Phillips, Caryl

Giovanni's Room (Penguin Modern Classics)

Average customer rating:

introspective, subtle, but passionate and full of drama
A Masterpiece
An affair of the heart threatened by society's "clutter and disorder"
Although strange and foriegn, its idea is still compelling
"Can we not have a life together?"

Giovanni's Room (Penguin Modern Classics)
James Baldwin
Manufacturer: Penguin Books Ltd
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0141186356

Book Description

Baldwin's haunting and controversial second novel is his most sustained treatment of sexuality, and a classic of gay literature. In a 1950s Paris swarming with expatriates and characterized by dangerous liaisons and hidden violence, an American finds himself unable to repress his impulses, despite his determination to live the conventional life he envisions for himself After meeting and proposing to a young woman, he falls into a lengthy affair with an Italian bartender and is confounded and tortured by his sexual identity as he oscillates between the two.

Examining the mystery of love and passion in an intensely imagined narrative, Baldwin creates a moving and complex story of death and desire that is revelatory in its insight.

Customer Reviews:

introspective, subtle, but passionate and full of drama.......2007-06-12

"Giovanni's Room", set in Paris of the 1950's, is a memorable study of a tormented soul of a young American, David. Narrated in the first person singular, this novel is deep and dark, making the reader feel the David's emotions and passions.

David, who moved to France like many young Americans after the World War II, to pursue the freedom within the artistic atmosphere and the traditions of the Old World, found in fact the side of himself he did not expect to uncover.

Starting the story at the point of total exhaustion, on the verge of madness, just about to leave the South of France for Paris again (and then, perhaps, finally to return to the States - although the ending is open in this respect) David recollects his relationship with Giovanni, an Italian barman whom he met on the night while searching for money to pay his hotel bill (or for another accommodation). When Hella, David's girlfriend, travels in Spain trying to organize her thoughts far from David and get to know herself better in solitude, David decides to ask Jacques, a man he knew casually, for money. Jacques invites him for dinner and then they end up going for a couple of drinks to the gay bar. Jacques is a friend of the owner, Guillaume, and they abandon themselves in a conversation, although Jacques clearly fancies the young barman. When two older men leave them alone, David and Giovanni immediately feel attracted to each other and by the morning they go together to Giovanni's room, where David subsequently moves. Guillaume, who gave Giovanni the job in hope to win the boy's heart, is very jealous; Jacques is also a bit upset, but both of them hope that the relationship won't last.

Well... the relationship does not last, and this is the information revealed at the very beginning of the novel. David is, all in all, a disagreeable character (another novel in which the main character is not likeable, yet evoking sympathy in the reader because of his complexity and misery, and certainly possessing some charm, which he uses without scruples), who acts egoistically and opportunistically, but also according to convention. By being selfish and cruel to those who love him, he destroys not only them, but also himself. He cannot accept his love for Giovanni, because he fights his gay tendencies (he cannot even think about himself as gay and always tries to distinguish himself from "old fairies" like Guillaume and Jacques), but when he finally gives in, it is too late to rescue the relationship. Here lies, for me, the universal message in the story: what happens if by our own silliness, mistake, carelessness, or hard-headedness, whatever, we lose the love of our life and, worse, have an utterly destructive influence on him or her?

Giovanni is a great character, he is a complete opposite of David - he follows his instincts to the point of abandoning himself in them, at the same time doing it completely unconsciously - he is convinced that he acts very rationally and has reasonable plans for the future. When David leaves him upon Hella's return to Paris, Giovanni loses all the grip onto reality and that leads to the tragedy.

Hella, the only significant female character in the novel (except marginal, although complex, Sue, who is another person in the collection of people used by David) is also very interesting - basically, David treats her exactly the same as he treats Giovanni, but she is much more down-to earth and with typical American self- control manages to get back on her feet.

The story takes place in Paris, the protagonist breathes the existentialis atmosphere, wandering in the narrow, old streets during the night. His desperation does not prevent him from perceiving the beauty of the city, but at the same time the city adds to his melancholy. In a different setting the story would undoubtedly be different, and so the novel seamlessly connects its time, place and plot.

