A Man in Full

Rating:
Summary: Windy, Wordy, Wheezy
Review: Just as the sartorial armor of teenagers is ridiculed here, this book is way too big and baggy for what it intended to cover. The characters and situations are hard to believe--and as a reader who has actually worked in a freezer, I can speak with authority on some of that. It is also very hard to look at the huge photo of a dapper Tom Wolfe, resplendent in his white suit and hat, and connect that with the message of less is more. A disappointing read--by the time it generated enough heat to warm me up, I was already frozen to death.

Rating:
Summary: An enjoyable and humerous tour-de-force
Review: A Man in Full is great. The story follows Atlanta real-estate mogul Charlie Croker through his peak, fall, and ultimate redemption as he grapples with executives at PlannersBank for control of his waning empire. The novel also depicts a maze of supporting characters through situations ranging from corporate conspiracy to prison escape. Wolfe's writing is in vintage form, and his commentary on class and race are right-on. The novel is hilarious and compelling, and difficult to put down. The characters are well-developed and multifaceted; the human depiction encourages the reader to feel sympathy rather than contempt even in the midst of high depravity. Highly recommended to readers who enjoy sophisticated humor and tightly-woven plots.

Rating:
Summary: What a total disapointment !
Review: Having been a fan of Tom Wolfe's earlier books, with the exception of Bonfire of the Vanities, I was hopeful that his next book would be better than Bonfire. Well, I was totally wrong. This book suffers from the same problems that Bonfire did, totally unconvincing characters. Wolfe takes an inordinate amount of time painstakingly developing his characters, then gives them nowhere to go and very little to do. In a 700 plus page book he uses 650 page to develop various storylines and then, seemingly realizing he had gotten nowhere with this story, he tacks on the most contrived, absurd and insulting ending I've encountered. I literally burst into laughter, the ending was so bad. If this was the last book availible on the planet I wouldn't reccomend it to my worst enemy. I could not be more disapointed.

Rating:
Summary: Aimed high got halfway there
Review: Maybe it's because I read "The Triumph and the Glory" and "Mother of Pearl" the week before I bought a copy of "Man in Full" but this new one from Tom Wolfe seemed to really drag in comparison. As an earlier reviewer pointed out, he spends way too much time describing objects and filling pages with tedious irrelevancies for my taste. I'm going to read "The Right Stuff" again so I can experience once more Tom Wolfe at his peak, because right now, he's in a galaxy far, far away.

Rating:
Summary: A very interesting book.
Review: I enjoyed the book, an interesting story line. God, it was long though. I am getting rather bored with many people chacterizing rural southeners as a bunch of good old boy rednecks.

Rating:
Summary: A Man in Full was well worth the wait.
Review: There is not a contemporary American author who could have crafted such a intricate tale. His ability to weave assorted characters from all levels of Atlanta's neo-provincial cultural hierarchy captivated me from the beginning to nearly the end. That being said, the ending was anticlimatic and thin. I could envision some grizzled publisher saying "Tom, just finish the damn book." The amazing thing about the story: it could actually overcome such a half-baked ending. I can only hope we don't have to wait another 10 years for another masterpiece.

Rating:
Summary: Couldn't Have Been Better - Totally Pleasing
Review: This is a good book, really, and I expected nothing better. It's more than just entertainment, and it does not represent literature as an art, and represents the 90s. The characters are deep. The plot is complex and some passages are very funny and it's a page turner. It justifies all the "frenesi" created around it.

Rating:
Summary: 727 pages that could have been said in 327
Review: Although the writing was great, there was way too much plodding detail in this book to make it move along. Disappointing, and I didn't care for the negative racial overtones.

Rating:
Summary: Good book. Not fantastic but worth reading
Review: This is a good book, really, but I expected something better. It's just entertainment, a good one, but it does not represent literature as an art, nether represents the 90s. The characters are not deep enough. Yes, the plot is complex and some passages are very funny and it's a page turner, but it does not justify all the "frenesi" created around it.

Rating:
Summary: A well done but incomplete satirical look at the 90s
Review: I enjoyed Bonfire when I read it a few years ago, but I couldn't quite grasp all of the irony and satire of it because I was a child during the 80s (I was born in '79). With A Man in Full, I have a much better idea of what Wolfe is aiming at even though it pertains to an older generation. And in a way, I think that's one of the book's flaws. I wish I could have read some more mockery of the younger generation of the 90s - the pop culture, the wealth and the poverty, etc. I wouldn't be so critical if he hadn't touched this subject at all, but he did when he wrote about Freaknic and Fanon's party life. He certainly could have gone deeper. Aside from this, I was engrossed with the writing, the characters, and the plot - and I think that this aspect of the novel couldn't get much better - but if I was to judge this novel as a satire of the 90s, as many are doing, I would find some holes (incidentally, similar to the holes I found in Bonfire). Oh, and the ending: at first I thought it was a little sudden like the other reviewers have been saying, but it really wasn't that unbelievable. I wish that Charlie's transformation could have been examined more, but then I thought of those evangelists that exist today (and of the whole 5th or 6th religious revival we're going through) and honestly, it doesn't seem so unrealistic anymore. And besides, it's fun to read a deus ex machina in modern literature (where Zeus doesn't get strangled on cables while descending) . . .