the end is never truly the end in this one. ( )
If a book doesn’t grab you by page 50, you shouldn’t feel bad for abandoning it. But SO BRAVE, YOUNG, AND HANDSOME should grab you right away with Leif Enger's typical writing style. However, I found that this book doesn’t live up to its promise.
Monte Becket is an author. He has written a bestseller, and everyone is anticipating what comes next. But he doesn’t have it in him, whatever “it” is. So he leaves his ever loving wife and child to join his neighbor, Glendon Hale, who is headed for Mexico. Glendon wants to apologize to the wife he left there many years before, and Monte wants to find "it."
What follows are chapter upon chapter upon chapter of unlikely events. This is how Monte gets from here to there, and the heck with his wife and child, who want him home. He ends up in California, where Glendon‘s wife has remarried and settled with her new husband. (It doesn’t spoil the story to tell you that.)
The book bored me to tears. I did not care about any one character. The whole thing is just plain silly. It felt like reading a comic book. ( )
In 1915 former train robber Glendon Hale undertakes a journey to escape his guilt and redeem himself. For his companion, he has convinced Monty, the story's witness and narrator, to accompany him, and he has a Pinkerton detective fast on his heels who is obsessed with capturing him. Throughout their encounters, along with Monty we are reminded of the complexities of a person's character. traits of good and evil. ( )
This novel combines a big Western story with characters and themes that you'll want to spend time mulling over. I really liked it, better than Peace Like a River which is an excellent book but I thought it was a little too sad much of the time. ( )
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Not to disappoint you, but my troubles are nothing – not for an author, at least.
Citazioni
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I looked at my son, the lover of mysteries. You could never guess what Redstart might say, for his mind was made of stories; he’d gathered all manner of splendid facts about gunpowder and deserts of the world and the anchoring of lighthouses against the furious sea; he knew which members of the James gang had once ridden into our town to knock over a bank and been shot to moist rags for their trouble; and about me he knew some things not even his mother knew, such as the exact number of novels I had abandoned on that porch.
Then letters began to arrive. I was still employed at the P.O. and was startled in the sorting room when envelopes bearing my name began crossing the desk. I rarely received mail – when I did it was apt to be from my mother, whose letters were straightforward offerings of gained wisdom. These on the other hand were praise from strangers who had read my little tale. … The daunting and completely unforeseen fact was this: They had mistaken me for a person of substance! I blushed but kept the letters. When I did hear from my mother, sometime later, she suggested I cling to my place at the post office and not let publication make me biggity. Fine advice, you will agree, yet vanity is a devious monkey.
“Jack London sets down a thousand a day before breakfast,” said I. Why do the foolish insist? But I was thinking of the modest dimensions a thousand words actually describe – a tiny essay, a fragment of conversation. “How hard can it be?” concluded your idiot narrator, lifting his glass to the future.
He was formal in the way of men grown apart, yet energy teemed behind his eyes and in some ways he seemed a boy himself. He might laugh abruptly at one of Redstart’s childish jokes; he was pleased by the simplest plays on language; and, like a boy, he kept eating rolls as long as there were rolls to be eaten. To Susannah he gave all possible deference, rising whenever she got up for more coffee or frosting, saying thank you in reverent tones and with averted eyes. These manners endeared him to Susannah straightaway, so that she looked round the table to make sure Redstart and I were noticing how a gentleman acts. He gave his story in bright shards.
She was a refined woman. It was disturbing to imagine her slinging my manuscript, goaded by my weak idioms.
Ultime parole
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“What are you writing?” asked Susannah. She was painting something, I couldn’t see what. “Just a sentence.” She lifted her head, a daub of orange below her lip. “Read it to me,” she said.
The story of an aging train robber on a quest to reconcile the claims of love and judgment on his life, and the failed writer who goes with him.
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Descrizione del libro
Minnesota, 1915. Monte Becket ha smarrito ogni spirito d'inventiva. Il suo unico successo, un romanzo diventato per caso un bestseller, è pressoché dimenticato. Monte conduce ora una vita semplice e piana, una moglie che lo ama al suo fianco e un figlio dall'intelligenza sorprendente. Ma in un giorno qualunque, in una stagione qualunque, la sua vita cambia radicalmente. Becket è a pesca lungo il fiume quando vede avvicinarsi, a bordo di una barca a remi, Glendon Hale, il più celebre e temuto rapinatore di treni dello Stato, ricercato (e mai catturato) ormai da anni. E, per quanto incredibile possa apparire, questi due uomini, pur non avendo nulla in comune, diverranno grandi amici: tanto che il fuorilegge strapperà Becket alla famiglia, per condurlo con sé in un'avventurosa fuga verso la California. Un viaggio attraverso il West più selvaggio e primitivo, che metterà a dura prova tanto l'autenticità del senso della legge di Monte, quanto l'inviolabilità della sua morale. Lungo un percorso movimentato da bizzarri incontri e dalle continue fughe da Charles Siringo, il detective che da sempre è sulle tracce di Glendon, Monte scoprirà così il fascino della strada: fino a realizzare che, da un'esperienza simile, non gli sarà mai più possibile tornare indietro.
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(3.74)
1
There are three superb characters, offered up for our enjoyment. They populate the dying West, where the desperados are old, as are the lawmen chasing them. Monte Becket, a man who knows nothing of the West except the imaginings he has put into his surprisingly successful novel; Glendon Hale, a man with a past that he wants to atone for; and Charlie Siringo, a less than scrupulous Pinkerton man, find themselves locked into each other's lives and swept across the rapidly changing 1915 landscape from Minnesota to California . The book is a wild ride, with these three reminding me of the lost art of bronco busting, where winning or losing is always determined by who hangs on the longest.
The West here is a dying culture, where the only cowboys are in wild west shows, and names like Butch Cassidy are beginning to fade with the memories of the men who knew him. It is, also, a tale about redemption; a tale about finding out who you are, or who you can be, before it is too late.
You can’t explain grace, anyway, especially when it arrives almost despite yourself. I didn’t even ask for it, yet somehow it breached and began to work. I suppose grace was pouring over Glendon, who had sought it so hard, and some spilled down on me.
Many of the events of the book would seem ludicrous in isolation and perhaps even in afterthought, but I believed this story and every event in the reading. I was there. I saw it, vividly. I pictured Hale and Siringo with weathered faces and western drawls that identified them as different, as relics, but with a kind of magical character that would be missed in the future from which they would shortly be missing.
I am so glad I took the time out of my planned reading to work in this delightful book. I was sad to relinquish these characters in the end, but I have no problem imagining where they are now, beyond the confines of the book, because the end is never truly the end in this one.
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