James Baldwin created a remarkable novel, full of introspective, universal questions that never get outdated. He managed to write about the problems, which at his time were rather hidden and unspoken. Very subtle prose and concise form round up the list of "Giovanni's Room's" qualities. This is the first book by this author I have read and I will definitely try more.

A Masterpiece.......2007-05-25

Giovanni's Room is such a poignant, touching, and finely crafted novel that deals with homosexuality, love, and death in a way that one rarely finds in one. The characters, each and every single one of them, are as real as anybody today in the 21st century. The emotions described in the book are so real and vivid that the novel rarely reads like a novel. A touching story, sharp social commentary, and a very vivid view of what homosexuality was like back in the 1960's in Paris.

An affair of the heart threatened by society's "clutter and disorder".......2006-11-03

"Giovanni's Room" is unique among Baldwin's novels for its all-white cast of characters--a decision that, his letters revealed, worried Baldwin somewhat, fearing that his portrayals would not seem authentic. His concerns turned out to be baseless; both Giovanni and David are convincing characters whose magnetism and flawed idealism stand in sharp relief to the cynical, grimy atmosphere of the bars and rooms they inhabit.

David is engaged to be married when his fiancee, Hella, travels to Spain to "find out" what she wants from life--and from David. He then meets Giovanni in a Parisian bar and their fate is sealed as soon as they enter Giovanni's tiny, claustrophobic room and its "outlines of clutter and disorder." David's internal struggle begins immediately: "if I do not open the door at once and get out of here, I am lost. But I knew I could not open the door, I knew it was too late."

I've come to think of Baldwin's "Giovanni's Room" as the inverted (no pun intended) example of Forster's "Room with a View," the book it oddly and inexplicably reminds me of. Although Baldwin is tragic where Forster is comic, the impossible coupling of stalwart David and carefree Giovanni echo the equally improbable pair of straitlaced Lucy and bohemian George. And in each novel, the foreign setting strips away David's and Lucy's inhibitions while it enhances Giovanni's and George's forwardness.

Both books, too, deal with a typically nineteenth-century theme, pitting moral honesty and romantic love against what "proper" society expects of its members. David is expected to marry Hella, as Lucy is expected to marry Cecil, and the comic or tragic outcome of each novel is determined entirely by the sincerity of the choices made by its characters. In Baldwin's more modern version, however, the virtue of David and Giovanni's relationship and the (yes) innocence of their love cannot ultimately withstand the pressures of society and the strictures of David's upbringing, and, inexorably, the couple become as sullied as the "clutter and disorder" of Giovanni's room.

Although strange and foriegn, its idea is still compelling.......2006-05-04

This book was written a long time ago for a completely different audience. That being said, this is still a good book that gives insight on to the lives of people in France in the early 20th century as well as possibly opening people's eyes to the idea of homosexuality in a whole new light. Baldwin creates real people, that could be me or you, and puts them in a situation that isnt too far fetched to consider, and does a good job of showing how people act.
Although it is old and slightly out dated, it is still an interesting and worth while read in today's world.

"Can we not have a life together?".......2006-03-14

"Love him and let him love you."

A young American expatriate in Paris is torn between relationship with a woman and love affair with a man. Set in the 1950s, Giovanni's Room is a man's excruciating repentance, or rather reminiscence, of one particular lie among the many lies he has told in his life. Could it be the first love, or maybe his only love, because David has never for an instant truly forgotten his first love, Giovanni, and the thought of whom often gives a guilty lurch in his stomach. He feels in himself a faint, dreadful stirring of what so overwhelming stirs in him. He meets Giovanni at the bar while his girlfriend Hella vacations in Spain. But David is uneasy about this relationship that is no more than just a sexual escapade with Giovanni. A feeling of contempt and pique conquers him to an extent that fear and anguish have become the surface on which he slips and tumbles. Is David really confused as he claims to be? Or is he just afraid of being despised? He is on a constant struggle for social approbation that he will forfeit his Giovanni's love for him - maybe his love for Giovanni as well? He thinks being with Hella will rescue him from his love for Giovanni.

