Centennial: A Novel by James A. Michener Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Centennial: A Novel
Book Review: Centennial
Summary: 4 Stars
Michener is the consumate author whose imagination pulls the reader onto a precipice where magnificient landscapes abound in his gripping novel of America past and future.Book Review: Good, but not his best
Summary: 3 Stars
YES, I LEARNED A LOT AND FEEL BETTER ABOUT THE BOOK NOW THAT I AM FINISHED. I DO HOWEVER, FEEL THE BOOK DRAGGED AND WAS SOMEWHAT DRY. UNLIKE MANY OF THE OTHER REVIEWS I READ HERE, THIS WAS NOT ONE BOOK I COULDN'T PUT DOWN. I HAVE READ 8 MICHENER NOVELS AND CONSIDER HIS WORK TO BE AMONG THE BEST, BUT TO DATE THIS HAS BEEN THE WEAKEST. AS USUAL THERE ARE MANY INTERESTING HISTORICAL EVENTS THAT MICHENER PUTS IN PERSPECTIVE, IN AN EASY TO UNDERSTAND MANNER.Book Review: Great book, but SKIP certain parts
Summary: 3 Stars
I love Centennial. Lame Beaver, Pasquinel, Levi Zendt, Elly Zalm, McKeag - unforgettable! For them alone the book is worth it - a classic. They live and breathe and allow Michener to bring magical life to 18th and 19th century Colorado.
BUT...
A hefty chunk of the book is simply not worth reading.
Centennial is presented as a book-within-a-book, with a modern narrator, Lewis Vernor, who is trying to sell his writing to "US" magazine. TOTALLY DULL. At first, while reading it, I thought I'd made a mistake and was reading some unedited, in-house, pre-publication manuscript. What were Michener's editors thinking?
I recommend skipping ALL sections relating to Lewis Vernor. That includes ALL of chapter 1 and the few pointless pages at the end of every subsequent chapter.
Also: Frankly, I would skip chapters 2 and 3 entirely, and would start reading about ten pages into chapter 4 (which in my paperback copy is page 149), at the entry of the Arapaho Indian Lame Beaver in the year 1756. This is where the book comes to life. You miss nothing before that, just a bunch of boring, dry stuff about Colorado's ancient history that you could get much more quickly off Wikipedia.
And since I'm going wild: The book peters out once it hits the 20th century. The characters lose their magic and the story becomes flat. All in all the last two hundred pages are worth skipping.
But don't worry, that still leaves you over 700 worthwhile pages to read!!
Book Review: Great early
Summary: 4 Stars
Probably the most memorable fictional character I have ever read, French-Canadian mountain man Jacque Pasquinel. The first half of the book is superb. Native Americans, trappers, people heading west, cowboys on the trail. Well worth the read - informative, entertaining. The later chapters of the book kind of struggle to wrap up the history of Centennial, Colorado, and are less memorable. Pasquinel was such a unique character Michener created. He lives with an arrow head stuck in his back, has at least two wives he mentions, spends his winters sleeping outside. The independence, freedom and danger of the pre-farming, pre-industrial west is extremely well captured. The journey west a Mennonite from Pennsylvania takes with his new wife is also a memorable portion of this novel. I enjoyed the earlier chapters more because I think the author's work is more engaging with a less modern setting. The same can be said of his novel The Source - incredible in the pre-historic to medieval setting, but tails at the end to finish. A friend lent me the 1970s tv mini series after I finished the book. Robert Conrad's accent was kind of shaky, and Richard Chamberlain did not have the toughness the McKeag character required - but it was worth it to put some visuals to the story.Book Review: I am Joe's bison
Summary: 2 Stars
I have not read any other Michener books, and after snoozing through the first 120 pages of this book without finding a single chapter of interest, I don't think I will. This isn't a novel, which in my mind should have memorable characters and an interesting plot; rather, it's a sort of history book-lite written on a Reader's Digest level that never really grabs you. My fellow 2-star reviewers have laid it out pretty well, so I won't rehash. This is just boring, even horrible, reading. I guess it just goes to show that a "runaway best seller" doesn't necessarily have to have any actual literary value.