A Man in Full

Rating:
Summary: Good book; huge but worth the time to read; 4 1/2 stars
Review: I'm late in reviewing this based on the twenty billion
reviews below.

I will say to hit see all reviews and click the button in
the middle list that ranks by MOST HELPFUL (meaning these got the most clicks for helping). Otherwise, you'll be on this page
forever.

Regarding the book, I really liked it. It was great until
the end where it seemed to fall apart. I haven't yet
determined if the author just got tired or he was trying to
make some offbeat message that I didn't get.

If you need a reference, this is a notch below THE BONFIRE
OF THE VANITIES in story structure but the characters and
events and little things are just as good.

Rating:
Summary: Sprawling, Lush and other
Review: This was a fine book, but unfortunately I couldn't read it straight through, I had to put it down for a month, I guess I just don't have the endurance for a 700+ page book, I put them all down after 400 pages and take a break. This was a look at the world of Atlanta, Socialites and business is a town that (apparently) is not that far from the sticks. Since I have never been to Atlanta, or anywhere down south, I do not know if this rings true to socialite, elitist Atlanta. It is a good weaving of 3 tales, A successful Atlanta business man who has made some bad decisions lately and is about to lose it all, the mayor of Atlanta and an old friend teeming up to prevent a social tragedy involving a heinous deed perpetrated by a despicable man, who just happens to have the right social standing, and a laborer who is sent to prison after the worst string of bad luck I have ever seen and finds salvation in the words of Epictetus and Zeus. I found the book engrossing at times and long winded at others. If there had been about 200 fewer pages I would have rated this book a 4 or a 5, but it just seemed to drag a little. If long novels don't bother you then I strongly suggest this one. If you are more a fan of the quick, short book, don't bother. Thanx for your time, T

Rating:
Summary: Ups & downs
Review: You can never go wrong with Tom Wolfe. If you buy one of his books you can be absolutely sure to get hours of thrilling entertainment. Like most of his books "A man in full" shows you the author's almost Dickens-like ability to interweave seemingly unrelated people. But wheras I have, personally, often been exilarated by his plots this book fails to deliver on that. The ending is banal and very predictable. I had a strong sense of what would eventually happen way before I reached the last chapters. And if there is one thing that can make you feel low it's bad endings. In this case it doesn't help that you get to it after having read more than 700 pages. Having said this I must add that Tom Wolfe still manages to entertain and impress you. Reading "A man in full" is an experience of long ongoing ups and downs.

Rating:
Summary: Loved it so much I wish it were a lot longer! Great Book
Review: Even though I expected to like this book because I liked Bonfire of the Vanities, I put off reading it for a long time because it was such a lengthy tome. Now that I've read it, I wish it hadn't been such a short book. As good as it is, I could easily have enjoyed a few thousand more pages of it.

I guess some readers like to snipe at larger than life type authors like Tom Wolfe, hence a lot of lower ratings for it, but I don't understand how reviewers couldn't enjoy the great writing in this book. What a storyteller this guy is! The character development and the physical descriptions are fabulous. The story is entertaining as all get out, even if it's not completely believable. What it is, to me, is greatly enjoyable. If you can read it and not enjoy it, I think it's your loss.

Rating:
Summary: Great read with a sophomoric ending
Review: Well, how in the world does such a great author construct such a terrible ending? ANY and I mean ANY high school student could have come up with a better ending. As horrific as it was it couldn't detract entirely from the rest of the book which was well written. How does an editor allow such a travesty of an ending to stand? Didn't Wolfe have his wife and friends proof-read the book? That having been said, I woke up my wife at 4:00 am to read the section on horse breeding and we both ended up laughing so loud that we woke up one of our children. Depsite the bad ending it IS worth reading and I would recommend it. It is, however, not as good as "Bonfire of the Vanities" which was outstanding.

Rating:
Summary: Not worth the time
Review: I was disappointed by this alleged "great American novel." This book is as bombastic, plodding at times, and (eventually) didactic as The Fountainhead, but much less compelling to read. The dialogue is forced, as is the plot at many times, and Wolfe's belabored efforts to give "authentic" voices to his characters by using exagerrated dialect (if Redneck, Jailhouse, Hawaiian Pidgin and "Middle-class African-American trying to be cool" qualify as dialects) are way too forced. The characters come across as unrealistic stereotypes; they feel like a middle-aged, middle-class, Northern white guy's idea of what certain kinds of people might think and do. The female characters are barely even one-dimensional. And just about all of the main characters are annoying enough that I found myself not caring much about what happened to them by the end. And the end, as others have said before me, is downright lame.

