About this title: Annie Proulx tells the story of Loyal Blood, who leaves the failing family farm in Vermont after World War II and goes west to see if he can do better. Each chapter in Loyal's odyssey is prefaced with one of the post cards he sends back home--where life is getting more and more bleak. Proulx's first novel, which is full of the daily minutiae of ...
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Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Scribner Book Company
Date Published: 1994
ISBN-13:9780684800875ISBN:068480087X
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. Clean pages with no marks or tears, heavy tanning on pages, dirt soiling to outer page edges, pages turned up, rubbing on edges & corners, tight binding. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 308 p. Audience: General/trade. read more
Description: Very Good. 068480087X Book free of markings. Cover shows light to moderate edge wear. Interior & spine evidence little to no use. Overall, a very serviceable copy. Your book will be carefully protected for transit in sturdy, weather-resistant packaging. We are prompt, efficient, communicative. read more
Description: Very Good. 068480087X Great condition Soft cover book, mild creases to spine, some light edge/corner rubs, this book is Great! Shop & Save With US. read more
"The Shipping News was on my Top 20 list for both 1997 and for all contemporary reads. It has been suggested to me that this text is better. Along the way, however, I read the newer Accordion Crimes and was disappointed and I, unfortunately, must rank Postcards closer to Crimes than to News. I think this would have made a more interesting, and hopefully better, novel if the author had concentrated on the life of Blood -- he was out there doing some fascinating stuff and there were hints of some powerful internal conflicts, but the text just flips past the episodes of his story, scattering them within the other somewhat sketchy stories."
"I have a passionate love-hate relationship with 'Postcards'. I adore Proulx's use of language and turn of phrase, but after a few pages her extremely poetic style pummells your brain into submission. Similarly, the disjointed quasi-vignettes of characters that the reader receives are in turns enjoyable and frustratingly dense. Her incisiveness and eloquence are beautiful; her subtle, shades-of-grey handling of morally-ambiguous sex and death are intelligent and intriguing (and pleasing in their lack of ethical expectations); but there is so much bleak misery in 'Postcards' that it becomes not just haunting, but demoralising. It is darkly glorious, but not a comfortable read, because, to my taste, it is far too bitter."
"I have never been so thoroughly depressed in all my life as the day I read this book. I can't bring myself to read it again, though I know I will some day. It is a brilliantly written story, a life story worth reading, a heartbreak. Proulx always amazes me with her ability to imbibe the mundane details of a person's day, life, conversations, etc. with the true weight of a human life. As much as I wanted Loyal to succeed, to be happy, to love and be loved, Proulx does not give in to the temptations of these plot devices. Life can be brutal, unfair and ugly, even as its description is beautifully written. When I can pick this book up again, I promise to pay attention to the other themes many critics have noted - war, progress, technology/industrialization, etc. - but for now, I can only think of Loyal."
"Annie Proulx can write, she is a genius with description. The problem lies in the depressive nature of the story and in the assumption that we will understand her obfuscation about Billy's death and the nature of what is wrong with Loyal. She describes but doesn't explain. I realized that I would never see resolution nor gain understanding. I think that the incident with Billy was rape and murder, I think it may not have been the only time. But these are not laid out as clear truths, we don't know for sure what happened. No one gets to be happy, well Dub does for awhile, but even that doesn't last. What is the point? That nothing lasts and we have no reasonable expectation of happiness? That the land will all be destroyed and turned into trailer parks, and that the wildlife will all get poisoned by government wildlife officials, and that you can't even sell a fossil find in this country anymore without a telephone, address, a couple of weeks to spare and other red tape! I really wanted to like this book because the writing is so fine, but I was glad to shut it and say OK, done with that.
"Mernelle and Ray MacWay sat in the backseat like pillars, each conscious of the heat of the other's body and hearing, not Mrs. Greenslit's waves of talk, but the sound of breathing. Over the mildewed upholstery Mernelle could smell soap, shampoo, pinewood, warm skin, Dentyne chewing gum. Her stomach growled and she hated it, willed it to shrivel. In the kitchen a bumblebee that had mistaken the gap between the screen door and its casing for nirvana flew at the windows, seeking to enter again the familiar world, visible and near, but walled off by a malignant force."
(changed my rating from 3 starts to 4 as I am still thinking about and marveling over Annie Proulx's writing. I am tempted to go get this book back from the coffee shop where I left it and give it a home on my shelf or give it to someone I hope will read it.)"
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