eShop USA > Books > Forgetting Elena: A Novel
Forgetting Elena: A Novel
Our Price: $15.00 Prices subject to change.
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780679755739
ISBN: 067975573X
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 192
Publication Date: October 04, 1994
Publisher: Vintage
Release Date: October 04, 1994
Studio: Vintage
Related Items: Featured Listmania!
Editorial Review:
Combining glittering wit, an atmosphere dense in social paranoia, and a breathtaking elegance and precision of language, White's first novel suggests a hilarious apotheosis of the comedy of manners. For, on the privileged island community where Forgetting Elena takes place, manners are everything. Or so it seems to White's excruciatingly self-conscious young narrator who desperately wants to be accepted in this world where everything from one's bathroom habits to the composition of "spontaneous" poetry is subject to rigid conventions.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - enigmatic tale works on several levels
This is a classic novel, and one that works on several levels. A satire of Fire Island gay culture? Yes, but it works even if you have no idea that this is what the book is supposed to be "about," as I didn't when I first read it years ago. The prose is seamlessly perfect, and the device of the amnesiac narrator, which shouldn't work, actually does.
Rating:  - Forgetting Elena
This is not an easy book. It is striking and memorable. If you read it more for the immediate effect of the imagery rather than try to figure out a plot or the characters, it is much more rewarding. I'm not knowledgeable about the model of Fire Island society but that is secondary anyway. If you are looking for a real page-turner, this book is not for you. If you read slowly and visualize what the author describes, you will be amply rewarded.This book may be about life on a beach but it is not ... Read More
Rating: - A perfect work
A vanished gay culture and setting (recognizably The Pines in the 1960s) transformed into an icy fantasy, with details borrowed from the ceremonial court life of ancient Japan and Java. An amnesiac narrator finds himself in an imaginary island society, at once funny and horrific, where refined, ever-changing rules govern the slightest action. He must somehow deduce his own identity from the enigmatic offhand remarks of others around him while not giving himself away.
Though infused with ... Read More
Rating:  - Overrated florid monstrosity
Two readings straight through, back to back, and I still couldn't figure out what anyone sees in this overwrought piffle.
Rating: - One of the masterpieces of 20th-century literature.
White's first novel is a fascinating study of an obsessive mind in action. The narrator, who lives on an island that in some ways resembles Fire Island, is a compulsive amnesiac who is apparently terrified to admit to anyone that he doesn't know who he is or what his relationship is to the people around him. It is clear he would feel embarassed if anyone found out. But as he attempts to determine his status in this highly stratified society, it is clear that its values are very much a part of his ... Read More
Related Categories:
| |
 |