At first I am not sure how much David cherishes Giovanni until he confesses his irrevocable love for him. That he will never be able to love anyone like he loves Giovanni intensifies his mental struggle with the forbidden love: What kind of life can two men have together? He keeps on fighting his life, fighting his love because he sees no prospect of a life shared by two men. Beneath this struggle for social acceptance is laden with a deep calling to abandon the conventional norms of success, worth, and love. He views this abject terror of desire with interminable cynicism and cruelty.

Giovanni's Room explores the troubling emotions of man's heart with unusual candor and yet with dignity and intensity. It delves into the most controversial issue of morality with an artistry. The most touching and absorbing thing is Giovanni's unconditional love for David, whose fearful intimation opens in him a hatred for Giovanni that is as powerful as his love for him. This love for Giovanni has been meticulously suppressed, and is not recognized until the ineluctable separation, which compounds David's scruple. The loss compounds his regret of not confessing his love. Even though Giovanni is very fond of him already, Giovanni's affection and loyalty do not make him happy or proud, as it should. Aren't we all somehow like David? We always want to wait to make sure the feeling is right, but how can we be sure? To David Love can only be measured by the grief so inconsolable that is concomitant of his loss. To the rest of us it's a message to drop our ego for an ideal relationship.

Average customer rating:

A wonderful premise, but...
"First person narratives told from varied points of view"
These are human stories not race stories
Excellent
Desperately heartbreaking vignettes of the African diaspora

Crossing the River
Caryl Phillips
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0679757945
Release Date: 1995-01-15

Book Description

From the acclaimed author of Cambridge comes an ambitious, formally inventive, and intensely moving evocation of the scattered offspring of Africa. It begins in a year of failing crops and desperate foolishness, which forces a father to sell his three children into slavery. Employing a brilliant range of voices and narrative techniques, Caryl Phillips folows these exiles across the river that separates continents and centuries.

Phillips's characters include a freed slave who journeys to Liberia as a missionary in the 1830s; a pioneer woman seeking refuge from the white man's justice on the Colorado frontier; and an African-American G.I. who falls in love with a white Englishwoman during World War II. Together these voices make up a "many-tongued chorus" of common memory—and one of the most stunning works of fiction ever to address the lives of black people severed from their homeland.

Customer Reviews:

A wonderful premise, but..........2005-02-14

I think this book has amazing potential- the plot lines are intriguing, and the characters are interesting- but it falls far short of what I anticipated. Phillips' prose simply does not draw the reader in. Instead, it is dry and boring, and it becomes incredibly difficult to get through the long, uninteresting passages to find the good parts. While I think that many readers will enjoy this book because of the powerful plot line, it seemed to me as though the book relied too much on plot and not enough on quality writing.

"First person narratives told from varied points of view".......2004-09-02

This book was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1993, Britain's equivalent to the Pulitzer. Phillips was born in the West Indies but raised in England, and the book is a series of first person narratives and stories told from a variety of points of view: an African father who sells his children into slavery, a freed slave in the South, an African-American GI in World War II. It moves from 1830s to 1960s in a sweeping look at the African Diaspora caused by slavery.

These are human stories not race stories.......2003-06-01

Eventhough the book is composed by four different unrelated stories, of a black evaegelist in Liberia, a black woman heading for a new life in California during the pilgrimage of the XIX century, the Captain of a slaves trading vessel, and a G.I in England during the II World War; for me there is a phrase that encompass most of the sadness and despair that goes with a life that other persons have damaged and limited due to the shade of your skin and not because of your actions and omissions.

"The young evangelist preached with all his might, but Marta could not find solace in religion, and was unable to sympathize with the sufferings of the sun of God when set against her own private misery".

Excellent.......2002-07-20

I love Phillips' writing style in this historical fiction. I read it ten years ago, and it is still one of my favorites that I lend out to friends with positive response.

