If you like unreliable narrators, have I got a treat for you! The novel
Exley has two! Miller LeRay and his therapist, who Miller calls Dr. Pahnee, are the dual narrators and the reader is not sure either of them is telling the truth.
At the beginning of the novel we learn that Miller's mother has decided that Miller needs a therapist because he insists that his father, who left the family a few months ago, has gone to Iraq as a soldier. She doesn't believe this because, as we find out through the course of the book, Tom is a drunk who hasn't held a job in years. He left the family but the reader does not know exactly why.
Miller's therapist has to be the most ineffective child psychologist in history. He refers to himself as a "mental health professional", and seems very unprofessional. Half the book consists of his notes, the other half is Miller's narration and they alternate telling the story. His notes are extremely entertaining. When he and Miller describe the same event you still wonder what is true.
The title of the book refers to the author of "
A Fan's Notes", Frederick Exley. "A Fan's Notes" is Tom's favorite book, perhaps the only book he has ever read. Miller is a precocious reader and, although he is only 9, can read just about anything. He has promised his dad that he would not read "A Fan's Notes" (it is highly inappropriate for a child), mostly because his mother does not want him to read it. Miller believes that his father has come back from Iraq and is now in the VA hospital. He gets it in his head that if he finds Exley and brings him to his father that his father will get better. Most of the book is Miller's search for Exley.
I found the book humorous for the most part, with some poignant parts. I enjoyed trying to figure out which of Miller's stories were true. I listened to the audio version of this book, which featured a different narrator for Miller and Dr. Pahnee, which added a lot to my enjoyment.
| Exley
By Clarke, Brock
2010-10 - Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
9781565126084 Check Our Catalog
BookPage Notable Title
The bestselling author of "An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England" returns with another wry and insightful novel about truth and reality, this time featuring the alternating voices of a confused young boy and his slightly unstable therapist. …More
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| An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England
By Clarke, Brock
2008-09 - Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
9781565126145 Check Our Catalog
A lot of remarkable things have happened to Sam Pulsifer, beginning with the ten years he spent in prison for accidentally burning down Emily Dickinson's house and unwittingly killing two people. Emerging at the age of twenty-eight, he creates a new life as a husband and father. But when the homes of other famous writers go up in smoke, he must prove his innocence by uncovering the identity of this literary-minded arsonist.
…More
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| Fan's Notes
By Exley, Frederick
1969-08 - Ballantine Books
9780345217059 Check Our Catalog
Frederick Exley's inimitable "fictional memoir" A Fan's Notes has assumed the status of a classic since its first publication in 1968. Mordantly and poignantly, Exley describes the profound failures of his life - professional, sexual, and personal. His attempts to find a place for himself in an unaccommodating world take him from the University of Southern California to Chicago - where he meets the dangerously seductive, lovely Bunny Sue Allorgee - to New York City's Greenwich Village saloons, and back to Watertown, his hometown in upstate New York, where he spends months on his mother's living room davenport watching television before undergoing shock treatment at Avalon Valley hospital. Between bars, women, and jobs, Exley exercises his obsession with the New York Giants and their great halfback Frank Gifford, until he at last realizes his life's ambition: writing A Fan's Notes. …More
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| Child of My Heart
By McDermott, Alice
2003-11 - Picador USA
9780312422912 Check Our Catalog
A BookPage Notable Title
In McDermott's first work of fiction since her bestselling, National Book Award-winning "Charming Billy," a woman recalls her 15th summer with the wry and bittersweet wisdom of hindsight. …More
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| Saturday
By McEwan, Ian
2006-04 - Anchor Books
9781400076192 Check Our Catalog
From the pen of a master -- the #1 bestselling, Booker Prize-winning author of Atonement -- comes an astonishing novel that captures the fine balance of happiness and the unforeseen threats that can destroy it. A brilliant, thrilling page-turner that will keep readers on the edge of their seats.
Saturday is a masterful novel set within a single day in February 2003. Henry Perowne is a contented man -- a successful neurosurgeon, happily married to a newspaper lawyer, and enjoying good relations with his children. Henry wakes to the comfort of his large home in central London on this, his day off. He is as at ease here as he is in the operating room. Outside the hospital, the world is not so easy or predictable. There is an impending war against Iraq, and a general darkening and gathering pessimism since the New York and Washington attacks two years before.
On this particular Saturday morning, Perowne's day moves through the ordinary to the extraordinary. After an unusual sighting in the early morning sky, he makes his way to his regular squash game with his anaesthetist, trying to avoid the hundreds of thousands of marchers filling the streets of London, protesting against the war. A minor accident in his car brings him into a confrontation with a small-time thug. To Perowne's professional eye, something appears to be profoundly wrong with this young man, who in turn believes the surgeon has humiliated him -- with savage consequences that will lead Henry Perowne to deploy all his skills to keep his family alive.
"From the Hardcover edition. …More |
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