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A Man in Full

A Man in Full

List Price: $28.95
Your Price: $19.69
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Starts with a bang, ends with a whimper
Review: This book started out and continued at break-neck speed and was difficult to put down because of the way it pulled you into the lives of the characters. However, as seems to be the problem with all authors these days, it appears that Mr. Wolfe got tired of writing it and threw together a slap dash ending that seemed to have been written in three seconds. While the ending was admirable in that it tied up the loose ends, it really left you feeling like you'd been ridden hard and put up wet.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Worth Your Time
Review: Don't let the fact that this book is extremely long discourage you. It is definitely worth taking the time to read it. I haven't read any of Wolfe's other books to compare it to, but I did enjoy this book and plan on reading more by him because of it. The ending, however, was mildly dissapointing. I think it ended to quickly. Wolfe could have written more, but his story just suddenly stopped. Despite that I enjoyed the book.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: coool
Review: it's so great! i read it straight for 2 days! all during Finals week! the characters were so funny! n even if it was long it wasn't boring. all though i tended to skip over the "descriptive" parts, thank god there weren't a lot of that. MORE action (fast too), more talk. yeah baby

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Strangely distant...
Review: Well... I do not know how I got through the 780 pages - except for Conrad Hensley, I cannot remember one single character that I found interesting. Okay, some passages were quite well-written: the horse-breeding, Peepgass' paternal suit, White's insecurity, among others. However, what's left after having read the book? Not a lot, I'm afraid. Joyce once said that if Dublin got destroyed, people should be able to rebuild it just by reading Ulysses. The same is true for Wolfe's novel concerning Atlanta. The story is about well-dressed and rich snobs in huih places playing with power they should not possess, and about naïve Conrad Hensley, for whom I really cared. He was the only one who did not deserve such a weak ending of the book. Pseudo-sectarianism - give me a break!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Worth the Time
Review: I read this book when it first came out and topped the bestseller list...I carried it around everywhere I went and simply could not put it down. Admittedly, the ending leaves something to be desired but as a whole this book is hilarious, comtemplative, and just plain interesting. Tom Wolfe has a lot to say in this book, and it is fascinating.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: He got tired of writing and threw together a sorry ending
Review: Its not worth your time. None of the characters are admirable.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: The traffic report was more interesting
Review: I ordered this book on audiotape for the daily commute. Like others I anticipated an interesting story based on The Bonfire of the Vanities. After several tapes I kept flipping it off for the radio. I struggled on through a few more but finally gave up. The characters are so damn boring and stupid. Charlie Crocker the man who has built this huge empire is totally clueless. His wife, son, financial adviser, bankers all have to give him direction. The other main plot line built around Conrad story was a playback of The Bonfire of the Vanities but this time with a dirt-poor protagonist rather than a rich and powerful one.

Nothing in this book is interesting. Usually if you don't like the characters you can find some enjoyment in the construction or the background material but this just grinds on with endless boredom.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: A Man in Full
Review: Tom Wolfe's new novel, A Man in Full, is a slight disapointment. The first 700 pages were great, but the end of the book was a bore. The explicit detail through the entire book kept you interested constantly, making it hard to put down. The book takes you through the crazy lives of many people such as Charlie Croker and Roger White II, otherwise known as Roger Too White. The book's intricate descriptions of scenes make it almost real-life. The end of the book seemed like the author just got lazy and didn't want to write anymore. Although this book was very interesting, it doesn't live up to the Wolfe classics like The Bonfire of the Vanities or The Electric Kool-aid Acid Test.

Rating: 1 stars
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: 3 stars
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.


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