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David James Duncan

Författare till The Brothers K

11+ verk 3,615 medlemmar 100 recensioner 28 favoritmärkta

Om författaren

David James Duncan has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes & has won a Montana Arts Council Award. He lives in Montana. (Bowker Author Biography)

Inkluderar namnet: David James Duncan

Verk av David James Duncan

Associerade verk

The Best American Essays 2009 (2009) — Bidragsgivare — 232 exemplar
Heart of the Land: Essays on Last Great Places (1994) — Bidragsgivare — 105 exemplar
The Best American Spiritual Writing 2008 (2008) — Bidragsgivare — 84 exemplar
Autumn: A Spiritual Biography of the Season (2004) — Bidragsgivare — 57 exemplar

Taggad

Allmänna fakta

Födelsedag
1952
Kön
male
Nationalitet
USA
Födelseort
Portland, Oregon, USA
Bostadsorter
Portland, Oregon, USA (birth)
Lolo, Montana, USA
Yrken
novelist
essayist
Priser och utmärkelser
Lannan Literary Fellowship (2002)
Kort biografi
Duncan is married to sculptor Adrian Arleo.

Medlemmar

Recensioner

Definitely in my top 5 books of all time. A wonderful, funny, tragic read. BUT, saying this book is about fishing is like saying the Noah's Ark Story is about the weather.
 
Flaggad
jemisonreads | 35 andra recensioner | Jan 22, 2024 |
Like the first viewer I am a huge fan of Duncan and was thrilled that he had a new book out. And for the first 250 pages or so I was enjoying the book a lot, but feeling evermore that it would not live to The Brothers K.

In the end I was deeply disappointed.

By the second two hundred page, it was becoming a slog, repetitive, long winded, taking a a couple of nice paragraphs and repeating their gist over and over for pages.

The last 250 pages were nearly unreadable, often just a string of random events and vignettes that added little new, and and kept hitting many of the same notes so hard it it was descending into self-parody. By this point I ceased to care about any of the characters and often resorted to skimming.

Some of his endnotes were entertaining: One in which he claimed to have pared the original manuscript down radically to leave only the most necessary and most meaningful passages (?1?!) The other in which he congratulated himself on doing a better job of "men writing women." Though I loved his previous books, his female characters were not his strong point. And frankly all of his characters strain belief in this book, but the women, especially Risi, are each different flavors of manic pixie dream girls.

This could have been a pretty darn good 350 page book.
… (mer)
 
Flaggad
quartzite | 1 annan recension | Jan 18, 2024 |
I am a HUGE David James Duncan fan - I've read his other novels (The River Why; The Brothers K) and all of his nonfiction, and I couldn't wait for his new novel to be released. Sun House is his first novel in 31 years! It is such a labor of love, so brilliant, so packed full of thought provoking insights and ideas, philosophy, comparative religion, humor, love.

That said, there were times this very long novel (761 pages) was a bit of a slog. The first half of the book was chock full of interesting characters and scenes, and I was enamored with it. Then about 3/4 of the way through it got so wordy, so bogged down with stilted and unlikely dialogue, and I got a bit confused about the characters, The storyline I was assuming would be the climax came at this point, and so swiftly it was a bit of a letdown.

Duncan obviously did a tremendous amount of research for this book - I think I read that it was a 16 year project. He writes brilliantly, his storytelling has always been remarkable. In Sun House, however, I found some sections overly long, some full of Sanskrit or Latin phrases that were difficult for me to get through, and a lot of woo-woo. Anyone who knows me will tell you that I love me some woo-woo. But this was a bit over the top even for me.

I love Duncan's vision of community in this novel - an inter-generational group of people who use their skills and strengths in service to the whole and who respect life in all its forms.

I do appreciate a novel with a lot of depth, one that helps me learn about new ways of living, communicating, or thinking. 75% of this book did that for me, but there were many obstacles to me diving in and staying there.

I sincerely hope we don't have to wait another three decades for Duncan's next novel. I still maintain that his writing is brilliant, usually highly readable, funny, and relevant.

I was sure this would be a five star book for me and one of my all time favorites. It's not that, but four big stars for brilliance and storytelling.
… (mer)
1 rösta
Flaggad
teelgee | 1 annan recension | Sep 27, 2023 |
This doesn't qualify as a full review due to bailing out of the story in the first 100 pages. I had hoped Duncan's storytelling to be similar to Richard Russo, but its not at all. And while I realize the setting is such that the Bible played a big role in people's lives, the non-stop references page after page after page dulled my interest. Am sure for those able to look beyond this, they'll enjoy it, but as for myself, I cannot.
 
Flaggad
Jonathan5 | 54 andra recensioner | Feb 20, 2023 |

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Statistik

Verk
11
Även av
6
Medlemmar
3,615
Popularitet
#7,004
Betyg
4.2
Recensioner
100
ISBN
50
Språk
1
Favoritmärkt
28

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