Rating: 
Summary: Much ado about nothing
Review: This is one of the most irritating writers I have come across in a long time. Example: Mr Wolfe delights in supplying the correct anatomical term for each and every muscle his heroes are decked out with. We keep reading about latissimus dorsii and deltoids and the trapezius, etc. Is he a frustrated weightlifter, or merely showing off? Example: This one is not only silly, but I found it insulting. Each person is described by his exact colour, from dark to light chocolate, to high yeller, etc. And the worst of them all: an authentic blue-blood black? Example: I have not come across any woman in this book who is not bitchy, shrill, clinging, pathetic etc. On the other hand, there are at least two types of men: There are MEN, and there are the others. Say no more.
Rating: 
Summary: Not as Bright as Bonfire
Review: The New and Old South collide in the person of Charlie Crocker, the main character of Tom Wolfe's novel, A Man in Full. In Crocker (one vowel shy of "cracker") live all the Old South redneck stereotypes -- college football hero, real estate tycoon, philanderer, bigot and lord of a plantation "below the gnat line" in south Georgia. Foolish real estate loans have left his empire under financial siege when politicians recruit him to help defuse a ticking racial timebomb. Rumors accuse Fareek "the Cannon" Fanon, a black football star at Georgia Tech, of date-raping a white debutante. A few words in support of Fanon, a lawyer assures him, will make Crocker's financial troubles disappear. At the same time, the 60-year-old remnants of his once bull-like body begin to betray mortality. Crocker is torn between loyalty to the girl's father, a fellow member of Atlanta's business elite, and the temptation of an easy escape from bankruptcy and social ruin. We empathize with and cringe at Crocker during his physical and financial descent.Wolfe is a skilled satirist. When he takes aim at modern phenomena -- everything from the racial and geographic dichotomy of Atlanta to the aerobics fitness craze -- his observations are right on target. Wolfe on second marriages: "Your first wife married you for better or for worse. Your second wife, particularly if you were sixty and she was a twenty-eight-year-old number like Serena -- why kid yourself? -- she married you for better." As with The Bonfire of the Vanities, Wolfe prods his pen into the racial fault line that divides America, a fault line that rumbles and moans but has yet to split wide open. This book doesn't burn as brightly as Bonfire. The spelling out of regional accents in dialogue becomes tiresome. The storyline of Conrad -- a laid-off Crocker employee who embarks on an Odyssey-like cross-country adventure to influence the novel's endgame -- is contrived. The "Stoic" ending is far-fetched. A Man in Full is nonetheless worth reading. Those who disparage Wolfe's novels as thinly disguised nonfiction are far off-target.
Rating:
Summary: Mediocre Wolfe
Review: Some of the professional reviews I read compared AMIF with Dickens or proclaimed "an impossibly smart" book. It is neither, unless you want Dickens for the T.V. generation. The book requires persistence until about page 440, then it gains momentum, making you hang on for the ultimately disappointing finish. Wolfe did some good local research, but his attempt to re-create south Georgia dialect is clumsy, and his characters are on the whole not believable or very interesting. The end panders to our desire for a happy ending, but comes off as totally unjust and unrealistic.
Rating:
Summary: Trash
Review: If you're looking for a massive, trashy novel...this is the one! If, on the other hand, you're looking for something of substance...don't bother. The highlight (for me) centered on the stoic, Epictetus. The rest is just so much dirty froth.
Rating: 
Summary: This one was half full
Review: Maybe I missed the genius here, but this book kept going and going and nothing seemed to be happening. The ending was very unsatisfying. You don't even like any of the characters. Should have called it quits after a few chapters. Having never read any Tom Wolfe novels before, this is likely my one and only Wolf read. Nuf sed.
Rating:
Summary: not too mesmerising
Review: I'm glad I plodded through this. I like the way the characters all come together in the end. There appears to be too much description that goes nowhere for my taste.
Rating:
Summary: Nice work...a little drawn out.
Review: Although the characters were defintaly developed the only one i found interesting had very little to do with the actual plot.
Rating:
Summary: Excruciating
Review: I must be missing something. I found this book excruciating to get through. Seems it was about 400 pages too long.
Rating: 
Summary: Spins A Great Yarn!
Review: I thought Wolfe depicted the qualities of an "old southern gentleman" right on the money. Charlie Crocker and company wove an intersting tale of greed, egotism, male chauvinism, ambition, pride, courage, betryal, and loss. I enjoyed the characters and the subtle humor (Wringer, Fleasom and Tick is a pretty humorous name for a law firm) and thought Wolfe did a good job of not being afraid to write how things "really" are in the OLD south, especially where there is race, money and power operating. Like many others, I was rather disappointed in the ending.....I would have like to have known more about how Charlie's life progressed and could not imagine him being an evangelist of all things! All in all, a great story, although I must agree with one of the other reviewers....the book is defintely not a postcard showcasing life in Atlanta.
Rating:
Summary: (read on ...)
Review: A man in full? The only reference to the title in all 787 pages of Mr. Tom Wolfe's decade-awaited novel is a little ditty sung by admirers of one of the book's main characters, one Charlie Croker. Mr Croker is a real-estate developer in present-day Atlanta, and--this isn't spilling any beans, trust me--doesn't earn this description, at least initially. Who *does* deserve to be a Man In Full, when the trappings of this witty, ironic tome are finally played out? Probably the person you least suspect. The way we find out is heavy-handed, but at least it's a fun ride. Mr. Wolfe has made a fine living writing pseudo-fiction (I'm sure professional reviewers have prettier words): dropping characters into present-day, very recognizable locales and moving them about like so many chess pieces. His somewhat dated 'Bonfire of the Vanities' skewered 1980's New York society (and spawned probably the worst film of the past 20-odd years) like no one else could, but ultimately did it matter? If he aspires to be more than the Thackery of his day, the author had better do better. He reaches far with this book. And almost succeeds. Clearly, he's after very high ground, and the characters set to do battle are riotous: the aforementioned Croker, a megalomaniac developer from southern 'Jo-jah' desperately clinging to his fortune; Conrad Hensley, a peon working for part of Croker's empire, who's life will soon showcase Wolfe's view of the service economy, our lust for jailing petty perpetrators, the assimilation of new Asian immigrants, and even a stop at philosophical redemption; the mayor and a prominent lawyer--both black--who must find a way to defend a black star athlete from Georgia Tech accused of raping a prominent white citizen's daughter. Add to all those a delicious assortment of lesser characters, all outfitted with Wolfe's over-the-top naming conventions (a banker named--I'm not making this up--Raymond Peepgass, a Hungarian fitness instructor named Mustafa Gunt) and his standard exclamations points! You have an excellent cast, and the game is set. It's a circus, but Wolfe commands them well. The characters' lives intertwine in ways we could probably predict once we know the staging--but we're left with one wildcard and we're made to wait for it. The book's second half almost predictably drags with all the characters save one, who may provide both deliverance and substance worthy of the book's title. Take all this in, and see if you agree.
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