or
Sign in to turn on 1-Click ordering.
Trade in Yours
For a £0.70 Gift Card
Trade in
More Buying Choices
Have one to sell? Sell yours here
Sorry, this item is not available in
Image not available for
Colour:
Image not available

 
Share your own customer images
Search inside this book
Tell the Publisher!
I’d like to read this book on Kindle

Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here, or download a FREE Kindle Reading App.

A Man In Full [Paperback]

Tom Wolfe (Author)
3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (50 customer reviews)
RRP: £10.99
Price: £7.58 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
You Save: £3.41 (31%)
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
Only 5 left in stock (more on the way).
Dispatched from and sold by Amazon. Gift-wrap available.
Want delivery by Thursday, 23 May? Choose Express delivery at checkout. See Details

Formats

 Amazon Price New from Used from
Hardcover --   -- --
Paperback £7.58   -- --
Audio, Cassette, Audiobook --   -- --
Unknown Binding --   -- --
Audio Download, Abridged £7.94 or Free with Audible.co.uk 30-day free trial
Trade In this Item for up to £0.70
Trade in A Man In Full for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £0.70, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Learn more

Book Description

Publication Date: 1 Sep 2011

Charlie Croker was once a fabled college football star and is now a late-middle-aged Atlanta real estate entrepeneur-turned conglomerate king, whose expansionist ambitions and outsize ego have at last hit up against reality. Charlie has a 28,000 acre quail shooting plantation, a young and demanding second wife and a half-empty downtown tower with a staggering load of debt.

Tom Wolfe was the razor sharp chronicler of the 1980s and now boldly turns to dissect greed-obsessed America on the cusp of the millenium.

(19980720)

Frequently Bought Together

A Man In Full + The Bonfire of the Vanities + I Am Charlotte Simmons
Price For All Three: £21.21

Buy the selected items together

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

Product details

  • Paperback: 752 pages
  • Publisher: Vintage (1 Sep 2011)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0099554771
  • ISBN-13: 978-0099554776
  • Product Dimensions: 12.9 x 3.9 x 19.8 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (50 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 17,897 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

    •  Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

More About the Author

› Visit Amazon's Tom Wolfe Page
Tom Wolfe
Discover books, learn about writers, and more.

Product Description

Amazon Review

Ever since he published his classic 1972 essay "Why They Aren't Writing the Great American Novel Anymore," Tom Wolfe has made his fictional preferences loud and clear. For New Journalism's poster boy, minimalism is a wash, not to mention a failure of nerve. The real mission of the American writer is to produce fat novels of social observation--the sort of thing Balzac would be dishing up if he had made it into the Viagra era. Wolfe's manifesto would have had a hubristic ring if he hadn't actually delivered the goods in 1987 with The Bonfire of the Vanities. Now, more than a decade later, he's back with a second novel. Has the Man in White lived up to his own mission?

On many counts, the answer would have to be "yes". Like its predecessor, A Man in Full is a big-canvas work, in which a multitude of characters seems to be ascending or (rapidly) descending the greasy pole of social life: "In an era like this one," a character reminds us, "the 20th century's fin de siècle position was everything, and it was the hardest thing to get." Wolfe has changed terrain on us, to be sure. Instead of New York, the focus here is Atlanta, Georgia, where the struggle for turf and power is at least slightly patinated with Deep South gentility. The plot revolves around Charlie Croker, an egomaniacal good ol' boy with a crumbling real-estate empire on his hands. But Wolfe is no less attentive to a pair of supporting players: a downwardly mobile family man, Conrad Hensley, and Roger White II, an African American attorney at a white-shoe firm. What ultimately causes these subplots to converge--and threatens to ignite a racial firestorm in Atlanta--is the alleged rape of a society deb by Georgia Tech American football star Fareek "The Cannon" Fanon.

