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Karoo [Paperback]

Steve Tesich (Author)
4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
RRP: £8.99
Price: £6.74 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
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Book Description

Publication Date: 7 Jan 1999

Oscar-winning writer Steve Tesich masterfully creates and destroys the sad, mad world of Saul Karoo.

Karoo is an alcoholic who can't get drunk, a loving father who can't bear to be alone with his son, a fixer of film scripts who admits that he ruins every one of them.

Calamity and comedy accompany Saul on his odyssey through sex, death and showbusiness as he seeks to 'fix' both a master director's greatest film and his own broken life at the same time.

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Karoo + The Mortdecai Trilogy
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Product details

  • Paperback: 464 pages
  • Publisher: Vintage; New edition edition (7 Jan 1999)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0099777916
  • ISBN-13: 978-0099777915
  • Product Dimensions: 19.6 x 13 x 2.8 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 156,106 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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More About the Author

› Visit Amazon's Steve Tesich Page
Steve Tesich
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Product Description

Review

"Karoo has all the ingredients of a truly great novel. Its plot has the pathos of a Greek tragedy and enough twists and turns to satisfy the most avid Raymond Chandler fan. The characters come alive as soon as they appear on the page. Fantastic" (Literary Review )

"Utterly wonderful... This novel does supremely what novels were invented to do - it confronts the most unbearable sadness with a comic exhilaration that makes you almost pleased that life is tragic" (Howard Jacobson )

"Mordantly funny, unexpectedly moving and brutally honest about the business of making movies" (Richard E Grant )

"Fascinating. A real satiric invention, loaded with wise outrage" (Arthur Miller )

"Terrific. Nakedly honest, a tour de force of self-destruction. As Saul spirals into free-fall we're with him all the way, because he's so furiously funny" (Deborah Moggach )

Review

"Drop whatever else you're reading. It won't be as good as Karoo. It certainly won't be as funny"
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating and painful 1 Dec 2008
By D. J. Swann
Format:Paperback
Don't be put off by the first 150 pages! At that point, I thought I was in for an endless wallow in slime along the lines of 1980s Martin Amis (which I enjoyed at the time...).

However, 'Karoo' turns out to be far more than an ironic expose of Hollywood hacks and their shallow lives.

Yes, it's concerned with shallowness (and obsessed with the divide between 'public and 'private' selves that once animated the work of Chekhov).

But 'Karoo' goes beyone the entertainment of similarly disgusted satires (e.g. 'The Player') and becomes a howl of mid-life pain, more excrutiating than an entire series of 'Curb Your Enthusiasm', and full of frustrated self-knowledge.

The novel's final third is suffused with a yearning for beauty and truth that put me in mind of 'Seize the Day', a brilliant novella by Saul Bellow, whose name bears a curious resemblance to that of the anti-hero in Tesich's book (and whose protagonist also ultimately finds grace in an uncomfortable encounter with a deathly body).

'Karoo' is written in the flat, fluent syle favoured by screenwriters. Easy to read, then -- but the bleak, tortured, self-circling truths faced by its anti-hero are hard to face, and I can imagine repelled readers throwing it to the floor in disgust.

Angry, male novels like 'Karoo' are bound to divide readers. But I have found this book unforgettable, particularly for the moving final quarter, where it widens out, rising above self-disgust and social satire to become a strange, emotional meditation upon creativity and the soul.

I would like to thank FC Boyce for introducing me to a novel that I would have missed if it weren't for is evangelising!
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars A Wonder 1 Mar 2007
By F. G. Cottrell-boyce
Format:Paperback
Extremely funny and at the same heart breaking. Unquestionably the best book ever about movies but also one of the best books ever about fatherhood, about failure, about drink, about ... oh and one of the most heart-stoppingly amazing final chapters you'll ever read.

Why is this book not number one?

what is wrong with you all?
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars A brilliant tale of a man at odds with his conscience. 22 Sep 2000
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
Saul Karoo is the return of the Anti-hero. Albeit an intellectual one. It is not so much the story that will grab you but Saul's skewed perceptions about love, life & relationships. Saul is a hack. A person who re-writes other peoples movie scripts. He is in an on-going divorce with his wife, suffers from sobriety and 'The evasion of privacy'(he can't stand being alone around people he is supposed to love)Yet, ultimately, Karoo is an immensely sad novel. There is nothing redeeming about our protagonist. Steve Tesich (the author)died four days after the completion of this novel. He won academy awards for the adaption of 'The world according to garp' and 'Breaking away'. If you're into dry inversed logic humour, you'll love it.
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