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Title: Pigeon, The by Patrick Suskind ISBN: 0-394-56315-8 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 12 May, 1988 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $32.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.07 (14 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: One Man Comes to Life with the Aid of a Pigeon
Comment: Darker than Thurber's "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" and more upbeat than Kafka's "The Metamorphosis," "The Pigeon" explores the internal crisis and ultimate redemption of Jonathan Noel. Noel is a man who up until now has lead a very organized, mundane, non-spectacular life in which his main goal is to avoid notice. He has concluded that " you cannot depend on people, and that you can live in peace only if you keep them at arm's length." One morning a pigeon appears at his doorway, shattering his careful calm routine and throwing him into a tailspin. Over the next 24 hours he undergoes a complete awakening. As "The Pigeon" opens he is almost a non-person; by the end of the book he has learned to enjoy his meager life. In a sense, "The Pigeon" is almost "Mrs. Dalloway," read backwards.
I liked "The Pigeon," though it reads like a play. I read an English translation but the language and descriptions were rich and evocative. Check it out of your library or find an old copy.
Rating: 5
Summary: Kafkaesque study of a day in the life of a security guard
Comment: Patrick Suskind's The Pigeon is a melancholy tale of one
man's struggle to cope with a small change in his beloved
daily routine - the appearance of a pigeon (and its
accompanying foulness) in the hallway of his apartment
building. The pigeon's appearance begins a chain of
misfortunes throughout the day, as the man (a bank security guard)
attempts to calm himself.
Rating: 4
Summary: Short and satisfying
Comment: The central achievement of Süskind's novella is the way it articulates the social anxiety of a man whose childhood fear of abandonment has played out as a lifetime of limited scope, controlling routines and self-imposed isolation. That might sound heavy but it isn't - mainly because Süskind wisely chooses the "free indirect" narrative style (mastered by Henry James). The story is told in the third person, but is nevertheless filtered through Jonathan Noel's gaze and consciousness so that external reality exists only as refracted in his mind. The result is that we see the world as he sees it, but without the unreliability that such a point of view entails. Süskind is thereby able to show us precisely what he wants us to see - both the horror and humour of Noel's experience - and to deliver a climax which remains somewhat objective and thereby inspires hope. Other reviewers seem to have found the ending cloying and unrealistic, but I think they're assuming more than Süskind suggests. Noel and his life are not utterly transformed at the end - he has an epiphany, he loses his fear, but it may or may not last.
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Title: Perfume : The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Suskind ISBN: 0375725849 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 13 February, 2001 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Mr. Summer's Story by Patrick Suskind ISBN: 0679419950 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 09 March, 1993 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
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Title: The Complete Stories by Franz Kafka ISBN: 0805210555 Publisher: Schocken Books Pub. Date: 14 November, 1995 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Three Stories and a Reflection by Patrick Suskind ISBN: 0747534934 Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Pub. Date: 13 November, 1997 |
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