Rate this book

Apologize, Apologize! (2009)

by Elizabeth Kelly(Favorite Author)

3.15 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

0307396959 (ISBN13: 9780307396952)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Knopf Canada

review 1: What did i think of this book? In a nutshell, I was disappointed. Long story short. I found an ad for this book from the Times' Sunday Book Review, packed away in boxes of books that have been in storage for a number of years, that I was finally unpacking after moving into a permanent and newly renovated old house. What caught my attention was a little blurb that asked "What do you get when you combine John Irving and Jonathon Franzen?".......Apologize, Apologize by Elizabeth Kelly. That may very well be, but she is not the sum of those two spectacular authors. The story could be charming as it investigates the lives of a completely dysfunctional family: a boozing father, a radicalized mother, dogs everywhere, in fact so many dogs, the two brothers are given dog names... more, Collie and Bingo...and the most revolting character in the book, a plutocratic grandfather who reminded me of someone like Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs ilk. The plot never went anywhere, skirting around the surface of ideas that could have been further developed and just when you thought something might happen, well the chapter ended and you were onto something else - Collie going to Medical School, a trip to El Salvador with Catholic nuns, an escape to Ireland with his father - an Irish Drunk to visit an aunt after he killed a cancer-stricken teenager by mistakenly injecting a chemotherapy drug in his spine instead of administering intravenously. Really? I disliked most of the characters, in fact, everyone. She killed some of them off; by the end, wrapping it all up in the last chapter, tried to portray them as having learned so much from their adventurous life that you should really admire them for having survived their dysfunction. Did not work. The prose, I got tired of it. I stuck it out, but I am thrilled that I got it through inter-library-loan, because I would have been pissed as hell if I purchased it with my money.
review 2: una famiglia folle, ricca e crudele, un figlio sano in mezzo a tutta questa pazzia, un episodio tragico che cambierà ogni cosa come un rimescolamento di carte. qualche stereotipo, qualche trovata brillante e un po' di confusione- da un certo punto in poi. esordio interessante e di qualità (e probabile successo, vista la facilità con cui si legge), anche se certo, siamo lontani anni luce dal capolavoro. non è affatto un libro "divertente", anzi. less

Download links for: Apologize, Apologize!

Advertising