Desperately heartbreaking vignettes of the African diaspora.......2002-01-04

Caryl Phillips' Booker Prize shortlisted "Crossing The River" (CTR) about the emergence of an African diaspora arising from the slave trade with the African colonies is a collection of seemingly unrelated vignettes spanning over 100 years which share the same emotional core. Each of the four segments making up CTR is a cry from the soul, which poignantly if not bitterly captures the essence of the cultural dislocation suffered by those sold to foreign lands. Some, like Nash in "Pagan Coast", imbibe the Christian values of their colonial masters but experience the pull of their native calling when they are set free and returned as missionaries. Others like Martha, from "West", suffer the misery, indignity and hopelessness that only chattels should know. Phillips isn't out to demonise the white man. He leaves it to us to judge. How do we doubt do-gooder Edward's sincerity in making Nash into a new man ? But then there is also skipper James Hamilton's indifference to the cruelty meted out to slaves in the title segment. The final segment "Somewhere in England" doesn't seem to belong but it does. The strong emotional resonance that these stories evoke is what binds them together. Phillips also displays his literary genius and stylistic versatility in using different styles for the different segments. His Conrad-influenced prose in "Pagan Coast" boasts some of the most beautiful and fluent writing ever. On "Somewhere in England", he comes across like a contemporary novelist using prose punctuated by thought fragments. "CTR" brings four separate but all desperately heartrending stories together. The names of the three children - 2 boys and a girl - sold to slavery by their father in an act of desperate foolishness and named Nash, Martha and Taylor, all make their appearances. They are the countless nameless who consititute the African diaspora today. CTR is a brilliantly constructed and devastatingly powerful piece of work. Nobody interested in serious literature should miss it !

Average customer rating:

Complex interrogation of the middle passage
Unexpected tone, aim and even subject matter. It's excellent

The Atlantic Sound
Caryl Phillips
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Africa | History | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0375701036
Release Date: 2001-10-09

Amazon.com

Caryl Phillips has established himself as one of the supreme chroniclers of African dispossession and exile. In previous works such as The European Tribe and Crossing the River, he documents the ironies of post-colonial history. Phillips's latest book is perhaps best described as a "meditation," although it is also a fine and invigorating book. The subject of Phillips's broodings is that of displacement, diaspora, homelessness--all those things that ineluctably accompany any descendant of West African slaves. Phillips himself was born in St. Kitts, West Indies, in 1958, and so here he retraces the first transatlantic journey he made with his mother in the late 1950s, by banana boat from the Caribbean to the gray shores of the Mother Country. He visits three cities central to the slave trade: Liverpool, Elmina in Ghana, and Charleston. Finally in Israel, he finds a community of 2,000 African Americans who have lived in the Negev desert for 30 years. Wholly absorbing, always surprising, brilliantly observant, sensitive to human tragedy but never pessimistic, Phillips writes as beautifully as ever. "It is futile to walk into the face of history. As futile as trying to keep the dust from one's eyes in the desert." --Christopher Hart, Amazon.co.uk

Book Description

In this fascinating inquiry into the African Diaspora, Caryl Phillips embarks on a soul-wrenching journey to the three major ports of the transatlantic slave trade.

Juxtaposing stories of the past with his own present-day experiences, Phillips combines his remarkable skills as a travel essayist with an astute understanding of history. From an West African businessman's interactions with white Methodists in nineteenth-century Liverpool to an eighteenth-century African minister's complicity in the selling of slaves to a fearless white judge's crusade for racial justice in 1940s Charleston, South Carolina, Phillips reveals the global the impact of being uprooted from one's home through resonant, powerful narratives.

Customer Reviews:

Complex interrogation of the middle passage.......2002-03-13

This is a remarkably complex and thought-provoking book.
It would be of interest to anyone who thinks about:
slavery/the middle passage, the limits (or failures) of Pan-Africanism, the power of the 'Exodus' myth in the Bible, and finally the invisible histories of urban space (i.e., of cities like Liverpool, UK and Charleston, SC).

