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Title: Ladies' Man by Richard Price ISBN: 0-395-97772-X Publisher: Mariner Books Pub. Date: July, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.67 (6 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: A wrenching look at urban loneliness
Comment: Kenny Becker, the protagonist of Richard Price's "Ladies' Man," will appeal to some readers and exasperate others. He had both effects on me, simultaneously.
As the novel traces one grueling week in this 30-year-old New Yorker's life, it becomes clear what his problem is: He seems to have a near-pathological aversion to any kind of commitment. His love life is a series of depressing affairs that invariably end badly; he's lost touch with his old school friends; his job is a bad joke; he practically has to have a gun to his head just to call his parents. This book contains one of the most heartbreaking paragraphs I've ever read: After reminiscing fondly about the bonding he did with his fraternity brothers back in college, Kenny concludes, "Of course, after three months I lost interest and dropped out of the fraternity, but that's just me, Cut-and-Run Becker."
We watch through Kenny's eyes as one life-changing event after another hits him during this week. As he gives voice to his restlessness, loneliness and longing, one thing keeps the story from becoming too whiny or self-involved: Price's nearly anthropological familiarity with the details of modern urban loneliness. It's all here -- the excruciating singles-bar scene, the daydreams about other paths one might take, even the feeling that when you come home at night the newspaper on the doormat is mocking your lack of plans for the evening.
One thing is for sure: If you have healthy, sustaining relationships with other people, you'll never take them for granted again after reading "Ladies' Man."
Rating: 2
Summary: Definitely a book of its time
Comment: This is, in my opinion, Price's worst book. Price is an amazing writer -- "Freedomland" is one of my favorite books -- but this isn't him at his best. "The Wanderers" was his childhood and it had a clear-sighted verisimilitude. "Ladies' Man" reveals that the author knows his town (New York) like no one else, but reading it today it becomes mind-numbingly dated and the ending, as noted, shoots off the charts. Anyone who doesn't want to read about the "hideous, dirty, sick" ways homosexuals hung out back in the '70s will want to skip this book, too. The ending winds up in an underground gay club and Price really lays it on thick with people locked tightly into a room and groping freely. The homophobia and mixed messages here speaks, I guess, more so of the author than of his character.
I would only read this if you're a fan of Price and want to see how he rose from the lean-meat prose of "Wanderers" and ascended to the literary heaven of "Freedomland." Otherwise, I think you'll be hugely disappointed. Pick up "Land" or "Clockers" instead.
This is a minor misstep in the career of a monumentally talented man.
Rating: 4
Summary: great book for urban singles both male and female
Comment: Although I'm a single woman in her 30s, I really related to this book about a guy who's just turned 30 and broken up with his girlfriend. I loved the raw realistic way Richard Price captured what it's like to be single and live in a big city (like him, I also lived in NYC when I turned 30). Being a heterosexual female, I never visited massage parlors or peep shows like this guy did, but the reason I found this book so refreshing was that I didn't find it preachy or self-pitying like so many other singles books. It just tells it like it is. I wouldn't be surprised if the creators of Sex and the City (which I also love) were inspired by this book.
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Title: Blood Brothers by Richard Price ISBN: 0395977738 Publisher: Mariner Books Pub. Date: 15 April, 1999 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: The Wanderers by Richard Price ISBN: 0395977746 Publisher: Mariner Books Pub. Date: 15 April, 1999 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Clockers by Richard Price ISBN: 0060934980 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 03 July, 2001 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Freedomland by Richard Price ISBN: 0440226449 Publisher: Dell Pub. Date: 11 May, 1999 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: Samaritan by Richard Price ISBN: 0375411151 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 07 January, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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