There are many great books out there, and better ways to spend many hours of your time than reading this thick (in more ways than one) tome.

Rating:
Summary: Great Story, Weak Ending
Review: What originally drew me in to A MAN IN FULL, Wolfe's tremendously detailed portraits of a seemingly disparate batch of folks, was ultimately the novel's downfall. I marvel his vivid pictures of the people who populate his books-the redneck captain of industry, Charlie Croker; the uptight, black lawyer, Roger "Too" White and his hunger for respect; Conrad Hensley, a warehouse grunt who merely wants more for his young family. Even the minor characters are fully fleshed, like Charlie's daughter's nanny who is almost entirely proper, except for her aversion to shoes.

Wolfe likes to throw these believable characters into wildly overblown and implausible situations, and in BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES, he was successful in making it work. He was successful, too, in A MAN IN FULL, until he tried to tie together the stories of all the main characters into an ending taken a few steps too far. I agree with other reviewers who found the ending to be "tacked on", and silly, marring an otherwise excellent read.

In all, I'd recommend A MAN IN FULL, but only if you're prepared for a rather unsatisfying ending.

Rating:
Summary: A Masterpiece in the Tom Wolfe Fashion
Review: This book which appeared twelve years after "The Bonfire of the Vanities" takes up a similar story and shows that Tom Wolfe has not lost the plot as is the case with some other writers. In this book, the struggle and the decline of a self-made entrepreneur Charlie Croker is told in the Tom Wolfe style. He is great in producing strong novels with all life size characters. As always, one comes across some of the funniest and wisdom-packed writing in the English language.

Rating:
Summary: A Book In Full
Review: Well, let's see. Three years to finally buy the book, four days to read it. Overall an entertaining story but the ending, well, it just sort of . . . ended. Would like to have heard (or read, actually) a bit more from the characters themselves at the end. Odd twist about who made whom a Zeusian. (Probably would have worked better to have people realize the connection between Conrad and Croker but that would have been too mundane I guess,) As a now-former banker, I liked both Bonfire and this one because I can relate to the "business" at hand. And yes, Peepgass and Zale were right, it sure is easy to get sucked into the big deals and start thinking you're "one of them" (been there, did that, got chewed out for it, but never lost $150 million. $3 million, sure, but never 150). And I didn't even mind the little errors about the near-to-me San Francisco Bay, which Wolfe took a lot of unnecessary heat for. Just as long as he didn't call them the "Oakland" 49ers or the "Oakland" Giants.

Rating:
Summary: A Tom Wolfe Masterwork
Review: In this wonderfully complex, funny, and often harrowing novel, Tom Wolfe explores peoples' obsessions with status, making money, and achieving success. While we often admire the builders and the athletes of the world, we often forget that they, too, are human beings, with many of the shortcomings we all have. Wolfe also shows the flip side of this admiration: how we love to read newspaper stories about celebrities, but often are secretly titillated when their foibles and failures are revealed. We rationalize, "maybe we are better off than them, afterall?"

Charlie Croker, former college football player and master real estate developer, has it all. He is incredibly wealthy, owns an enormous plantation ("Turpmtine") in Atlanta, Georgia with all the trappings: servants, horses, airplanes, and a young and beautiful, sexy, and smart second wife. Charlie is also 60 years old, impotent, ailing with an old knee injury, and on the verge of bankruptcy. He is haunted by his creditors from PlannersBank, and is in danger of losing it all.

Fareek "the Cannon" Farron is a young, African-American, college football star, who is admired, not only for his strength and great athletic ability, but also for his rare achievement of rising above the poverty and criminality of the South Atlanta neighborhood of his childhood. Rumors of Fannon's alleged rape of the daughter of a prominent, white businessman threaten to ruin his reputation and possibly to disrupt race relations in Atlanta.

Conrad is a poor white, 23 year old warehouse worker in one of Charlie Croker's California frozen food outlets. Conrad is an honest, hard working, and exceedingly principled young man who does not have much in the way of money or possessions. He also has a nagging mother-in-law who believes he is a failure as well. Through a series of horrible mishaps and misunderstandings, Conrad is jailed and could very well lose his wife and children. Through his reading of a book of dialogues of the ancient Greco-Roman Stoics that his wife mistakenly sends to him while he is in jail, Conrad learns a new philosophy of life. This philosophy, which Conrad later imparts to Charlie Croker, changes both of their lives forever. They come to realize that there are far more important things than the lure of "success" and material goods. It is no tragedy if one loses all of these things. What is more important is what is left: the inner self, the dignity, "the spirit" that all human being have. That is what sustains life when all else is gone.