Of course, a detailed plot summary would be about as long as your average minimalist novel. Suffice it to say that A Man in Full is packed with the sort of splendid set pieces we've come to expect from Wolfe. A quail hunt on Charlie's 29,000-acre plantation, a stuffed-shirt evening at the symphony, a politically loaded press conference--the author assembles these scenes with contagious delight. The book is also very, very funny. The law firms, like upper- crust powerhouse Fogg Nackers Rendering & Lean, are straight out of Dickens, and Wolfe brings even his minor characters, like professional hick Opey McCorkle, to vivid life:

In true Opey McCorkle fashion he had turned up for dinner wearing a plaid shirt, a plaid necktie, red felt suspenders, and a big old leather belt that went around his potbelly like something could hitch up a mule with, but for now he had cut off his usual torrent of orotund rhetoric mixed with Baker Countyisms.
Readers in search of a kinder, gentler Wolfe may well be disappointed. Retaining the satirist's (necessary) superiority to his subject, he tends to lose his edge precisely when he's trying to move us. Still, when it comes to maximalist portraiture of the American scene--and to sheer, sentence-by-sentence amusement--1998 looks to be the year of the Wolfe, indeed. --James Marcus, Amazon.com --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"A hugely enjoyable and impressive read, 800-odd pages of splendid plot, terrific characterization and astounding detail... Dickens would have approved" (Harry Ritchie The Times Books of the Year )

"Enthralling enough even to satisfy The Bonfire of the Vanities devotees...humane and redemptive" (Ruth Rendell Sunday Times Books of the Year )

"Fiercely and instantly addictive...this book will be a good friend to you" (Martin Amis Guardian )

"Powerful... Beautiful... As funny as anything Wolfe has ever written; at the same time it is also deeply, strangely affecting" (New York Times Book Review )

"A masterpiece...the difference between seeing the world in slices and seeing it in full" (Andrew Ferguson Wall Street Journal )
See all Product Description
Inside This Book (Learn More)
Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
Search inside this book:

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

What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?

› Explore similar items

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
15 of 16 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars A masterpiece of intelligent storytelling 27 Jun 2005
By Sam Holliday VINE™ VOICE
Format:Paperback
I often discover great books too late - this one came out in 1998 - but I still wanted to add my voice of congratulations to Mr Wolfe on this amazing piece of work.
I took it on holiday with me after only recently discovering the genius of Bonfire of the Vanities and I was a bit nervous that this wouldn't pack the same emotional punch as that legendary novel .
But I should have had no fears. In truth, I wouldn't even like to judge/compare it against its famous cousin because both have the same power to grab your attention and keep you reading and both prove Tom Wolfe's inspiring ability to tell a cracking, knowing, multi-faceted story.
What we have here, is 800 pages of quality writing and pure page turning drama. Set in modern day Atlanta it features the unforgettable character of Charlie Croker - an all-conquering property developer who is as rich as most countries and yet, as the novel starts, looks to be facing the possible end of his world of immense luxury and power.
We watch with fascination as we see Croker's desperate battle to salvage the world he created and watch with equal (and perhaps more horrible) fascination as he tries to convince himself he is a better person that most of us suspect he actually is .
Intermingled with this riveting main tale are several superb mini-plots which involve politics, racism, sex, family rivalries and corporate America, plus a seemingly unconnected story about a decent, principled man's descent into prison life (and what an astonishing vision of prison hell Wolfe portrays). The relevance of that storyline only starts to connect with the other main threads in the last few pages but it takes the book to a surprising finale . . .
Overall, I have to say this, like Bonfire, is simply a modern day classic. It's a real page turner, written with style and verve and if full of impeccably rounded characters.
It is a book to treasure and admire .
My next 'big' read will be Wolfe's latest novel - I Am Charlotte Symonds - which I will lap up with relish even if George Bush did recommend it. And I am only two years late reading it this time!
1 Comment | 
Was this review helpful to you?
Yes
No
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars Just About Fantastic 25 July 2011
By MatDatPhatKat
Format:Paperback
Tom Wolfe gets top marks for his characterisation and his literary style, but I'm going to have to knock off a couple of points for what I perceive to be his difficulty with finishing off a story. Whilst Bonfire of the Vanities gets 100% (undoubtedly his best piece of fiction), I felt that both I Am Charlotte Simmons and A Man In Full 'raced' to slightly unsatisfactory conclusions.
That said, I rate Wolfe as one of my favourite authors and, on balance, I prefer his works to those of Updike, a contemporary of his with whom there have been some fairly public slagging matches. Don't get me wrong, Updike's works are excellent and satisfying, but I just find Wolfe more gripping and compelling.
I'd highly recommend A Man In Full, but I'd suggest that the reader reads his fiction in the order it was written. Start with Bonfire of the Vanities, then A Man In Full and finish with I Am Charlotte Simmons.
Comment | 
Was this review helpful to you?
Yes
No
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars More of the same, only less so 12 Dec 2000
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
Maybe if I hadn't read Bonfire of the Vanities I'd ahve adored this book. But I had, and it left me feeling...cheated. It's the same book in almost every detail, with only the names and the location changing.

