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Title: The Ordinary Seaman by Francisco Goldman ISBN: 0-8021-3548-X Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: February, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.50 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.78 (9 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Highly recommended, very tight and well written
Comment: This is a very fine novel. The plot is tightly woven; the writing is crisp and even, sprightly, occasionally darkly humorous, and always interesting. Its characters are fascinating portraits drawn on a carefully crafted palette.
Mr. Goldman has done a truly remarkable job and this work should be widely read. His story line, the travails of a desperate group of dirt-poor Nicaraguans, is dispensed in calculated doses. I learned just enough about each helpless participant that I was always felt tuned for more information. Mr. Goldman links the civil war so carefully into his novel that it never intrudes, instead it adds constant, new dimensions. While seemingly effortless, the author's construction is beautifully coordinated.
Masterful blending of each character yields an astonishing, cleaver plot. Although Estaban appears to be the protagonist, he is always balanced and never intrudes on the whole. He acts much like the anchor line of the Urus, the ill-fated boat, which itself appears to be Mr. Goldman allegory of life. Or is this simply too much a stretch, beyond the author's intentions? I think not. Mr. Goldman succeeds where so many others fail; this is a terrific, powerful, carefully crafted, interesting novel.
At first I was distracted by the colloquial Spanish Mr. Goldman includes in dialogue and descriptions. It was a trial for my two years of college training. I soon understood many of the words, much of them if only from the situations described. In time they became actually pleasurable and added to the authenticity. I think this is a remarkable feat and the author deserves to be congratulated on his successful technique.
I do not read books to find faults. However, sometimes they appear as deficiencies that distract from the effects authors set out to achieve. In Mr. Goldman's cases there are none. This book is a fine effort and very interesting, well worth the time spent reading, and it is highly recommended.
Rating: 4
Summary: Great Read
Comment: As I read the first dozen pages or so, I found the descriptions seemed, well, too "purple". Then Goldman seemed to hit his stride. Goldman's primary source, as he reveals in the Acknowledgements, was a sociological book entitled "Trouble on Board" (author's name escapes me now). I'd read it in '94 as a source for a university paper I was then writing. From this source and his own emotionally descriptive touch, Goldman has managed to do three things, one aesthetic, two sociological, with "The Ordinary Seaman": 1. Entertain! Particularly with respect to mood, tense, perspective (limited omnicient), description, and language (the purple prose becomes simply good, original. I wondered if Goldman wrote early drafts 'in Espagnol'); 2. Show the plight of the international seaman on "foreign flag" or "flag of convenience" ships; 3. Provide for Norte Americanos a voice for the "illegal immigrant" experience. This last he does most effectively, and is one of his stated objects, especially in the way in which the "Urus'" poor inmates view NYC. Estaban, the novel's protagonist, is a character of great passion, an odd admixture of the young veteran Sandinista and the innocent, literally and figuratively adrift in an America that is, to him, an alien world and culture, but has the energy to prevail. A GREAT read.
Rating: 3
Summary: Pretty good
Comment: Not as good as Goldman's first novel but if you're looking for an enjoyable piece of literary fiction, you could do worse.
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Title: The Long Night of White Chickens by Francisco Goldman ISBN: 0802135471 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: February, 1998 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Dreaming in Cuban by CRISTINA GARCIA ISBN: 0345381432 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 10 February, 1993 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Drown by Junot Diaz ISBN: 1573226068 Publisher: Riverhead Books Pub. Date: July, 1997 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Who Would Have Thought It? (Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage) by Maria Amparo Ruiz De Burton, Rosaura Sanchez, Beatrice Pita, Maria Amparo Ruiz De Burton ISBN: 1558850813 Publisher: Arte Publico Pr Pub. Date: November, 1995 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: The House on the Lagoon by Rosario Ferre ISBN: 0452277078 Publisher: Plume Pub. Date: October, 1996 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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