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A Calling for Charlie Barnes

Autor Joshua Ferris
en Limba Engleză Paperback – 15 sep 2021

Ce rămâne din identitatea unui om atunci când visurile sale pragmatice se lovesc de zidul unei crize economice globale? În A Calling for Charlie Barnes, descoperim un portret complex și adesea auto-ironic al unui bărbat ancorat în certitudinile secolului trecut — ziarul de dimineață și telefonia fixă — forțat să își renegocieze locul într-o lume care nu îl mai recunoaște. Miza nu este doar supraviețuirea financiară în timpul Marii Recesiuni, ci una profund psihologică: confruntarea dintre versiunea eroică pe care Charlie o are despre sine și realitatea fragmentată reflectată de ochii celor patru soții, ai copiilor săi și, mai ales, ai fiului care alege să îi scrie povestea.

Suntem de părere că Joshua Ferris reușește aici o performanță narativă remarcabilă, mutând lupa de pe colectivitatea din Then We Came to the End pe intimitatea dureroasă a legăturilor de sânge. Dacă în The Unnamed autorul explora o alienare fizică bizară, în acest nou roman el analizează alienarea emoțională a „visului american”. Imaginați-vă tensiunea și deziluzia unui om de afaceri aflat la răscruce din A Hologram for the King, mutată într-un decor de suburbie americană unde eșecul este mascat de optimismul incurabil al unui romantic incurabil.

Notăm cu interes modul în care Ferris jonglează cu perspectivele, transformând biografia lui Charlie Barnes într-o meditație despre natura adevărului personal. Ritmul este alert, punctat de un umor tăios, dar subiacent pulsează o melancolie autentică despre ce înseamnă să fii un „om bun” într-o eră a valorilor volatile. Este o lucrare care confirmă maturitatea autorului, păstrând spiritul ludic din Dinner Party dar aplicându-l unei structuri de roman de o profunzime surprinzătoare.

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Specificații

ISBN-13: 9780241202876
ISBN-10: 0241202876
Pagini: 352
Dimensiuni: 153 x 234 x 25 mm
Greutate: 0.44 kg
Editura: Penguin Books
Colecția Viking
Locul publicării:London, United Kingdom

De ce să citești această carte

Recomandăm această carte celor care apreciază proza americană contemporană ce îmbină satira socială cu analiza psihologică fină. Cititorul va câștiga o perspectivă onestă asupra dinamicii tată-fiu și a modului în care ne inventăm propriul trecut pentru a supraviețui prezentului. Este un roman esențial pentru fanii lui Joshua Ferris și pentru oricine a simțit vreodată discrepanța dintre cine este și cine aspiră să devină.


Despre autor

Joshua Ferris (născut în 1974) este o voce distinctă în literatura americană actuală, recunoscut pentru debutul său răsunător din 2007, Then We Came to the End, o satiră a mediului corporatist scrisă la persoana întâi plural. Opera sa, care include romane precum To Rise Again at a Decent Hour (nominalizat la Booker Prize) și volumul de povestiri Dinner Party, gravitează constant în jurul absurdului cotidian și al fragilității umane. Stilul său se caracterizează printr-un amestec de umor fin, observație clinică a societății și o preocupare constantă pentru crizele existențiale ale omului modern în fața tehnologiei sau a declinului economic.


Notă biografică

Joshua Ferriswas born in Illinois in 1974. He is the author of four novels and one collection of short stories. His debut,Then We Came to the End, won the PEN/Hemingway award and was shortlisted for the National Book Award and his most recent novel,To Rise Again at A Decent Hour,was nominated for the Booker Prize and won the Dylan Thomas Prize. He lives in upstate New York.

Recenzii

Brilliant, funny, heartbreaking . . .Family, memory, ambition and death, all told with dervishing glee. Not just a daredevil of a novel, but something truly new
Funny, moving, and formally a work of genius,A Calling for Charlie Barnesis quite literally the book Joshua Ferris was born to write.
Dazzling. Mind-blowing. About as much fun as you can have without risking arrest
Adeeply funny, very moving book. . . Ferris's hijinks are serious; his play is profound.There is magic in these pages
A Calling for Charlie Barnesiswonderful:fast and deep, urgent and brilliant. . .A hilarious, intimate, and scathing takedown of so many American vanities
Ferris's workcuts to the heart of who we areby focusing very painfully on who one man was . . . Consider this booknot just a work of grief or love or memoir, then, but a work of hope, too.
Joshua Ferris has proved hisastonishing ability to spin gold from ordinary air. . . Asbrave and adeptas any writer out there
Not too many authors have written the Great American Office Novel...Then We Came to the Endfeels likea readymade classic of the genre. . . .A truly affecting novel about work, trust, love, and loneliness
Dismayingly funny in the way that only really serious books can be

Brilliant, funny, stomach-turningly accurate

Very funny, intense and exhilarating

Descriere scurtă

Charlie Barnes, sixty-eight years old, reasonable man, small-business owner is facing the abyss and it's time to reckon with how he has lived his life so far. What happened to all those great ideas that were snatched from the jaws of success? And what was with all those unsuccessful marriages? Well, who's counting the wives when Barbara, his fifth and most permanent wife, is such a rock solid pillar of society?

Maybe Jake Barnes, son of Charlie and writer of his story is counting. Now that his father seems to be on the way out, Jake begins to wonder what Charlie Barnes's desperate dreams of success have really added up to. If his father's life was a series of fantasies, then how is it possible for his son to tell the truth about him? And will Jake have to confront the fact that in their ambitions, and their delusions, they might not actually be so very different?

Joshua Ferris's new novel is both a profoundly tender and brutally funny portrayal of a life lost in the American dream.

Descriere

Descriere de la o altă ediție sau format:

From the Booker-shortlisted author of To Rise Again at a Decent Hour comes a hilarious novel about fathers, sons, thwarted dreams and confronting the reality of who we really are

'This is a fine American novel about family, love, and a decent but flawed man trying to be better. In dark times like these, I can't recommend this book too highly. It's strong' Stephen King on Twitter
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Charlie Barnes is a mid-century man devoted to his newspaper and his landline. But Charlie is about to get dragged into our troubled age by his storyteller son, who has a different idea of him than he has of himself. Then there are his other children, his ex-wives, present wife, business clients, friends and acquaintances, all of whom have their competing opinions of Charlie.

He certainly seems simple enough: he's a striver, a romantic, and a thoroughgoing capitalist. But suddenly blindsided by the Great Recession and a dose of bad news, he might have to rethink his life from top to bottom, and on short notice. What makes a man real? What makes him good? And how does the story we tell about ourselves line up with the lives that we actually live?
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'Funny, moving, and formally a work of genius, A Calling for Charlie Barnes is quite literally the book Joshua Ferris was born to write' Garth Risk Hallberg, author of City on Fire

'Dazzling. Mind-blowing. About as much fun as you can have without risking arrest' Richard Russo, author of Empire Falls

'Wonderful: fast and deep, urgent and brilliant . . . A hilarious, intimate, and scathing takedown of so many American vanities' Dana Spiotta, author of Stone Arabia