Describe Books Conducive To Angels
| Original Title: | Angels |
| ISBN: | 0099440830 (ISBN13: 9780099440833) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Characters: | Jamie Mays and Bill Houston |
| Literary Awards: | Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction (1984) |
Denis Johnson
Paperback | Pages: 209 pages Rating: 3.73 | 5044 Users | 317 Reviews
Define Containing Books Angels
| Title | : | Angels |
| Author | : | Denis Johnson |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | First Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 209 pages |
| Published | : | March 6th 2003 by Vintage (first published August 12th 1983) |
| Categories | : | Fiction. Thriller. Novels. Suspense. Mystery. Drama |
Chronicle Concering Books Angels
‘A dazzling and savage first novel’ New York TimesAngels tells the story of two born losers. Jamie has ditched her husband and is running away with her two baby girls. Bill is dreaming of making it big in a life of crime. They meet on a Greyhound bus and decide to team up.
So begins a stunning, tragic odyssey through the dark underbelly of America – the bars, bus stations, mental wards, and prisons that play host to Jamie and Bill as they find themselves trapped in a downward spiral though rape, alcohol, drugs and crime, to madness and death.
From the author of Tree of Smoke , winner of the National Book Award for Fiction
Rating Containing Books Angels
Ratings: 3.73 From 5044 Users | 317 ReviewsRate Containing Books Angels
First, an opening number: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aq344k...*****Trying to forget your past is a futile as trying to dodge the rain drops when it goes from a drizzle to a downpour. Unexpectedly, the sky will just open up and you're fucked. Im not going to lie, this book (the first half anyway) brought back an awful lot of unwanted memories for me.What is it that protected me from turning into one of these sad sonsabitches? I grew up piss poor surrounded by a bunch of degenerates, why am IJohnson's first novel, Angels is a savage downward spiral of people who you at first recoil from at their lack of self control, then come to love as the chaos reveals itself as something much greater than mere individuals. A gorgeous portrayal of confusion, drugs, and madness a crying angel with roving tattoos is the center of my favorite scene, second only to the ending, which I won't spoil here. The heartrending moments of truth come with less immediacy than they do in some of Johnson's other
I keep a short list of books that I consider Great-writing-Painful-to-read. A cringe accompanied by pain on nearly every page. Powerful. Memorable.*** Angels. It touches on so many things. Squalor, drug use, alcoholism, rape, murder, and good old insanity. Too well done and Painful. ** Others on the list- for alcoholism Malcom Lowry's Under The Volcano will leave you in a fog for weeks. * Theodore Dreiser's An American tragedy forces the reader to truly feel the shame a murderer carries.* And
Began re-reading this thing recently and then had to back off for a while. My own life was too stressful, and you better be on solid ground when you read Angels, because Johnson isn't going to spare you anything. He begins with homelessness and moves onto gang rapes (plural), the psych ward, a murder, death row. You feel kind of relieved when all the main character has to worry about is his girlfriend being looped up on red wine and speed at the family cookout or a few shots being fired at him
What you will find in this novel, and in any Denis Johnson work Ive encountered, is a sublime mix of the most lyrical sentences and the most Faulknerian depravity imaginable. This might be Johnsons best. At times I wanted to cry from the shear beauty of the sentences gracefully laced within the storyJamie could feel a liquid warm front moving in on the raw borders of her own disquietand other times I found myself near tears from the senseless, senseless violence. But these are the people Johnson
This was Johnsons debut novel and its well written and powerful. In Johnsons short stories, the characters are often those who live on the edge of society. Junkies, alcoholics, and petty criminals populate these stories and Johnson chronicles their lives of quiet desperation with sympathy and insight. In Angels, Johnson again focuses on people living on the margins and while its far from an uplifting book, his characters come alive in all their flawed humanity. In the book, Jaime Mays, a woman
4.5 stars. What an ending. The last 30 pages or so were absolutely worthy of 5 stars.
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