Adrenalin Mother. Adrenalin Mother, with your dress of comets and shoes of swift bird wings and shadow of jumping fish, thank you for touching, understanding and loving my life.
Without you, I am dead. The humor is there, and the absurdity that Brautigan is so good at is there also to certain extent at least. The idea of the library for example is absolutely wonderful. I'm not the only one that thinks so.
But the story is slower than most of his novels that I have read so far, and it doesn't reach quite the same hight. I even found it a little bit repetitive at times. Okay, Brautigan often plays with repetition, but here it felt repetitive, rather than interesting.
Still, there were some laughs along the way, and I enjoyed parts of it very much. Just not as much as most of the Brautigan novels that I have read before. I hadn't read this in about twenty years, I'm guessing, and I wondered how it would hold up.
Richard Brautigan writes like no other, and I still love him to death, but reading him at 40 instead of 20 is a different experience. I used to recommend him to "young people" who read the usual counter-culture stuff Bukowski, Burroughs, Thompson [that's Hunter S. He's very of his time, and I hate to go so fa I hadn't read this in about twenty years, I'm guessing, and I wondered how it would hold up.
He's very of his time, and I hate to go so far as to say "dated," but, no, let's just leave it at of his time. Beautiful, gentle, poetic writing, funny, absurd, trippy. If someone like, say, Ryan Adams who has a book of poetry out now described a woman as having hair that hung like bat lightning around her face, I'd want to punch him. When Richard Brautigan says it, I go with it. But I don't know how many other people nowadays would.
May 10, Dave rated it it was amazing Recommends it for: anyone who likes something different. I really dig Brautigan and all of his works. This book was recommended to me by another student at the time because it is about a guy who runs a library and lives with his girl friend in the place.
The funny thing is that anyone can bring a book he or she wrote to add to the shelves of the library. The main character gets his girl friend pregnant and they take a trip to Mexico so that she can get an abortion.
I like Brautigan's style and I tend to write like him in my own stories. Feb 17, Mat rated it it was amazing Shelves: beat , to-read-again. Wow, what a great novel. Just when I think I have read the best Brautigan novel and he can't possibly get any better, then I read this and realise that, like William Burroughs, his writing got better and better with age.
Many people rave about Naked Lunch but really Burroughs's magnum opus is the incredibly wild and fantastic The Western Lands - a book he wrote towards the end of his life. Similarly, with Richard Brautigan, many know him as the writer of Trout Fishing in America which has sold ar Wow, what a great novel.
Similarly, with Richard Brautigan, many know him as the writer of Trout Fishing in America which has sold around 2 million copies or more to date , which was and still is a great wet fish across the reader's face Really enjoyed it but it wasn't until I read The Hawkline Monster that I could fully grasp the greatness of his full potential as a writer.
Now I come to The Abortion - a book as well written as The Hawkline Monster but one which is much more serious in content. Not that The Abortion is without funny moments of his renowned dry, droll and laconic Brautigan wit and humour. It has plenty of that but it also resounds with moments of poetic beauty for example on page - "It was hard for a minute and then we both smiled across the darkness at what we were doing.
Though we could not see our smiles, we knew they were there and it comforted us as dark-night smiles have been doing for thousands of years for the problemed people of the earth" and towards the end of the novel gut-wrenching sadness.
Brautigan is able to skilfully blend and weave all of these elements into the novel to deliver a powerful punch on the reader. Without going into too much detail, the book is centred around a young man whom we can fairly safely assume to be based on Brautigan himself who has taken on the job of looking after a library. This is no ordinary library but one which welcomes all the previously unwelcome and unpublished books around the world by writers of any age.
Once you take on the job though, you can never leave the library. As more and more people are coming in all the time. People come in and choose a shelf and have their book registered in the library ledgers.
Foster is the narrator's friend who takes care of the books stored in the caves I guess the library's actual capacity ran out long ago. Then there is the beautiful Vida, a woman so beautiful that she is haunted and chased by her own beauty with admirers here, there and everywhere.
Vida gets pregnant to the librarian custodian and they head to Mexico for an abortion, arranged for them by Foster who knows a Mexican doctor who can do it for them. I won't say any more but the book moves ahead at a perfectly timed pace with Brautigan's signature crisp and concise chapters, leading the reader gently towards an exciting finale that has you gripping on to the edge of your book for dear life. Well, kind of. Got a little bit carried away there.
