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Summary: The South has risen again and been totally revealed!!
Review: What a great book!! Being Southern probably helped me to relate to the characters. They populate my world each day. Tom Wolfe's characterizations have always been probing and graphic with both the good and evil revealed; but he outdoes himself here. The jail sequences were so realistic that I dreamed of them; and the complexity of the structure grabs you and won't let you go until the last page. (And I always want the book to go on so that I won't have to leave Wolfe's delicious sense of the ridiculous and the sublime.) I haven't read the winner of the National Book Award; but it cannot be better than this! And may I always be a Stoic!
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Summary: Master formula novel (or script) but not a master work
Review: This was my first Tom Wolfe novel. Having just moved to Atlanta, I thought it would be fun reading. Overall, this book was an inflight novel, an international flight with some gate changes. AMIF was cleanly written and well researched with all the mainstay formula items that one should expect from a book for the movies. AMIF was not a captivating or an engaging work. The reader should not expect true literature from AMIF, but should find a professional effort. I doubt I will ever want to reread it, but I did not mind the first read (except in a few sections).
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Summary: A big disappointment
Review: Tom Wolfe is one of my favorite writers, and BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES one of my favorite books. Imagine my anticipation when I opened this book -- and my disappointment when I closed it. To me it was a sad rehash of BONFIRE, an attempt to jam every two-dimensional stereotypical character into a novel that would lampoon all of our society's quirks. I couldn't muster up any real interest in any of these people, no matter how sympathetically they were painted. The entire plot, including its creaky ending, seemed to be a BONFIRE rewrite, transplanted to Atlanta. If you're interested in horse breeding, one scene may interest you. If not, check out ELECTRIC KOOL -AID ACID TESTS or BONFIRE.
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Summary: long-winded and boring
Review: I read the first half of this novel and promptly stopped. I found the characterization too detailed which made the reading long-winded. Having spent a great deal of time in Georgia, I was familiar with the setting, yet it did not add to my enjoyment of this book.
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Summary: Who wrote the finale?
Review: The narrative was a romp, the characters a hoot, the ending a dud! Wolfe can do better but I hope he never takes his tongue from his cheek!
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Summary: A Man In Full Is A Book Not Finished
Review: An enjoyable page-turner, but so similar in style to Bonfire that you often feel as if you've read parts of it before. The high point is the cast of over-the-top yet entertaining characters; the low point is the disappointing finish. After 700 pages of complex, converging antics -- which gives it some of the flavor of Vonnegut's Breakfast Of Champions -- I expected a bit more than a few paragraphs of "what they are doing now" after a less-than-dramatic final scene. It seemed as if Wolfe just ran out of gas at the end, and wrapped it up as quickly as he could to make a deadline.
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Summary: Zeus' spark? I think not.
Review: Yes, this book does bring situations and people together through excellent plot twists, but why? If all Conrad is going to do to the hopeless Croker is convert him to stoicism, I don't care. 730 pages of page turning dialogue and complex situations to have the whole book come down to some long forgotten philosophy. I also wonder why Roger White and Wes Jordan have to have a ten page conversation to let the reader know what could have been said (should have) in the previous 730 pages! Five star start, one star ending.
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Summary: A 700+ Page Disappointment
Review: If Tom Wolfe had not been the writer, and I hadn't already read 400 plus pages of the 750 pages, I would have put "A Man In Full" aside and never looked at it again. But I did finish it, and was greatly disappointed. First of all, it it overwritten...you could skip entire pages and almost every other sentence and not miss anything. Mr. Wolfe goes on and on and on trying to show his new mastery of the Southern culture, but it's as exciting a read as a "Crock Pot Cookbook." And finally, as you're nearing the very end, finally feeling like at least he's getting somewhere, you realize there are only fifty pages left and nothing is feeling tied up. Finally, he ties it up, but unfortunately, you're left with the feeling that he simply ran out of steam after his ten years of working on this book...and ultimately the ending is superficial and unsatisfying. I felt angry that a writer as good as Mr. Wolfe would put this book out. Yes, there were some interesting characters (even if most all of them were unlikable), but ultimately the book was overwritten, superficial, and sadly, felt very contrived. There's a lot of better books to spend your time with...skip this one and wait for his next. He's too interesting a writer not to get it right next time.
Rating: 
Summary: One of the best books of 1988
Review: I was a little daunted by the length of this book however towards the end, I did not want it to end. The characterizations were amazing. How Tom Wolfe dreams up these people and makes them seem so believable and human is unreal. I especially liked the character of Martha, Charlie's ex wife. The description of the benefit which she attended where she was ignored was so insightful and on target. Having been to a number of these social events myself, I can relate to the accuracy of Wolfe's description. The only part which I skipped over and found too depressing to read was the prison description. Most of the real action takes place towards the last quarter of the book and it is well worth the wait. This book was much better than Bonfires since the characters were much more likeable and sympathetic and it did not get bogged down on one storyline the way Bonfires did. I can't wait for the movie to come out and to see who they cast! I can't think of anyone else besides Nicholson as Charlie Croker!
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Summary: A great read, but loses it at the end.
Review: This is a well written book, with interwoven stories and characters who are real - until the last fifty pages, when the whole book falls apart, under the weight of its own incredible resolution. It's as if the author gave up on the story and just wanted to finish this very wordy disappointment.
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