The different destinations in the book -- Ghana, Liverpool, Charleston, even Israel -- all have some bearing to the middle passage. The argument of this book, if there is an argument, seems to be that the journeys "homeward" that many people of African descent invent for themselves are all in some way symptomatic of the original event of separation, the forcible departure constituted by captivity and the journey to the new world.

Amardeep Singh

Unexpected tone, aim and even subject matter. It's excellent.......2001-07-25

I picked this book up in the library probably because of its alluring cover image and title, I'll admit it. And I was prepared to even enjoy what I thought was coming: an intellectual travel book of the Paul Theroux ilk, with perhaps the added sarcasm and chip on the shoulder due any returing British colonial.

It was, however, immediately more interesting and engrossing than any of those books Mr. Theroux has written, and it had even more honesty than Maya Angelou's book about coming to Africa, "All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes." For a long time I was not sure if it was meant to be novel or not. It was acertainly a novel idea, to make such trips, one after the other, in the time that one would need to see the places one was visiting (although I get the feeling that he might have strayed further afield in Africa than he did. There is an element of depression at times that was perhaps strongest in Africa, that kept some of his questions from being asked, so that he decided to move on and end any meandering reflection.) He was always interested in takling to people of the places he visited, but not to justify or romanticize about some book-learned image of the place. He aims more to appreciate what the possibilities of the places he visits are now, and then more importantly, what people there feel their history to be.

It is almost as if he goes to visit a relative in each place, (although he never does this) and in the process was not recognised as a visitor or tourist (was not recognised as anything, perhaps, something that helped lend the novel air to the book, and an interesting element of his reflection. I guess it is based upon the narrator's (and author's, I suppose) African heritage, colonial experience, and English mother tongue, despite his never having lived in America, Britain, or Africa.)

I recomend this book as history and even as a novel. I Guess it is a new sort of book for this age, frank and real and yet also curiously fictitious. It is hard to put down. I look forward to reading it again.

Dancing in the Dark
Average customer rating:

Trite and unoriginal

well done but one dimensional

I enjoyed it with some reservations

Dancing in a Dark, Dark World

Enriching

Dancing in the Dark
Caryl Phillips
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1400079837
Release Date: 2006-10-10

Book Description

In this searing novel, Caryl Phillips reimagines the life of the first black entertainer in the U.S. to reach the highest levels of fame and fortune.

After years of struggling for success on the stage, Bert Williams (1874—1922), the child of recent immigrants from the Bahamas, made the radical decision to don blackface makeup and play the “coon.” Behind this mask he became a Broadway headliner–as influential a comedian as Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, and W. C. Fields, who called him “the funniest man I ever saw, and the saddest man I ever knew.” It is this dichotomy at Williams’ core that Phillips explores in this richly nuanced, brilliantly written novel, unblinking in its attention to the sinister compromises that make up an identity.

Customer Reviews:

Trite and unoriginal.......2006-11-11

I was looking for Mary Higgins Clark and came up upon this Mary Jane Clark book and thought I'ld give it a try. What a mistake! I found the book unbelievably trite and unoriginal. The story features quite a few girls in one small town who all have eating disorders and cut themselves. After meeting the rest of the characters in the town, I wanted to cut my own wrists! The protagonist was entirely one dimensional. The parents of the teen who was first kidnapped were pathetically weak rendering the whole relationship with the daughter impossibly plodding and unrealistic. The woman one of the kidnap victims babysits for is so boring and selfish that I found myself rooting for the husband to leave her! The author writes as if she is trying to tell us how much she knows about the news business without making it interesting or integrating it into the story therefore sounding altogether preachy without an ounce of vitality. The red herrings were obvious, the ending unsatisfying and the book was altogether an unpleasant read. I would definetely not recommend this book.

well done but one dimensional.......2006-08-06

Stylistically, this novelization of the life of comedian Bert Williams is a tour de force with its daring use of internal dialog and the mutliple points of view. The language is precise and intimate, although it occasionally lapses into the purple zone.

