AnyBook4Less.com	Find the Best Price on the Web Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Home  |  Store List  |  FAQ  |  Contact Us  |
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money Keyword AuthorISBN

Title: The buzzards: a novel by Janet Burroway ISBN: 0-571-09252-7 Publisher: Faber Format: Unknown Binding

Your Country USA Canada United Kingdom Australia Austria Belgium France Germany Italy Netherlands Switzerland Currency AutoUSD CAD GBP EUR AUD CHF Delivery Only cheapest delivery All delivery options Include Used Books Are you a club member of: Barnes and Noble Books A Million Chapters.Indigo.ca

Average Customer Rating: 5 (2 reviews)

Rating: 5
Summary: Rape and Murder: Politics Everlasting
Comment: Burroway has written a brilliant book about modern politics based on Aeschylus's Oresteia. Her modern political man consents to the murder of his own daughter in order to get the sympathy that will get him the Presidential nomination. He is parallel to Agamemnon who sacrificed his daughter in order to get his ships to sail so he could fight and win the Trojan War.

The buzzards are the birds whose entrails give the answers to our questions and of course they are also the politicians who profit by the signs, who pick the bones of their supposed loved one and of the populace who vote for them.

What is so frightening about this book is is timeliness (as well as its timelessness). Burroway captures those smooth, caring, deep-throated tones of compassion that our modern politicians do so well. She renders this "compassionate conversation" as a cover for blind ambition, the sweet words coming from the politician's mouth even as he consents to his daughter's murder. One can hear Reagan, Bush, Clinton's voices; and one can hear and see the effects of blind ambition as the candidate makes himself not see what his right hand is doing.

Rating: 5
Summary: CONTEMPORARY SIGNIFICANCE
Comment: The Buzzards by Janet Burroway is a brilliant, timely novel about the rapacious nature of politics. Burroway has constructed her novel as a modern-day Oresteia, with the Agamemnon character once again sacrificing his daughter to the gods of politics in order to win the prize, in this case an election. What makes the book not only timeless but frighteningly timely is that you can actually hear the political "goodness" of a Clinton, Reagan, or Bush at their most sympathetic and compassionate in Burroway's "political man" - that goodness of self-deception even while her politician is agreeing to his daughter's murder as our politicians agree to the rape and murder of the land, of the poor, of women and children, of those who are and continue to be disenfranchised in any way. The book is a brilliant study of the policial mind, of the harm it does while keeping itself ignorant of its motives and of the horrifying effects of its blind ambition.