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Postcards
by: Annie Proulx

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Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9781841155012
ISBN: 1841155012
Label: HarperPerennial
Manufacturer: HarperPerennial
Number Of Pages: 352
Publication Date: January 01, 2003
Publisher: HarperPerennial
Studio: HarperPerennial
Sales Rank: 50066

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Editorial Review:

Synopsis:
Annie Proulx's first novel received huge acclaim and marked the launch of an outstanding literary career. 'Proulx has come close to writing "the great American novel" ' New York Times Postcards is the story of Loyal Blood, a man who spends a lifetime on the run from a crime so terrible that it renders him forever incapable of touching a woman. The odyssey begins on a freezing Vermont hillside in 1944 and propels Blood across the American West for 40 years. Denied love and unable to settle, he lives a hundred different lives: mining gold, growing beans, hunting fossils, trapping, prospecting for uranium and ranching. His only contact with his past is through a series of postcards he sends home -- not realising that in his absence disaster has befallen his family, and their deep-rooted connection with the land has been severed with devastating consequences...

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- Not perfect, but imaginative and striking
Some people really do not like this book. Some have given it one star in a review, and others have complained that it does not stand up next to Proulx's much more famous "The Shipping News", yet I feel moved to come to its defence. This is Proulx's first novel, and, for those who do now know the storyline, it begins with the collapse of a family unit on a small farm and goes on to chart the progress (in inverted commas) of the members of that family across the geography and time of the United States in the 20th century.

The fiercest accusation levelled at this book is that it lacks a plot, and I would be inclined to agree, but this is not necessarily a bad thing. Indeed, I often find that otherwise good books are spoiled by their ... Read More:

Rating:

- good, but not worthy from this author
A good book, really a very good book, but still a little disappointing from this author. Another fairly grimy down-to-earth account of Americans' inhumanity to Americans, but the book is more like Accordian Crimes in the respect that it lacks a totally punchy central plot and is more a set of interesting cameos. Not my taste, but certainly worth reading. Quite interesting bits about fossils! However I'm still looking out for another book as good as The Shipping News!

Rating:

- A glorious read.
"Postcards" is a darker work than Proulx's better known "The Shipping News" but all the hallmarks are there. The descriptions of nature are breathtaking, the dialogue acute, the control consummate. The author unerringly chooses the right phrase, or positions the right word just so. This is the work of a master water-colourist in prose. Without giving too much away, it is the story of two lost lives. The first occurs on page one but it is the chronicle of the second that forms the rest of the book, poor damaged Loyal sending back his postcards - loyal by nature as well as by name. While brother Dub gets rich and fat in real estate, Loyal battles against everything the elements can throw at him - rockfall, fire, snow - then picks himself up, ... Read More:

Rating:

- AWFUL
If i could give it zero stars i would it was uninteresting from the start I could not keep up with the extreme numbers of new characters introduced every chapter till it reached the end one word to describe this book. AWFUL

Rating:

- Beautifully written, but so depressing
Proulx is an amazing writer, and I was deeply drawn to her characters. Having grown up in a small town in New Hampshire, the Blood's saga was a little too familiar-accidents, lost love, cold family relationships, and the loss of the simplicity of a past age(which was actually never all that simple). While I appreciated her talent, this story was just so bleak, that I had to put it down for days before I was compelled to pick it up again.

Books : Postcards