The Lonely Polygamist: A Novel
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- ISBN13: 9780393062625
- Condition: New
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Product Description
From a luminous storyteller, a highly anticipated new novel about the American family tree writ large. Golden Richards, spouse to four wives, father to twenty-eight children, is having the mother of all midlife crises. His construction business is failing, his family tree has grown into an overpopulated mini-dukedom beset with civil disobedience and rivalry, and he is done in with grief: due to the accidental death of a daughter and the stillbirth of a son, he has come to doubt the capacity of his own heart. Brady Udall, one of our finest American fiction writers, tells a tragicomic tale of a deeply faithful man who, crippled by grief and the demands of work and family tree, becomes entangled in an affair that threatens to ruin his family tree’s future. Like John Irving and Richard Yates, Udall makes characters that engage us to the fullest as they grapple with the scenery of need, like, and belonging.
Perfectly written, keenly experimental, and ultimately redemptive, The Lonely Polygamist is an unforgettable tale of an American family tree—with its inevitable dysfunctionality, heartbreak, and comedy—pushed to its outer limits.Amazon.com Review
Amazon Best Books of the Month, May 2010: EmNephiHelamanNaomiJosephinePaulineNovellaParleyGale… When times get tense–and they regularly do–for Golden Richards, the title patriarch of Brady Udall’s The Lonely Polygamist, he turns to a soothing chant of the names, in order, of his 28 children. (It’s also practical, when he needs to sort out just which kid is showing him a scab, and which teen is asking if he can come to her 4-H demo.) While Huge Like seeks the inherent soap opera in a man with many wives, Udall finds the slapstick: Golden’s houses are the sort of places where the dog is regularly wearing underwear and a child or two likely isn’t. But Udall doesn’t settle just for jokes (though the jokes are brilliant). Golden may be hapless, distracted, and deceitful, but he is large-hearted and so is his tale. There’s menace and more than a full share of tragedy there, as well as unabashed redemption and a particular sympathy for the loneliest members of this crowded family tree. With a fresh and faultless ear for American vernacular, Udall’s huge tale of beset manhood effortlessly earns its comparisons to tragicomic family tree classics from The Corrections to John Irving. –Tom Nissley
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Hey, I want to write a review but even though I paid up front AND paid for prompt manner of language, The book never came!!!!! I am very miserable!! This is dreadful!! So what will you guys do about this???
Joe Pirraglia
Very miserable customer
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
I was disappointed as I started this novel. I didn’t perfect it. It was contrived. I realize these families exist, but their own exclusive society doesn’t allow our knowledge of the innermost workings and this fictional rendition was just too fictional for me.
Beyond this, the book was jus unadorned heavy. I buy a lot of books but this one took the “per ounce” prize.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
I bought this book based on the glowing reviews I read, but after reading 110 pages, the tale really gets bogged down by long sentences and silly scenes that don’t add to the main tale and overall enjoyment of the prose. The novel needs less fuzziness and more edginess. Take the sentence on page 110 that starts out with “Today, he chose he would pedal……” It just goes on for a whole paragraph and leaves the reader gasping for air.
When I reflect of Literary fiction, I reflect of Faulkner, Bellow, Hemingway, John Steinbeck, and persons authors who had a voice and made their novels appealing by using words sparingly and wisely and coming up with unique sentences and descriptions, thereby making ambiguity in the narrative. Everything doen’t need to be spelled out in black and white. A sentence fragment is excellent now and then.
But I applaud Brady by taking on such an immense and controversial topic and making some appealing characters. It just needed much more editing and rewrites.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
I chose to read this book because of the 4 star rating and reviews by additional readers. I establish the book simple to read and in some parts loved how the leader described a situation, feeling or emotion. BUT I kept waiting for the tale to renovate. To really care about the characters. To get involved with their plight. It was all just too clean and tidy. Might as well have had a ribbon and doves at the end. Very disappointed. It had such potential.
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
It took me nearly six weeks to read this book…and in the meantime, I read several glowing reviews of “The Lonely Polygamist”. It is being called the “next fantastic American novel”…but not for me.
I just didn’t connected with any of the characters, didn’t find either empathy or sympathy for them..and establish myself skimming the pages. For me, the main character, Golden Richards, set the tone for the book. He’s basically dropped out of his own life, out of the lives of his four wives and twenty eight children – has lost all interest. Which as a reader, doesn’t make me very interested in reading about him.
“In his job, he nearly permanently took the most convenient route, the option that offered the least complication, resistance and stress (a practice that had cost him vast amounts of money and time over the years) and in his family tree life, his wives, like corporate handlers or political advisors, jockeyed for position and battled it out among themselves, and when the time came he would be open with a few limited options in a way that made it clear which option he was to choose.”
Language of wives, only two of the four had strong enough voices to differentiate them from the crowded noise of background people. I kept forgetting about the additional two, and only a couple of the children got much of a part in the tale at all.
There is a moment towards the end of the book where I thought Golden would finally engage with his life – and I could engage in the tale…
“He started to stumble over the names, mixing up the order and backtracking to get it right, straining to reach the list’s end, to do this one thing right, at least, this one simple, last thing…FigNewtonDarlingJame-o…and now he was no longer language the names so much as inhaling them, swallowing them into his lungs and holding them there, his tongue thickening in his mouth, his rib cage creaking as it swelled, unable to withstand the mounting pressures of anxiety and sorrow and regret…”
But in the end, he still didn’t care enough about the live had had, the lives he touched. It was too small, too late. At least for me.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5