One incident really jarred with me. One of the characters gets a Finnish woman pregnant. She refuses to have an abortion because she is a Roman Catholic. Finnish Roman Catholics are less common than hen's teeth, yet Wolfe obviously felt the need to make her refusal more believable by making her a Catholic. It makes you wonder how many of his brilliant insights rely on the audiences ignorance (especially my own).

An amusing, well written book. But it's extremely putdownable.

Comment | 
Was this review helpful to you?
Yes
No
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?   Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars Confident Satire
'A Man in Full' is satire which has a ring of truth I imagine, though I have not been to USA. Wolfe seems to have a good ear for dialogue and I could hear the speech in my head... Read more
Published 2 months ago by Nora Walters
4.0 out of 5 stars A Tom Wolff as we know and love it
Well trodden territory for Tom Wolff in a style we know and love. A big book about big people in a big city (Atlanta) in a big country with big problems. Read more
Published 2 months ago by EL
5.0 out of 5 stars A Modern Dickensian Novel
Very impressed with the range and readability of the book.I haven't read 'Bonfire' yet but will now.Wolfe is probably the only modern author writing big,interesting books.
Published 17 months ago by bucky
5.0 out of 5 stars A Man In Full
I think that this is probably one of the best books I've read in the last few years. It is about men. Every kind of man you could think of. Read more
Published 18 months ago by Disengaged
3.0 out of 5 stars Fine as far as it goes
This is an enjoyable state-of-the-nation book, the nation being the USA. The characters come across like components in a carefully controlled equation rather than real people. Read more
Published 18 months ago by oldschoolstoryhunter.calm
3.0 out of 5 stars Limp ending
I like the way Wolf writes...I really enjoyed Bonfire....it's an excellent book but the ending to this tomb is very disappointing
Published 20 months ago by bluemo
5.0 out of 5 stars Contemporary fiction at its finest.
Wolfe's rhythmic sentences kept making the hairs on my forearms rise. His story telling is superb. This and Shantaram are presently tied as my two favourite modern novels.
Published on 17 April 2011 by Shaun Attwood
4.0 out of 5 stars A mild dilution of Bonfire of the Vanities. But good.
Tom Wolfe is one of my favorite authors, and my reviews of his books will testify to that.

The man in full is Charlie Croker, a self-made mill-(possibly bill-)ionaire;... Read more
Published on 17 Feb 2010 by Talc Demon
5.0 out of 5 stars A modern American masterpeice
A brilliant insight into the world of the 'American Dream'; the highs, the lows and the spaces in between. Read more
Published on 11 Jan 2008 by messageinthemoon
5.0 out of 5 stars One of my all-time favourites
This is the fourth time I have read this book and it is just as refreshing a read as it was first time round. Read more
Published on 10 Sep 2007 by Caterkiller
Search Customer Reviews
Only search this product's reviews

There's a problem loading this menu at the moment.

Learn more about Amazon Prime.

    Your Shopping Basket is empty.

    Give it purpose -- fill it with books, DVDs, clothes, electronics and more.

    If you already have an account, sign in.

    There's a problem previewing your shopping basket at the moment.

    Check your Internet connection and go to your cart, or try again.

    View Shopping Basket (0 items)

      Customer Discussions

      This product's forum
      Discussion Replies Latest Post
      No discussions yet

      Ask questions, Share opinions, Gain insight
      Start a new discussion
      Topic:
      First post:
      Prompts for sign-in
       


      Active discussions in related forums
      Search Customer Discussions
      Search all Amazon discussions
         
      Related forums

      Listmania!

      Create a Listmania! list

      Look for similar items by category

      Feedback


      Amazon.co.uk Privacy Statement Amazon.co.uk Delivery Information Amazon.co.uk Returns & Exchanges