Ash Wednesday by Ethan Hawke Summary and Reviews
|
List Price: Our Price: $1.99 You Save: $10.96 (85%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of Ash Wednesday
Book Review: Ethan Hawke-not that bad
Summary: 4 Stars
I admit it (but not to my friends or anyone who has seen his version of Hamlet)-I have a soft spot for Ethan Hawke. I grew up watching Dead Poet's Society and of course Before Sunrise/Sunset and Waking Life. I came to this novel not expecting much but was quite pleasantly surprised. It's not exactly going to win the Pulitzer Prize, but it was an interesting read and eerily captures the worries and doubts of the MTV'd-out, tripped-out, relationshiped-out twenty-something mind. This book is helpful if you're going through the maelstrom that is a young marriage in America. Also I liked that he referenced both the Beat Poets and Thomas Merton in his acknowledgement section.Book Review: Ethan Hawks wrote this
Summary: 3 Stars
He's a good actor..This book isn't the best. But, Ethan does have a unique style.
It's worth reading..I enjoyed the reading.
Book Review: Good enough
Summary: 5 Stars
I was intrigued to read a novel by Ethan Hawke and was very pleasantly surprised with his wonderful, believable use of dialogue. I felt the characters were so screwed up they wiped out any empathy I might have mustered for their situation, but there was so much thought put into this book, so many different ideas concerning our very being on this planet, that I set aside my dislike for the characters and enjoyed reading a novel with so much soul. An excellent actor and a much greater author than I expected. And he shares his beautiful first name with my son, so how could he possibly do any wrong?Book Review: I made it through the entire book
Summary: 2 Stars
This is not an easy task with Hawke's book b/c the characters are narcissistic and stifling. The writing is not revelatory, but there is a heart to the book and that is offered quite sincerely. Neither character is one you'd necessarily like to sit down with for dinner (well maybe Christy, b/c she is depicted as being very sexually-attractive and her mood changes are interesting).But this is a book I felt like putting down a couple of times b/c it doesn't have a real strong narrative drive, but I stayed with it, found the male character endearing and honest, and ended up enjoying it pretty much.Book Review: I'm not quite sure what this is about but I loved it.
Summary: 4 Stars
I picked this up at a major .za bookseller's January sale this year. It was the big paperback edition, retailing at a third of the regular-sized novel, so I scored 60 bucks in local currency and went for the cheap one. Ironically, I had gone in there to purchase the smaller paperback, so I didn't just pick this up and think "Oooh - Ethan Hawke. I'll take it."The book recounts the ill-fated and wacky tale of Jimmy and Christy, newlyweds, on a trip across the country. The prose itself is written in two styles as the author recounts aspects of it, narrating in part as Jimmy and in part as Christy. Although the tale is written as it happens, each aspect is peppered with incidents - likewise, or just ones which are related or reminisced about - from Jimmy and Christy's youth, adolescence and young adulthood. Both of their characters have a fairly positive outlook on life, but both have had to deal with adversity while growing up. You get the sense that Jimmy fared worse than Christy and has had his perceptions and morals scarred by these events.
The story reminds me of a French art-house film, for want of a better description. What I mean is that there is not a plot, per se; the story is almost like a live documentary of the tale in which the viewer is treated to a look-in to the lives of Jimmy and Christy, but the tale has not yet concluded and the producers do not yet know what is going to happen at the end. It's kind of "a day in the life of" and there isn't really the sense that the story will end out going anywhere. Whether or not the story does is up to you, the reader, to decide. I got the distinct impression that the author started to write from a skeleton of a few key events and let the story evolve as he went along.
The tale is fairly dark and harrowing, particularly the recounting of Jimmy's various bleak incidents of his youth. Youi will find Jimmy loathsome at times; and Christy sometimes comes across as a bit of a hopeless case as well. As far as redemption goes, well... I don't want to give too much away.
The book itself, though, is not put-downable and I managed to tear through it whenever I could get a few minutes to read in about 4 days.
Tis is the author's 2nd novel; both were published to critical acclaim. I have long admired Mr Hawke as an actor, particulary in Gattaca which is a fine example of brilliant science-fiction, and I hope he has success with his future endeavours as an author.