|
Get up to 65% off some of our top titles. Shop now |
Frequently Bought Together
Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought
by Jonathan Raban
|
by Jonathan Raban
|
by Jonathan Raban
|
by Jonathan Raban
|
by Jonathan Raban
|
Product details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
Product Description
Amazon.com
Jonathan Raban's Waxwings is a canticle for the late 1990s told through the intertwined lives of several Seattlites. In the novel, the city becomes a microcosm of America at the turn of the millennium, and Raban's characters--all in some way tragic "tourists" in the world--are rendered with a compassion that redeems their personal failings.
Thomas Janeway is a British novelist and professor of literature at the University of Washington whose life is coming apart in his adopted home. He deeply loves his four-year-old son, Finn, but his wife, Beth, is caught up in the dot-com explosion, and the couple has grown apart. As Seattle erupts in the WTO riots and terrorist plots, Janeway's life crumbles around him. His wife leaves him, his house becomes a shambles of half-completed reconstruction and his son is caught fighting in school. When he becomes a "person of interest" in the abduction and possible murder of a local girl, he is put on leave with pay from the university. Yet, Raban does not let Janeway--or any of his characters--wallow in self-pity. They all try to move forward with life, and even Janeway "the suspect" finds sympathetic allies in surprising places.
At one point in the novel, Janeway lectures his students on the "generosity" of VS Pritchett, saying that the writer believed "in a general redistribution of verbal wealth, in taking good lines from the haves, and giving them to the have-nots". This "liberal realism" also characterises Raban's work. Raban treats all of his characters, from Janeway to Finn, with patience and balance. He fully inhabits each and tells fragments of the story from the perspective of Beth, Tom, Finn and even Tom's illegal-immigrant contractor, Chick. One narrative infuses another, lending the novel a Dickensian universality. Together the disparate voices perfectly capture the particulars of a place, Seattle, at a unique moment in American history. --Patrick O'Kelley --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
The author of Bad Land and other impressive novels has come up with an exciting new one which promises to be the first of a series of three books set in the Pacific North-West. The two main protagonists are Tom Janeway, a Hungarian-born Englishman living in Seattle with his wife Beth and son Finn, and an illegal alien known as Chick, who came over in a cargo container ship, and is desperate to pay the $37,000 he owes for his passage. Chick meets up with Tom, the distracted professor, who needs work done on his house, and soon things begin to go wrong for him. It is a brilliant story very well told.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?
 |
55% buy the item featured on this page: Waxwings £15.19 |
 |
15% buy Bad Land £6.17 |
 |
11% buy Hunting Mr. Heartbreak (Picador Books) £5.98 |
 |
10% buy Arabia £4.98 |
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
 |
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
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.
Your Recent History
(What's this?)|
After viewing product detail pages or search results, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in. |
