Jeremy Pauling is a bachelor with a passion for making sculptures out of odds and ends. He is also fearful of beautiful women, so when his new lodger, Mary, arrives, he is faced with a challenge he really cannot handle. From the author of THE ACCIDENTAL TOURIST and BREATHING LESSONS.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Celestial Navigation
and over 1.5 million other books are available for Amazon Kindle . Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Visit the Books Trade-In Store for more details. Special Offer until June 30, 2013: Receive an additional £5 promotional Gift Certificate, when you trade-in at least £10 worth of books. Learn more. |
Book Description
Product details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, and more.
Product Description
Review
"A rich, revolutionary novel...she writes with virtuosity and perfect confidence, insight and compassion" (The Times )
"Anne Tyler's talent is to make extraordinary characters entirely credible... So unfaltering is their story that every word is convincing" (Sunday Times )
"Tyler has created two characters at once entirely original and entirely convincing...a quiet but immensely strong novel, to admire and treasure" (Sunday Telegraph ) --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
"Anne Tyler's talent is to make extraordinary characters entirely credible... So unfaltering is their story that every word is convincing" (Sunday Times )
"Tyler has created two characters at once entirely original and entirely convincing...a quiet but immensely strong novel, to admire and treasure" (Sunday Telegraph ) --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
Book Description
From the Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Amateur Marriage, comes this unusual and touching novel about two oddly-assorted characters and their intertwined lives.
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Browse and search another edition of this book.
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This is a novel about an artist, perhaps a great one, not at all an easy thing to attempt: you have to navigate around the shoals of sentimentality about tragic suffering (see Van Gogh); and describing plastic art in a way that conveys more than your own enthusiasm is very difficult too. This artist, Jeremy, is not at all unlike Joseph Cornell, the maker of boxes, famously reclusive, modest, shy and poor, unwilling to leave his house - but even Cornell had more outside life than Tyler gives Jeremy, though he didn't have a wife.
The wife of the great artist is also a commonly attempted subject nowadays, and in this book we root as much for Mary as for Jeremy. The trouble is, I think, that, though we are pleased when they get together and have their many rather faceless children, we don't believe it. Therefore when the end of the book comes, perfectly logically, we don't like it.
But there is a good deal to like in Celestial Navigation - the strange sense of timelessness (with Anne Tyler we always seem to be 20, 30, 40 years behind the given date), the sheer length of life, the dreamlike innerness of an old many-storied house, the sharp pain of regret at uncommunicated love - and the other characters; another damaging mother (as in Homesick Restaurant), a parasitic young drifter, a spinster who finds her role.
Five or six books compete for the title of Tyler's best novel. This one would come sixth or seventh, but still essential reading.
I sometimes have a sense of her as a writer for very old children, people like us perhaps.
The wife of the great artist is also a commonly attempted subject nowadays, and in this book we root as much for Mary as for Jeremy. The trouble is, I think, that, though we are pleased when they get together and have their many rather faceless children, we don't believe it. Therefore when the end of the book comes, perfectly logically, we don't like it.
But there is a good deal to like in Celestial Navigation - the strange sense of timelessness (with Anne Tyler we always seem to be 20, 30, 40 years behind the given date), the sheer length of life, the dreamlike innerness of an old many-storied house, the sharp pain of regret at uncommunicated love - and the other characters; another damaging mother (as in Homesick Restaurant), a parasitic young drifter, a spinster who finds her role.
Five or six books compete for the title of Tyler's best novel. This one would come sixth or seventh, but still essential reading.
I sometimes have a sense of her as a writer for very old children, people like us perhaps.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
By hiljean
VINE™ VOICE
Format:Paperback
This is a story spanning 13 years and centring around the misanthropic Jeremy Pauling. The structure is unusual for Anne Tyler with different narrators for each chapter, but despite her usual excellent writing, the storyline left me feeling, like other reviewers, ultimately unsatisfied.
By B
Format:Paperback
Oh yet another book about asperges , I think? If I sound in doubt, apologies its just that Ms Tyler never really spells it out so one can't be sure. Despite reading this book as best as I could I also knew very little about some of the main characters either and I was left frustrated at the sadness and emptiness of their lives.
Jeremy's sadness and loss was well portrayed though and I wanted to know what happened to him though the 'end' result though not of my choosing was skipped and rushed a little as are many novels when one has a dead line to keep [ please note writers , readers do noticed] I still found it to be the most realistic . Alas unlike the idea that he may have fathered all of those children in the circumstances. Only for the die hard Tyler fans I believe.
Jeremy's sadness and loss was well portrayed though and I wanted to know what happened to him though the 'end' result though not of my choosing was skipped and rushed a little as are many novels when one has a dead line to keep [ please note writers , readers do noticed] I still found it to be the most realistic . Alas unlike the idea that he may have fathered all of those children in the circumstances. Only for the die hard Tyler fans I believe.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
By freda
Format:Paperback
If I had merely read the other reviews and taken them at face value I would have missed what I consider to be a good book. I am a huge Anne Tyler fan and have read them all so far, except for a Slipping Down Life which is next on my list. I thought Celestial Navigation was beautifully written and very engrossing - I also did not think that Jeremy was supposed to have Aspergers'. I also did not think that the ending was weak - it was after all what one would expect considering that Mary was obviously not going to come back because he didn't ask her to. It was sad but then life is sad sometimes - not all endings can be happy and satisfying. Anyway, I enjoyed it very much.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
I came out after reading this book feeling awfully depressed. throughout the book, we keep wondering - is there hope for Jeremy? but Tyler does not pull us out of the general melancholic tone of this book.
(Perhaps i was thinking too much of Saint Maybe, which is a more hopeful book).
3 of 7 people found the following review helpful
By Whatever
Format:Paperback
This book is the one that finally opened my eyes to the fact that Anne Tyler is not the great novelist that she is sometimes thought to be. The ending is just SO unsatisfactory, and the reason for that is that the flimsy nature of the story can't take it. It is merely a silly, unbelievable romance which can be an enjoyable bedtime read, and, as such, should have the right kind of ending. Joanna Trollop can just about carry this off. Tyler can't.
1 of 4 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
Jeremy deserves more. Tyler leads us in, very slowly, to a claustrophobic house, where Jeremy lives, hermit-like. The relationship that develops between him and his female lodger, is difficult to believe in, despite its' captivating attraction. I could not help feeling like I should not have been "watching"! If you like novels which remind you of the strange things people do, this is for you.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
›
Go to Amazon.com to see all 40 reviews
4.2 out of 5 stars
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
