Category: book Nook
Plays well with Others by Allan Gurganus
Book Number:RC 47683
337 pages on 13 sides
Read by Jim Ziger
The NLS summery of this book was way off the mark, so I robbed the following
from the web site. I'm at a loss as how to tell you about this book.
Funny, heartbreaking, heart warming, real and fun. I am better for having
read this one. Be warned, it's not for the faint of heart or people who shy
away from homosexual content. Although not so graphic as some heterosexual
books I've read, it's still there. I never felt like it was too much, it
told the story, or I should say,"stories". I am now a fan of Allan Gurganus.
I give it a 5 out of 5.
Happy reading,
Carla/TexasRed
With great narrative inventiveness and emotional amplitude, Allan Gurganus
gives us artistic Manhattan in the wild 1980s, where young artists--refugees
from the middle class--hurl themselves into playful work and serious fun.
Our guide is Hartley Mims Jr., a Southerner whose native knack for happiness
might thwart his literary ambitions. Through his eyes we encounter the
composer Robert Christian Gustafson, an Iowa preacher's son whose good looks
constitute
both a mythic draw and a major limitation, and Angelina "Alabama" Byrnes, a
failed deb, five feet tall but bristling with outsized talent. These friends
shelter each other, promote each other's work, and compete erotically. When
tragedy strikes, this circle grows up fast, somehow finding, at the worst of
times, the truest sort of family.
Funny and heartbreaking, as eventful as Dickens and as atmospheric as one of
Fitzgerald's parties, Plays Well with Others combines a fable's high-noon
energy
with an elegy's evening grace. Allan Gurganus's celebrated new novel is a
lovesong to imperishable friendship, a hymn to a brilliant and now-vanished
world.
"A wondrous book..brimming with life.... [It] confirms Gurganus's stature as
one of our most significant and indispensable writers." --Atlanta Journal &
Constitution
"Gurganus, a storyteller in the grand tradition, can tell his stories as
well as anyone alive." --The New York Times
"Witty and piercing. There are sentences that glisten like black
opals." --Los Angeles Times
http://www.allangurganus.com/index.php
Sounds like a great, must-read here.
I don't know, sounds okay, but it's really not for me.