From Publishers Weekly Holm (Coming Home Crazy) is living once again in the small town of Minneota, Minn., where he grew up, and he is feeling sentimental about it. He is a smart writer and has some interesting things to say about sense of place, but there is an underlying softness in his attitude towards his hometown that makes these essays treacly, and no amount of literary references can sharpen them. "God knows I tried to escape, to do the right American thing, making a middle-class life in a gentler, lovelier, more urbane place, some better home for an eccentric intellectual misfit," he insists in an essay that rambles from the cost of living in Minneota to the meaning of the town's name ("much water" in Dakota) to reviewer misprints of the title of his first book, but one gets the feeling he never tried all that hard. The history of the town is much less interesting than the characters that populated it in Holm's childhood, and he devotes much of the book to biography of these characters, many of them originally from Iceland. An essay on the way that children are taught to mistrust strangers today segues into a tribute to the elderly woman who often baby-sat for him; an examination of poverty disintegrates into admiration for how his parents forced him to be kind to Sara Kline, "a Minneota 'bag lady,' years before that term became fashionable." It's not that this isn't heartwarming, it's just that it is familiar and sometimes suffers from smugness. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library Journal As a youth, Holm defined failure as dying in his hometown of Minneota, Minnesota. He left to see the world, and when he returned?almost 40, broke, unemployed, divorced, unpublished, and his immediate family dead?home looked better to him. He began to write about the people who were most important to him in his childhood, the old Icelandic immigrants who were his relatives and neighbors in a tiny town on the western edge of Minnesota. In this memoir, we meet them all, including Pauline Bardal, a spinster without formal education who introduced the author to music and the piano, and Virgil Voltaire Gislason, a dandy and bon vivant who delighted in serving proper martinis, even during Prohibition. A fine writer with a wry, self-deprecating style, Holm has done what many authors aspire to do: make the dead live again. In doing so, he has produced a memoir that considers the question of what constitutes success in a culture infused with the immigrant desire to rise in the New World. Highly recommended for public libraries.?Caroline A. Mitchell, Washington, D.C.Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. See all Editorial Reviews
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这本书的结构安排,简直是一场精妙的迷宫设计,每走一步,都有新的发现,却又始终能清晰地感受到内在的逻辑联系。它没有采用传统的线性叙事,而是通过不同时间点和不同视角的碎片化信息交织在一起,构成了一幅完整的历史剪影。这种非线性的处理方式,极大地考验了读者的耐心和理解力,但回报也是丰厚的——一旦你掌握了其中的脉络,那种豁然开朗的满足感是无与伦比的。更让我感到惊喜的是,作者在处理复杂人物关系时的克制与精准。他从不急于给出简单的道德判断,而是将人物置于情境之中,任由读者自己去体会他们的矛盾与挣扎。这种尊重读者的姿态,是很多当代小说所欠缺的。读完之后,书中的许多人物仿佛并未真正“结束”,他们依然在我的脑海中活动、呼吸,这种持久的影响力,是衡量一部作品是否真正卓越的试金石。
评分从技术层面来看,这本书在氛围营造上的功力简直令人咋舌。作者对环境的描写,已经超越了单纯的背景交代,它更像是一个有生命的、参与到故事进程中的角色。你几乎可以闻到空气中泥土和青草的气味,感受到季节更迭带来的光影变化。这种强烈的代入感,使得故事的真实性达到了一个令人信服的高度。如果说情节是骨架,那么作者通过对感官细节的调动所构建的氛围,就是饱满的血肉。我特别注意到,作者在处理对话时,也极其注意地方色彩和人物性格的统一性,那些看似家常的对话,往往暗藏着权力关系、隐秘的情感或是未言明的历史包袱。阅读的过程,就像是潜入了一口深井,你需要适应那里的幽暗和寂静,但当你适应之后,你所见到的景象,将远比地表之上更为丰富和立体。
评分这本书的叙事之精妙,仿佛是微风拂过记忆的湖面,泛起的涟漪层层叠叠,最终汇聚成一幅令人心神俱往的画面。作者对于生活细微之处的捕捉能力,简直令人叹为观止。那些看似不经意的日常片段,在文字的打磨下,焕发出了令人惊艳的生命力。我尤其欣赏它对于人物内心世界的细腻描摹,那种挣扎、那种释然,都处理得恰到好处,不煽情却直抵人心最柔软的地方。阅读的过程中,我常常会停下来,反复咀嚼某一段文字,感受其中蕴含的深意和情感的张力。它不仅仅是在讲述一个故事,更像是在邀请读者进入一个精心构建的精神空间,在那里,时间仿佛慢了下来,让我们有机会重新审视那些被我们匆忙略过的生命风景。整本书的节奏感把握得非常到位,时而舒缓如溪流,时而激昂似山洪,每一次情绪的转折都显得自然而然,毫无斧凿之痕。这是一种非常高级的写作技巧,需要深厚的文学功底才能驾驭得如此游刃有余。
评分这是一部需要反复品味的著作,初读或许会因其内敛和含蓄而略感平淡,但每一次重读,都会揭示出此前未曾注意到的层次和光泽。它像一块未经雕琢的璞玉,需要时间去摩挲,才能显露出其内在的温润和坚韧。作者的笔触极其克制,几乎从不使用夸张的形容词来推销自己的情感,一切都内化于场景和行为之中。这种“少即是多”的哲学贯穿始终,赋予了作品一种古典的、沉静的力量。它不迎合读者的期待,不提供廉价的安慰,它只是诚实地呈现生活本身可能蕴含的复杂性与矛盾性。对我个人而言,它成功地在“乡愁”与“放逐”这两个看似对立的概念之间架起了一座坚实的桥梁,让读者得以思考,真正的“家园”究竟是地理上的坐标,还是精神上的锚点。这部作品的价值,在于它提供的思考空间,而非结论本身。
评分坦白说,初捧此书时,我略带疑虑,以为这又是一部沉溺于地域风情的矫揉造作之作。然而,随着阅读的深入,我的偏见被彻底打破了。这本书的格局远超出了地理坐标所能界定的范畴。它探讨的核心议题——关于归属感、关于个体在广阔世界中的定位——是如此普世和深刻。作者巧妙地运用了看似寻常的场景作为载体,将这些宏大的哲学命题融入其中,使得阅读体验既有扎实的接地气感,又不失精神层面的升华。这种“小中见大”的叙事手法,让我想起那些真正伟大的文学作品,它们总能从最具体的生活经验中提炼出永恒的真理。文字的质地是粗粝而又充满韧性的,如同被岁月雕琢过的石头,每一道纹理都诉说着不为人知的故事。我特别喜欢它对语言的运用,那种近乎诗意的散文笔法,让阅读过程成了一种享受,一种对文字本身的敬畏。
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