- Paperback: 320 pages
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC; New edition edition (2 Oct 2000)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0747549923
- ISBN-13: 978-0747549925
- Product Dimensions: 19.4 x 12.8 x 2.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 161,611 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
New York Times
'Selby's place is in the front rank of American novelists...so to understand his work is to understand the anguish of America'
Review
'Selby's place is in the front rank of American novelists...To understand his work is to understand the anguish of America' New York Times
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
THEY sprawled along the counter and on the chairs. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
THEY sprawled along the counter and on the chairs. Read the first page
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Concordance
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Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
16 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I am very glad that I've read this book, but now I have, I will never read it again.
It is a hard-boiled account about marginalised people - a prostitute, a transvestite, a convict, and a sexually troubled trade union leader amongst others. The style of writing is utterly refreshing and compelling, the characterisation astonishing, and beating from deep within the book is a heart and humanity. It is not though a dispassioned or sanitised book - the words "raw" and "gritty" are a massive understatement at times.
Be in no doubt that this book can be brutal, it pulls no punches and it often leaves a dirty bloody taste in your mouth whilst reading it.
It's a very good book, there's no doubt about it, but be prepared for a painful and uneasy read. There are no happy endings.
It is a hard-boiled account about marginalised people - a prostitute, a transvestite, a convict, and a sexually troubled trade union leader amongst others. The style of writing is utterly refreshing and compelling, the characterisation astonishing, and beating from deep within the book is a heart and humanity. It is not though a dispassioned or sanitised book - the words "raw" and "gritty" are a massive understatement at times.
Be in no doubt that this book can be brutal, it pulls no punches and it often leaves a dirty bloody taste in your mouth whilst reading it.
It's a very good book, there's no doubt about it, but be prepared for a painful and uneasy read. There are no happy endings.
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Last exit to Brooklyn is the only Selby Jnr. book I have read, yet will undoubtedly not be the last. Read in a stuffy hostel in Spain while ill, I was transfixed by a world of degredation, mysogyny, and utter contempt. The characters that Selby Jnr. portrays are visceral and hateful - Tralala is almost like a modern day Lulu, and ultimately deserves what she gets. Vince and his pals are hateful characters not unlike Burgess' Clockwork Orange mob - disrespectful to everyone and everything and getting away with it. It seems that Selby Jnr. is trying to show how the characters all use and abuse each other and ultimately, none are the better for it. This book is seedy, and the characters hateful, yet it had me gripped to the end.I still don't know why I enjoyed it so much and could not put it down - maybe this is Selby Jnr.s way of showing that we can be just as perverse as these fictional characters. Sickeningly enjoyable and made even more contreversial when thinking of the trouble Selby Jnr. had in getting it published. Will definitely be reading more of his work.
22 of 24 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This was Hubert Selby Jr. debut novel and such was the power of the book that in the UK, the original publishers were taken to court to be prosecuted for obscenity. Luckily for us the case was thrown out but the book has a raw power that is both compassionate and horrifying.
Selby writes sketches of various lives living in Brooklyn. All trying to survive on a estate that continually grinds them down. People do nasty things to each other but Selby doesn't condemn his characters but trys to comprehend them.
The stories are bitter and raw, from Tralala who cannot distinguish between sex and love to Harry, a repressed homosexual who lets out his anger on his workers, his wife, his children because he has never come to terms with his sexuality.
Selby writes in a prose style that ignores every rule of school grammer bar one: it has to be understood by the reader.
There are no speech marks, semi-colons and rarely does a comma appear. The effect is stunning, the text hits the mind like bullets as the emotion crosses out of the page. If you thought William Burrough's 'Naked Lunch' was a daring literary experiment, try 'Last Exit to Brooklyn'.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Last exit to brooklyn
I have always thought this a great film and wanted to read the book. At last I sent off for a copy and when it arrived I took the first oportunity to settle down to what I... Read more
Published 7 months ago by Jex
Arguably Selby's best novel - and probably one of the most disturbing...
Selby has been described as a `clinician of violence ... whose novels have the immediacy of art' (Josephine Hendin, Vulnerable People: A View of American Fiction Since 1945 (A... Read more
Published 9 months ago by R. G. White
A Must read!
I read Last Exit on the back of a list-mania review and was pleasantly surprised. Definitely a slow burner - if you are anything like me you might struggle with the first 50 pages... Read more
Published 11 months ago by Polkadotsteph
Showing it's age but still has the capacity to shock
I read this on a recent trip to New York City (pretentious I know, but it worked last time with "Catcher on the Rye" as well). Read more
Published 19 months ago by Mr. Joel C. A. Cooney
Old and collectible books
This is difficult. Each item is going to be different. It depends on desire for the book per se but it;s out of print. Read more
Published 22 months ago by Alison Pole
Strangely Subtle
Last Exit to Brooklyn is relentlessly bleak, I only found one character I had any sympathy for and she appeared in the last part. Read more
Published on 4 April 2010 by Harry the book monkey
Swish the curtains and face the world
Life beyond social veils may be difficult to swallow. Dickens wrote about working class life with a dose of sentimentality pandering to his literati readership. Read more
Published on 22 Feb 2010 by Dr. Delvis Memphistopheles
A Modernist Literary Masterpiece - Not for the faint hearted
I will never forget how it felt to read this book.
The language here seems to do things I thought were only possible on film or on mind altering drugs: it creates a... Read more
The language here seems to do things I thought were only possible on film or on mind altering drugs: it creates a... Read more
Published on 7 Dec 2009 by N. Chida
A novel you will never forget!
This is an incredible novel and it is hard to find anything else to compare it with. The effect of reading this book is so intense and powerful; it is truly mind-warping. Read more
Published on 9 Sep 2009 by F Drew
Nasty. Enthralling. Intimate.
Well this isn't Barby and Ken territory.
Glimpse into the world of New York human trash... Read more
Glimpse into the world of New York human trash... Read more
Published on 1 Sep 2009 by B. H. Whitehouse
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