- Paperback: 224 pages
- Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd; New edition edition (1 July 1999)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 014028558X
- ISBN-13: 978-0140285581
- Product Dimensions: 17.8 x 11 x 1.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 2.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 923,613 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Plus, get an extra £5 Gift Certificate when you trade in books worth £10 or more before June 30, 2012. Visit the Books Trade-In Store for more details. |
Product details |
More About the Authors
Discover books, learn about writers, and more.
Product Description
Product Description
This is the story of Benjamin who falls prey to the sexual advances of his girlfriend's mother. Compromising situations lead to a compromised future and Benjamin must choose between the two women.
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organise and find favourite items. |
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Having seen neither the film or the play, I was able to read The Graduate without any preconceptions. And I enjoyed it. It is written very much like a play, with minimal description and plenty of snappy dialogue, and the characters' feelings shown exclusively through their actions. This keeps the pace high but also means that there is little introspection which leads to a sense of superficiality. There are some moments of high drama, and a couple of episodes of stomach tingling anticipation, particularly in the first half of the book. However, the second half of the book lacks the zip of the first, and the dialogue driven style of writing gets a little tiring and monotonous. But the main problem I found was that Benjamin is not a sympathetic character, and particularly later on in the story I found myself caring little if he actually got what he wanted or not. In fact, I was hoping he wouldn't, and that he got the come-uppance that his actions deserved. I also found Elaine Robinson's motivation a little difficult to understand. All in all, however, the book was an entertaining account of the loneliness and lack of direction that can pervade adolescence, but lacked the heart and humour of Catcher in the Rye or The Outsiders.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Until I saw this in a second hand bookshop I hadn't realised the film was based on a novel. It is certainly true that there isn't much in the book that that you won't have seen in the film. In fact one of the things that struck me was what an easy job the scriptwriters had. The key events and dialogue are all here.
But if you enjoyed the film there is no reason you shouldn't enjoy the book, though it probably impossible not to imagine Hoffman, Bancroft etc. as you read.
Benjamin Braddock is a memorable, engaging an infuriating character, the story is both funny and and moving. I think without the slick images and direction you focus more on the characters and themselves.
A good read in itself and a fascinating backgrounder to a major film
But if you enjoyed the film there is no reason you shouldn't enjoy the book, though it probably impossible not to imagine Hoffman, Bancroft etc. as you read.
Benjamin Braddock is a memorable, engaging an infuriating character, the story is both funny and and moving. I think without the slick images and direction you focus more on the characters and themselves.
A good read in itself and a fascinating backgrounder to a major film
9 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The Graduate of course became a very famous film, and often when this happens, people like me will say, "Don't bother going to see the film, there's so much more in the book." Well on this occasion let me say: if you've seen the film, don't bother reading the book. There isn't anything more in it. And the reason I can say that in confidence, without having seen the film, is that the book is essentially a script with speechmarks added and the tenses changed. It has no thoughts of characters, no interior monologue or anything underneath. Here there is no why.
Of course, as the book is about an unmotivated (or not clearly motivated) twenty-year-old college graduate, it is entirely proper that there is no insight into his behaviour. Why shouldn't we have to work it out for ourselves? Unfortunately, there are other authors who stay on the surface of things - Bret Easton Ellis, Cormac McCarthy - and who end up with works of great depth. The Graduate, probably because it displays little effort in engaging the reader, does not warrant the effort of thinking about it. (Perhaps part of the problem, too, is that the author was only 23 when he wrote it. How many great works are written in the author's early 20s? Incidentally I understand his recently published novel, New Cardiff, still uses this depthless technique, when he's surely old enough to know better.)
The Graduate is nominally a comedy, and it is amusing in places, but only briefly, and only as tiny oases in the middle of a vast desert of witless dialogue. The endless, unresolving two-handers predict the genius of Joseph Heller's Bob Slocum in Something Happened, with his pages and pages of futile disputes with his wife and children, but in Webb's clumsy hands are much more reminiscent of toe-curling music hall exchanges.
It ill behoves me, whose personal canon would include Money, A Handful of Dust, Something Happened and Brighton Rock, to complain about unsympathetic characters, but this too is a problem with The Graduate. When a book has little else going for it, at least characters you can root for would be something. But the protagonists of this book are like Tom and Daisy in The Great Gatsby (a book which will never again be mentioned in the same sentence as The Graduate): "careless people - they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they made..." and really, what one wants most of all is for them to get their comeuppance. Which they don't. Avoid.
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
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.
