- Hardcover: 103 pages
- Publisher: Calder Publications Ltd (1977)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 071450310X
- ISBN-13: 978-0714503103
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 3,713,315 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Product Description
In his most famous and perhaps most typical work, Robbe-Grillet explores his principle preoccupation, the meaning of reality. The novel is set on a tropical banana plantation and the action is seen through the eyes of a narrator who never appears in person, never speaks and never acts. He is a point of observation, his personality only to be guessed at, watching every movement of the other two characters' actions and events as they flash like moving pictures across the distorting screen of a jealous mind. The result is one of the most important and influential books of our time, a completely integrated masterpiece that has already become a classic.
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
From the Back Cover
Alain Robbe-Grillet is one of the best-known post-war French novelists, the principal theoretician and spokesman of the 'nouveau roman', the most important school of French contemporary fiction that looks at reality in a new subjective way and has changed our conception of the novel.
In Jealousy, Robbe-Grillet's most famous and perhaps his most typical novel, he explores his principal preoccupation, the meaning of reality. The novel is set on a tropical banana plantation and the action is seen through the eyes of a narrator who never appears in person, never speaks and never acts. He is a point of observation, his personality only to be guessed at, watching every movement of the other two characters' actions and events as they flash like moving pictures across the distorting screen of a jealous mind. The result is one of the most important and influential books of our time, a completely integrated masterpiece that has already become a classic. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book is one of the rare occasions in which you get a nice slap in the face saying that fiction (or films, tv, music etc) doesn't necessarily have to be the way it is often so nicely packaged and homogenized. Having said that it's internal project is clear after a few pages and it is a tough book to get through, the seemingly shortness of this book actually (for me) gives it a containment to pull together what Grillet wanted from his 'Nouveau Roman' writing. It was recommended to me by an artist. It fits in well with other interesting main stream fictions like Riddley Walker or The Atrocity Exhibition (and countless others I'll remember later no doubt). It can read like a diagram of descriptions between the few protagonists, their recorded movements interactions in the house scream of something (jealousy?) you must wring out. Truly inspiring (I read a couple other of his books near Jealousy's equal).
14 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book is quite simply weird, involving and is amazing to read. You are literally placed into the varying thought processes of who is assumed to be a man, the husband of a dark haired woman, both are never actually named in the text. The setting is amazingly well-suited for the overall aesthetic of the novel, to be honest I thought this would be incredibly boring but instead I found myself fascinated. It is best to read with some rapidity and in as few sittings as possible due to the nature of the text.
I am aware that this review is mostly abstract but I believe that attempting to detail the style will reveal too much about the book itself, you honestly need to try it for yourself.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
3 reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Stunning and original, dark and mind-warping
4 Oct 2005
Format:Paperback
When I first read "Jealousy," I had never read anything else like it--because there is nothing else like it.
For starters, the book is written in first person, yet it never uses the words I, me, my, mine, we, our, or us, or any other first person posessives. When it's time for dinner, instead of saying, "And now we sit down to eat," the author says something like "And now it is time for dinner," and he describes there being three plates, and mentions two other people eating.
Also, the book is incredibly precise in its details. It names every tree in a bananna forest, spends pages describing a woman brushing her hair, and meticulously records where every shadow in every corner of every room falls, to the point that if he hasn't yet described a part of a room, you wonder, "Well, what's in THAT corner?"
As a result of this unique perspective, and of the author's close attention to detail, the reader forgets the story is in first person at all, and grows to trust the book as an exact, almost scientific account of everything going on.
But, what's going on isn't science--it's an affair. It's the narrator's wife having an affair with a neighbor, in a hot, foreign, plantation-style setting. As the narrator gets more suspicious and prejudiced, so does the reader. As the narrator gets more distrustful and angry, so do you.
This book is brilliant--it's French experimentalism at its best. It explores themes of love and identity and jealousy and reality (despite its author claiming he wants the reader not to find any intended symbolism in it, but only to observe it as one would real life). It's antilinear and unconventional, and explores several dark motifs, such as a squashed centipede on a wall that seems more and more violent with every mention, and with every moment passed in the narrator's growing rage and paranoia.
At times this book may be hard to read, but it's always worth it, and it's always genius. Buy it, but it, buy it, buy it. Your mind will never be the same again.
For starters, the book is written in first person, yet it never uses the words I, me, my, mine, we, our, or us, or any other first person posessives. When it's time for dinner, instead of saying, "And now we sit down to eat," the author says something like "And now it is time for dinner," and he describes there being three plates, and mentions two other people eating.
Also, the book is incredibly precise in its details. It names every tree in a bananna forest, spends pages describing a woman brushing her hair, and meticulously records where every shadow in every corner of every room falls, to the point that if he hasn't yet described a part of a room, you wonder, "Well, what's in THAT corner?"
As a result of this unique perspective, and of the author's close attention to detail, the reader forgets the story is in first person at all, and grows to trust the book as an exact, almost scientific account of everything going on.
But, what's going on isn't science--it's an affair. It's the narrator's wife having an affair with a neighbor, in a hot, foreign, plantation-style setting. As the narrator gets more suspicious and prejudiced, so does the reader. As the narrator gets more distrustful and angry, so do you.
This book is brilliant--it's French experimentalism at its best. It explores themes of love and identity and jealousy and reality (despite its author claiming he wants the reader not to find any intended symbolism in it, but only to observe it as one would real life). It's antilinear and unconventional, and explores several dark motifs, such as a squashed centipede on a wall that seems more and more violent with every mention, and with every moment passed in the narrator's growing rage and paranoia.
At times this book may be hard to read, but it's always worth it, and it's always genius. Buy it, but it, buy it, buy it. Your mind will never be the same again.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Wow!
18 Jun 2001
Format:Paperback
Compared to his other works, i did not enjoy it as much. But this is a brilliant writer. Anything he writes overflows with creativity. I recommend this book. But i recommend The Voyeurs or The Erasers first.
0 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Jealousy by Alain Robbe-Grillet
5 Jan 2007
Format:Paperback
I bought this book for a class I had, and it wasn't really the kind of book I usually read. I found there to be no plot line and it bored me to death. It's good if you like a story that is focused on what's written between the lines.
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