Ancient Evenings

Rating:
Summary: my favourite book
Review: I have read many mailer books and this is so good that I have read it three times and I am sure will read it many more times.
the imagination and story telling takes you to where the story takes.fantastic.I am going to get a hardback edition to go with my paperback as it is so special.

Rating:
Summary: Wasn't sure at first...
Review: I picked this book up used and had trouble to start with - the first 25 pages or so were the equivalent of wading through mud. After reading the reviews here I decided I'd plow through the rest of it or die trying. Fortunately, the writing evened out and became quite casual reading.

It's a weird book to say the least and not like anything I've read (mostly classics, sci-fi and scientific) however it was thoroughly fascinating at the same time. It didn't matter what was going on in the story: the writing was powerful, the thoughts and images of the story clearly conveyed in writing. Very few books can put a picture in your head like this one can.

While the sexual exploits were certainly entertaining (and quite humorous at times) they - like everything in the book - happened for a reason, illustrating the power struggles and state of the mind quite lucidly as the characters interacted with each other.

This book isn't for everyone, but those able to read it cover to cover will think about the book and characters long after finishing it - the mark of any good book as far as I'm concerned.

Rating:
Summary: THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL
Review: I read this the first week it came out, long ago, and thought it the Great American Novel, despite its being set in Egypt. Why so grand an opinion? Because the writing, especially the set-pieces about mummification and a trip up the Nile, as well as others, were better written than any passages of equal length by any American author I'd ever read. RAINTREE COUNTY sets out to be the Great Amrican Novel but, as much as I enjoyed it when I was twenty, its lyricism falls short of Mailer's. The trip up the Nile is equaled only by Twain's Mississippi, Melville's Three-Day Chase at the end of MOBY DICK, and Hemingway's description of the deep waters Santiago fishes in in THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA. I found Mailer's characters, even the walkons, more well-rounded and weighted than any by the whole pantheon of classic American writers. Melville, Twain, Thomas Wolfe, Dreiser, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Bellow, Updike, none of them has created Tolstoyan characters with feet as fully plantd on the page as Mailer's Egyptians. Nor has Mailer ever again matched the exquisite bath of light in which he washes these pages.

Rating:
Summary: Moonlight tonight
Review: That's what this book is about. Yes. It is VERY graphic, but the theme of this is about life (and death) then. One of the few [non]-fiction books I ever read. Made me want to read more of NM's stuff.

Rating:
Summary: A long way from Mailer's best
Review: There are moments of brilliance in this book, but they're few and far between. This is the third Mailer book I've read, after The Naked And The Dead and The Fight. Both, in their different ways, utterly brilliant. This book just goes on interminably and you get the impression Mailer just gets sick of it, wraps things up quickly and gets out of there. If you can make it that far though, the last few pages are great!

Rating:
Summary: All sound and no fury
Review: This book is a dud, and a long and painful one at that. I've been reading Mailer my entire life. He's written masterpieces (Armies of the Night, Executioner's Song) and there are the great collections of journalism (Advertisements for Myself, Existential Errands, etc), but let's face it, he's never written even a good novel, and this one doesn't even come close. There's a lot of huffing and puffing and certainly some interesting recreations of the Ancient Egypt, but the book goes nowhere and adds up to nothing. Norman Mailer needs an enema -- and fast!

Rating:
Summary: Well worth the considerable effort!
Review: This is a tough book to read, no doubt about it. I put it down twice before reading it through the third time. This is a deeply insightful text, and the plot is mystical to the point of surreal. The story is set in various timelines, as the central character has been reborn several times. In his rendition of his lives Menenhetet paints a picture of ancient Egypt, one that has little if any correlation to our times. So in that sense the book does indeed suck the reader into the time of ancient Egypt. After I read this book I felt much like I did after seeing "Saving Private Ryan" - not particularly entertained, but very moved. I recommend it.