Rating: 
Summary: a glorious hybrid!
Review: The reviewers should all stop worrying about whether this is poetry or prose and simply listen to the work. This is haunting, brilliant, beautiful work from a writer for whom genre catagories do not exist.
Rating: 
Summary: A Most Original Read
Review: This book completely fascinated me. I can understand the frustration of some readers, for the book doesn't fit easily into any defined category of genre or style. But I was captivated by its commitment to the imagination, by its fresh play with the traditions of poetry and narrative. The poems which make up the "story" of Geryon are witty and wry; they are also stunning (literally) and deeply poignant. I've read many books in my life, but this one is truly brilliant...and unforgetable.
Rating:
Summary: Only If One Has Wings
Review: this is anne carson at her best! the promise she showed in plainwater and eros the bittersweet comes alive here in one of the best books from the late 90s!
Rating:
Summary: canada rocks
Review: this is anne carson at her best! the promise she showed in plainwater and eros the bittersweet comes alive here in one of the best books from the late 90s!
Rating: 
Summary: I really regret buying this book.
Review: This is modern poetry that doesn't scan, rhyme, alliterate, or do anything but serve as an excuse for doing perverse things to prose. Maybe if you like modern poetry, you'll like this work. I detest it. I have no use for modern poetry and never, ever, ever would have made a mistake like buying this in a physical bookstore. This is the last time I've buying anything labelled 'A Novel in Verse' without an excerpt or some assurance that it isn't modern goo.
Rating:
Summary: Amazed
Review: This is one of the most interesting books I have read in a while. It moves beautifully between a mysterious, mythic presence to a heavy, all-to-human narrative. And this is to say nothing of its form! The economy of the writing is precise and exacting. The Verse was strangely magical, projecting me into the nebulous space beyond what Carson had written. I will certainly have to read this a few more times, because I think there is still much to be revealed even after one pass.
Rating:
Summary: Amazed
Review: This is one of the most interesting books I have read in a while. It moves beautifully between a mysterious, mythic presence to a heavy, all-to-human narrative. And this is to say nothing of its form! The economy of the writing is precise and exacting. The Verse was strangely magical, projecting me into the nebulous space beyond what Carson had written. I will certainly have to read this a few more times, because I think there is still much to be revealed even after one pass.
Rating:
Summary: Both Poetry and Prose
Review: This is poetry, in that it is beautiful and uses words ever-so carefully, but this is prose, in that it reads as easily as a novel and tells an engaging story. Geryon is a wonderfully-precise protagonist, going through his adventures with a quiet endurance and an energetic attachment to them. He has something of the quality of a Franz Kafka, a Michael Stipe, or an Angela Chase, but he's not so broodingly self-absorbed; rather, he's observant and thoughtful about the world around him. If the early-90s alternative rock movement had been more attentive and less despairing, it would have sounded something like this book, and would have taken a bigger audience.The framing prose, inventing some poetic fragments of an ancient Greek poet, asks us to look at the story-telling, as a parable of history-making, and makes us sensitive to the way the book uses language. If the book made me think about its construction as a book, though, it didn't keep me from reading it as a great story.
Rating:
Summary: Gorgeous, stunning, haunting
Review: Those too narrow-minded to accept a story as it unfolds in its own style will struggle. Those open to unexpected, shattering beauty will be thrilled and crushed by Carson's writing. Lovely, lovely, lovely.
Rating:
Summary: Inspiring!
Review: Whenever I feel a need to revitalize my writing or merely need a good chuckle I turn to "Autobiography of Red". No one inspires me as well as she does and no one has the knack of finding just the right verb or adjective to express herself. I want more!
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