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S'està carregant… Her First Americande Lore Segal
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Apunta't a LibraryThing per saber si aquest llibre et pot agradar. No hi ha cap discussió a Converses sobre aquesta obra. 1985. Great book. Ilka Weisznix, a Jewish emigre from Vienna, whose Father died in WWII, has moved to New York. She meets Carter Bayoux, her first American, in a whistlestop bar in Nevada. He is light-skinned and it takes her a while to realize that he's black, or a negro as they said in the 50s, when the book takes place. Bayoux is an educated, intellectual and a journalist, interested in international politics. He writes about the UN for the Harlem Journal, but has fallen on hard times because of his rampant alcoholism. He teaches Ilka a lot about American life at a time when she's just learning English and struggling to understand the world around her. His retinue of intellectual friends, mostly blacks and Jews, confuses Ilka. They become lovers despite a significant age difference and the fact that they both know it will end badly. Segal's writing brings ordinary people and incidents to brilliant life and makes extraordinary events seem almost ordinary, because they happen in ordinary time to ordinary people who usually only have an inkling at most of their extraordinariness while they're happening. Ilka wonders how people ever come to get their clothes off and make love, then she asks Carter and he says he always wonders how that's going to happen too. Segal's acute observation of the human animal had me recognizing myself and my fellow creatures on practically every page in ways I had never thought of before, or ways which I thought no one else, but me had ever thought of before, which is the essence of great literature: to find yourself recognized and therefore not alone. Also the recognition of the humanity of her characters is done which such grace that none seem better or worse than each other. In the end all are equally wonderful and equally flawed, which seems in itself to be another universal truth. If only we could all always see it as clearly as Lore Segal. Sense ressenyes | afegeix-hi una ressenya
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She's Ilka Weissnix, a young Jewish refugee from Hitler's Europe, newly arrived in the United States. He's Carter Bayoux, her first American: a middle-aged, hard-drinking black intellectual. Lore Segal's brilliant novel is the story of their love affair--one of the funniest and saddest in modern fiction. No s'han trobat descripcions de biblioteca. |
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Google Books — S'està carregant… GèneresClassificació Decimal de Dewey (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LCC (Clas. Bibl. Congrés EUA)ValoracióMitjana:
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I found this to be a fascinating read. At times I caught myself pondering American slang and thinking how strange it must sound in the ears of a foreigner.
As an aside, I have no idea why Lore wanted Ilka to travel all the way to Nevada to meet Carter. They both live in New York City so wouldn't it have been easier to have them bump into each other there? The trip out west is just an odd blip in an otherwise mostly New York-centric story. ( )