| ||||||||||||||||||
|
Two for £7 on top paperbacks
Choose two top paperback books and get them for £7. Learn how. |
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
• 'A huge and masterly drama…gripping and surreal and overwhelmingly convincing.' Laura Shapiro, Newsweek
• 'A novel so imaginatively and expansively of our times that is seems ahead of them.' Richard Eder, Los Angeles Times
• 'Franzen has managed to put together a suspense story with the elements of a complex, multi-layered psychological novel…A riveting piece of fiction that lingers in the mind long after more conventional pot-boilers have bubbled away.' Peter Andrews, The New York Times Book Review
• ‘Unsettling and visionary…“The Twenty-Seventh City” is not a novel that can be quickly dismissed or easily forgotten: it has elements of both “Great” and “American”…A book of memorable characters, surprising situations, and provocative ideas.’ Washington Post
Product Description
The critically acclaimed first novel from Jonathan Franzen, author of the prize winning and internationally bestselling, ‘The Corrections’.
By the author of the bestseller ‘The Corrections’ and the sensational ‘Freedom’, ‘The Twenty-Seventh City’ is a novel of intrigue, humour and fear. St. Louis, Missouri, is a quietly dying river city until it hires a new police chief: a charismatic young woman from Bombay, India, named S. Jammu. No sooner has Jammu been installed, though, than the city's leading citizens become embroiled in an all-pervasive political conspiracy. A classic of contemporary fiction, ‘The Twenty-Seventh City’ shows us an ordinary metropolis turned inside out, and the American Dream unravelling into terror and dark comedy.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
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?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
23 of 25 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections caused a pretty big stir in the US about eighteen months ago; so big that ripples made it across the Atlantic well before the book was published in the UK. Whatever your view of the hype, the book was better than it led you to believe. It read like a masterpiece. Preternaturally composed and insightful. So real that is scared you just describing the inside of a house. But, with that bravura performance yet to come, what of Franzen's earlier fiction?
The Twenty-seventh City, first published in 1988 and set four years earlier, has recently been re-released, riding the wave of literary commotion caused by his bestseller. It is a long debut novel about the city of St Louis, once a top-five centre of economic and cultural importance, listed right up there with New York and Boston, but now, in the mid-eighties, falling rapidly down the list of grand American cities. The St Louis arch is, in this book, the only thing that stands out about the city, and even that seems merely to awe residents, whilst those from out of state only turn their attention when the Cardinals make the play-offs in baseball's Major League.
Faded glories are apt to be burnished, though, and St Louis is about to undergo a transformation. The arrival of S. Jammu, an American-born Bombay police chief (distantly related to Indira Ghandi) who is installed as the new local head of police, heralds a timely change in fortunes. She has her eye on much more than just crime, however, and under cover of her charm and her outstanding political abilities a wide-ranging conspiracy touches all levels of city society, polishing everything up as it goes.
Franzen draws a wonderfully entertaining, vibrant picture of a local business community unable to shift itself out of a slump. A mass of interweaving characters flit in and out of the conspiracy, very few of them able to comprehend what is going on. There is a real pull of mystery here. Reading it you are never sure quite who is in charge, and whether those who claim to know something really do or not. Jammu, the arch politician, even seems as though she might be too eager to believe her own publicity and had not managed to keep her eye on the ball. All this is as it should be, of course. The Twenty-seventh City is a great, typically American novel about he sprawl of the urban environment, inflated by wonderful characters, told with gusto and style. But it is also a bit of a thriller, with the reader forever guessing who exactly is up to what.
Going back to this, Franzen's debut, after reading his masterful third novel, is a decision fraught with peril. It is, so often, a disappointment to read an author you love when he was younger and less assured. And it is fair to say that The Twenty-seventh City is not in the same league as The Corrections. It does not have that same microscopic emotional honesty, but is much more fun to read. It is a romp. A great, city-wide game of spy and counterspy, a confection of dodgy deals and morally upright businessmen, a bounding account of terrorism, kidnapping, romantic affairs and unhealthy sexual obsession. There is so much that is so alive in these pages that in fact it is easy to forget what else Franzen has written. And this fact alone marks his first novel with the touch of greatness. Greatness to come perhaps, but minor brilliance even to begin.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Having enjoyed The Corrections very much I looked forward to Franzen's first novel, The 27th City. Somewhat to my surprise, though first novels often are untypical of a writer's entire output,I heartily disliked it; couldn't wait for it to end in fact. I find the premise unpersuasive(female Indian former police chief of Bombay gets the same job in St Louis, Missouri, the 27th city of the title, and effectively seizes political power via corruption, murder and cruel sexual manipulation, all in a period of six months.)If,as is claimed, it's supposed to be a telling study of the collapse of the American Dream,for me it fails. It's impossible to engage with any of the principals. The endless passages of regional politicking and the confusingly large cast of peripheral characters exhausted my patience. It's painfully overwritten. An able editor would have suggested it be cut by a third. In sum, I found the tone so unpleasant that it's one of only two novels (the other being V.S.Naipaul's loathsome Guerillas)I don't want about the house.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I bought this on the basis of "The Correction" and "Freedom" but like all writers Frazen can't do it every time ( and perhaps that's only right)and with this one he doesn't quite make it. Its funny detailed and complex like his other novels but with two many characters, too many sub-plots and because of this just doesn't involve enough. the characters just become characters and nothing more, they have no life of their own. By all means read his other two mentioned but go for this one only if your a completest.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
a disappointment after reading "freedom"
I turned to this first novel of Jonathan Franzen after reading The Corrections (which I liked), Freedom (which I thought most mostly great) and The Discomfort Zone (highly... Read more
Published 12 months ago by William Jordan
Well worth perservering with...
I'm glad I had read The Corrections first as otherwise I might not have finished this. The collection of characters is confusing at first as they take time to develop but this... Read more
Published 15 months ago by ZedWise
Good but Occasionally Directionless
The talent of Mr Franzen should not be doubted. All that hullabaloo about the Oprah Book Club (I'm sure you've heard the story) sounds a bit likethe machinations of a PR campaign,... Read more
Published on 28 April 2004 by D. C. Njoku
A bit of a waste of time - Yet, shows what's to come...
After reading the excellent 'The Corrections' a few months agao, I was very excited to be taking 'The Twenty-seventh City' away with me recently on holiday. Read more
Published on 8 Sep 2003 by "simobap"
A little confusing at points, but fascinating and fun.
This title came up on my Instant Recommendations, and I decided to give it a try after reading the reviews. Read more
Published on 10 Nov 1998
Audacity! Humor! Intellect!
I have never been to St. Louis, but Franzen's depiction of big-city decline, desperation and corruption is familiar (and compelling) to anyone who lives in an aging city in the... Read more
Published on 6 Aug 1998
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
