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A Changed Man
by Francine Prose
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Allison & Busby (2006-07-13)
ISBN: 0749082631
EAN: 9780749082635
Paperback
Edition: New Ed
SKU: B470-1038
Condition: New
Comments: In stock - Immediate despatch from an efficient and professional leading British bookselling firm.
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Customer Reviews
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Close, but not quite
Rating  (3)
Date: 2008-01-14
What can you say about the book - well to start the characters are very well devleoped and from the different perspectives you get you do feel that you get to know the different people involved quite well.
It does also get you thinking who wants what from who and who is the person really in need of change aswell as who is the idealistic dreamer?
Although I couldnt put the book down during the first half of my read, it didnt have the same effect in the second half - if was as if the book finished but the climax never really came - which is obviously dissapointing.
It went from being based around a former white supremacist and an aging holocaust surivor to being about the budding romantic links between 'the changed man' and his workmate.
Good but you get the sense that the author gave up half way through - just saw a film with a cheesy ending and applied the same think to the book and mentioning the film aswell!
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A superb satire
Rating  (5)
Date: 2005-06-30
5 out of 5 customers found this reveiw helpful
I knew nothing of this author before reading this book, but was captivated by the blurb on the back cover and then when reading the first few pages. The introductory passage where the reformed nazi enters the lift and a dwarf gets on is both funny and thought provoking.The book is balanced in many ways by both the sly knocks at the Politically Correct and the demonstration of how people are inculcated with prejudice. The chapter where Bonnie's Son is brought up before the Principle after writing an essay on Hitler being Gay and being accused of being homophobic is superb. This is contrasted with the adults inner struggle between being better people and attempting to do good things and their own desires, selfless vs selfish. At very turn the book surprises, as it mocks the media, the extreme right and the world of the charitiable cause, and underlying this is a kind of existential lonliness of all the characters, as just like all the best comic writing a good proportion contains bathos and pathos. Yes it does address serious issues, such as race, class and sex but in a subtle and gentle way, it leads you on an entertaining path, which at the end left me with all sorts of questions in my mind with regard to how we combat evil and try to do good. get it, read it, its good.
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