My keyboard has been drinking, not me. Thank you Richard for another great novel. Brautigan should be compulsory reading in any modern literature class, in my humble opinion. Thanks to the Rikkyo University Library for letting me rent out a copy of this great book. Oct 15, Ro rated it did not like it. Book is rubbish! I wanted to read it because I'd heard about the concept of the library of unpublished manuscripts.
Thought that was a pretty interesting idea and I enjoyed reading about the elderly woman who came into this library to submit the book she had written about growing flowers in a hotel room by candlelight.
The first few chapters talk about the idea of the library, and that's quite nice. Then you have to sift through page after page of very poor writing about how beautiful this man's Book is rubbish!
Then you have to sift through page after page of very poor writing about how beautiful this man's girlfriend - Vera - is and how terribly confusing this is for men who encounter her A stand out moment was the entire chapter dedicated to two men being surprised at Vera's ability to drive a vehicle.
The journey for Vera to get an abortion isn't written as if it has much emotional difference to any road trip to Mexico. There's no consideration of how Vera feels about any of this: just an emphasis on her attraction.
I'd write here that this book would be more interesting if an effort had been made to enter into Vera's thoughts on this, but that would be a lie because on top of the narrative having no substance, it's also just awfully written.
On top of this, Brautigan has written in repeated racist descriptions of people in the street who aren't linked to plot and I can't work out why he included them aside from a fancy for racial slurs. I only finished it because it was so bad that I wanted to finish it, to understand its full badness.
I think you can actually read him getting bored of himself as the book progresses. I am glad that it was short. Pure shite. View 2 comments. My second trip through Brautigan's surreal romantic landscape.
I first read this book while in college in and it blew me away like most almost everything counter-culture and avant-garde blew my hayseed mind away back then. Twenty years later I am similarly impressed. Brautigan is a prose poet of a novelist and this one unfolds like the relaxed field of daisies for hire he describes, brought on by nipping whiskey in the afternoon, newly in love.
The objectification of women is dealt with hea My second trip through Brautigan's surreal romantic landscape.
But it was interesting to see and something I hadn't noticed during the first go. For lovers of physical books and bookstacks, it's worth it merely for the descriptions of the myriad books deposited in the mysterious library where the events of the story unfold.
This book was mentioned in the This American Life episode on libraries. The idea of a library where anyone could drop off a book they've written is fantastic. The act that developed from it was interesting to listen to and made me seek out this book, which was sort of hard to find.
The trouble for me is that the majority of the story isn't about the library and how it's run. I wanted more about the people who bring in books and the types of books they bring in.
The very 60s story about going to g This book was mentioned in the This American Life episode on libraries. The very 60s story about going to get an abortion in Mexico? Less interesting. Also waaaaaaaaay too many comments about Vida's perfect body. Quick read. Glad I hunted it down. The rest is fine. Mar 30, Amy rated it did not like it. I wanted to like this book after hearing about it on the This American Life episode on libraries.
The library described as being open 24 hours a day and allowing any submission of unpublished book being an interesting concept. However, this is a novel about an abortion from the perspective of a man where the female involved is so not flushed out that all we know about her is that she has a Barbie-esque body, with breasts that don't move.
Her beauty is so great that there is risk of accident beca I wanted to like this book after hearing about it on the This American Life episode on libraries. Her beauty is so great that there is risk of accident because people stare at her. This is like the fantasy of an adult male who lives in his mother's basement. No thank you. Dec 01, Ben Loory rated it it was amazing Recommended to Ben by: my mom. Jan 15, Sahar Hamed rated it liked it.
Although I love Brautigan and there's no doubt in him being one of the best Magic Realism authors,but I was a little bit disappointed in this book. The idea of the library was great, and how the librarian had the chance to meet this beautiful Vida and how they got along was interesting.
But the rest of the book was unbelievably boring. Add a review Your Rating: Your Comment:. Sombrero Fallout by Richard Brautigan. The Abortion by Richard Brautigan. In Watermelon Sugar by Richard Brautigan. Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut. If you see a Google Drive link instead of source url, means that the file witch you will get after approval is just a summary of original book or the file has been already removed. Loved each and every part of this book.
I will definitely recommend this book to fiction, novels lovers. Your Rating:.
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