- Mass Market Paperback: 464 pages
- Publisher: Penguin Books (July 1989)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0451822102
- ISBN-13: 978-0451822109
- Product Dimensions: 17 x 10.7 x 3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,135,095 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Review
An unparalleled trip into the heart of America (Observer )
Wonderful (Guardian )
Even with all the swirling contradictory data, this you feel is America, and the news starts here (Sunday Times )
Monumental, DeLillo at his chilling best. Concentrates on the inner life of the people who shaped the Kennedy assassination. He constructs the very human faces behind a monstrous event, creating fiction which trespasses on reality (Time Out )
An audacious blend of fiction and fact (The Times ) --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
Wonderful (Guardian )
Even with all the swirling contradictory data, this you feel is America, and the news starts here (Sunday Times )
Monumental, DeLillo at his chilling best. Concentrates on the inner life of the people who shaped the Kennedy assassination. He constructs the very human faces behind a monstrous event, creating fiction which trespasses on reality (Time Out )
An audacious blend of fiction and fact (The Times ) --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
Review
An unparalleled trip into the heart of America Observer Wonderful Guardian Even with all the swirling contradictory data, this you feel is America, and the news starts here Sunday Times Monumental, DeLillo at his chilling best. Concentrates on the inner life of the people who shaped the Kennedy assassination. He constructs the very human faces behind a monstrous event, creating fiction which trespasses on reality Time Out An audacious blend of fiction and fact The Times
--This text refers to the
Paperback
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Another superb read from perhaps the greatest American writer of his geneartion. Unlike many novels concerning JFK/LHO DeLillo's attempt details event from two different angles. The first which explores Lee Harvey Oswald's life is well 'fleshed out' by the authors dazzling creativity and is, in my view, the more interesting of the pair. The other more convetnional plot sees the infamous conspiracy to assasinate the young president unfold. Such is the quality of the authors delivery and characterisation, by the end we are left sypathising with Lee Harvey Oswald, one of the most notorious men of the twentieth century. On the whole I'd recommend this novel to anyone who has enjoy DeLillo previously or anyone with a general interest in the recent history of the U.S.A.
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
'Libra' is absolutely brilliant. Simply by the biography of Lee Oswald it is gripping and intense, but combined with the infamous conspiracies in which he may (or may not) have been involved, the probing descriptions of the agents, Oswald's wife and his mother it is a masterful novel.
You're constantly wondering what is fact and fiction, a device that is as clever as it is easy to employ on such a subject; The entire enigma of JFK's assassination is tightly woven into American fabric thirty one years on.
Delillo has created something powerful and moving with 'Libra' and I can't recommend it enough. It is a daunting trip into an incomprehenisble time in American history.
You're constantly wondering what is fact and fiction, a device that is as clever as it is easy to employ on such a subject; The entire enigma of JFK's assassination is tightly woven into American fabric thirty one years on.
Delillo has created something powerful and moving with 'Libra' and I can't recommend it enough. It is a daunting trip into an incomprehenisble time in American history.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Somtimes you see a book and read a few reviews on Amazon and you just know it's for you.Immediately after starting this book I had a feeling it was going to be superb.The writing is first class,the kind that is rare.The story is of course familiar but added to in a clever sophisticated way,rather than blindly slapping on layers of conspiracy.Regardless of the subject matter it's a stand up book and he surely could have written an equally engrossing book if he had just made it all up.It pulls you in,and you won't find yourself racing through the last few pages.A classic to the very last word.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
brilliantly achieved
i thought this was a truly great book.
it is not a "conspiracy" novel as such, because while it deals with a lot of that kind of material surrounding the assassination of... Read more
it is not a "conspiracy" novel as such, because while it deals with a lot of that kind of material surrounding the assassination of... Read more
Published on 14 Mar 2010 by wordparty
Nightmare on Elm Street
DeLilo before he became too much of a `great' novelist for his own good. Brilliant, cold, precise - whether it's `true' or not doesn't matter in the literal sense. Read more
Published on 1 Jan 2010 by A. Willard
Good, but superseded by Ellroy...
Your reaction to this book depends, I think, on whether you have read James Ellroy's trilogy of America in the 1950s and 1960s. Read more
Published on 30 Dec 2009 by bloodsimple
A piece of history worth treasuring...
I had to read 'Libra' for my university module on Contemporary American Fiction. I have to say I was impressed. Read more
Published on 6 Mar 2007 by J. Westgarth
1988's Oswald-themed novel
DeLillo's breakthrough novel was 'White Noise', its follow-up 'Libra' was another classic and one of his key works alongside 'White Noise' and... Read more
Published on 10 Mar 2006 by Jason Parkes
DeLillo at his best
The way the author links up the life of Lee Harvey Oswald (the Libra of the title) with the multiple and convoluted conspiracies to stage an assassination attempt is completely... Read more
Published on 7 Jan 2005 by Adam Kelly
short.sharp.dull.sentences.
Want to get into Delillo,because heard so much about him,and an excerpt of `Cosmopolis` impressed. But I couldn`t get past the style of `Libra`; short,sharp,dull sentences;... Read more
Published on 10 Jun 2003
An excellent plot built around the JFK assassination
This is DeLillo at his most complex and best. Branch's task (to write a secret history of the assassination) perfectly sums up postmodern thought as expresed by Baudrillard in... Read more
Published on 25 Jan 2001 by mmh9@hotmail.com
Great book, but some loose threads . . .
Like most of the reviewers, I loved Libra. However, I had a nagging feeling that the last forty or so pages were not as "tight" and solid as the rest of the book. Read more
Published on 20 July 1999
The best American novel in ages
This book is a masterpiece. Read it. It is the most chilling, precise, well observed, magnificently written book about America I've ever read.
Published on 3 Jun 1999
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