This book opens up the old discussion that is always debated in historical fiction: how true does it need to be? Phillips does an excellent job in describing the passive nature of Williams, and the fear he (and other Blacks) must have had about whites in that era.

Phillips, however, does a poor job in explaining Williams' need to perform, as well as other aspects of his personality that made him the most successful Black performer of his era.

Additionally, Phillips makes several errors in fact. He makes a theme through the novel on how Williams' proper father disapproved of his career. In reality, his father, a pool hall owner, was very impressed by his successful son. Another theme of the novel, of Williams drinking alone in solitude, is also wrong. Williams was a heavy drinker but always drank with friends and colleagues.

I enjoyed it with some reservations.......2005-12-01

I'm a Bert Williams fanatic. I have all of the current cds of his 80 surviving recordings and DVDs of his surviving films "Fish" and "Natural Born Gambler", as well as having read all three of his other biographies. So I eagerly awaited this fictionalization of his life.

Caryl Philips did a lot of research on Bert Williams and his partner George Walker and it shows. A lot of this stuff is close to the fact. I especially loved the sololoquies that he has some of the major characters exhorting in the book, such as Bert's wife Lottie's expression of her love for Bert, George Walker's feelings on his partner's thoughts, and Betr's final meditation on his father. Phillips has a beautiful way with the King's English and wonderfully articulates the innermost feelings of his characters.

However, while I'm aware that this is somewhat fictionalized and some artistic license is inevitable, some things are too far off the mark. First of all, Bert and Lottie DID adopt the latter's three neices as their own children, contrary to the book (one of them spoke fondly of Bert in a 1946 interview in Negro Digest), and the scene where Aida Overton Walker (George Walker's Widow) makes an explicit, drunken pass to Bert and suggests that her husband was sleepign with Berty's wife is a bit off the mark. Yeah, it spices up the story, but considering that these were real people, it gives me some pause.

But that aside, I would suggest the reader familiarize themselves with Bert Williams via his nonfiction bios and his recordings as it would help in fully understanding this story. That said, be prepared for an interesting read.

Dancing in a Dark, Dark World.......2005-11-25

"Dancing in the Dark" is a biographical novel of Bert Williams, the black entertainer who performed in vaudeville in the early part of the 20th century. He was one of the finest dancers and comedians of all times and eventually became the first black person to perform with the Ziegfield Follies. In his act, Williams played the slouching Jonah man, the careless, unlucky black for which everything goes wrong - a sort of "sad sack" character. To be acceptable to white audiences he has to play the shiftless, coon. Unfortunately, it was one of the only ways that white Americans would accpet a black on stage at the time. When Williams tried other roles, he failed. To perform his act, Williams had to blacken his face with burnt cork to cover his his light complexion and his racial pride.

Caryl Phillips uses a style of writing that allows several voices to speak: Williams, his wife Lotties, his long time partner George Walker and also Walker's wife, Ada who eventually becomes Aida. (And one wonders if the change of names is a play on the opera of the same name that is alleged to be an improper characterization of a black woman.) Although the style allows the reader to get the perspective of various characters, there were times that I was confused and had to take a second look to make sure that I knew who was speaking. While this style of writing may be pleasing to some readers, I felt it distracted from the story. Williams story is one that should be told, but Phillips makes it difficult to hear.

The subplot regarding George Walker, Williams long time partner, and the relationship between the two makes for interesting analysis. Walker is the more business oriented partner and demonstrates more apparent racial pride, but is also a womanizer, often risking his career and that of Williams with his frequent liasons, espcially with a white female. But all the while his loyal wife stays with him.

Lottie has conflicts over her hair and it is not until Madam C. J. Walker develops hair products for women that she is able to deal with it. Like her husband, who uses burnt cork to cover his face, she uses hats to cover her hair. Is Phillips trying to say that like her husband, Lotties is unable to accept her image as a black woman? Is she in conflict because she does not have "good hair" like her sister, a sister who comes to a tragic end.

Willliams conflict is over his desire to be an entertainer. But his only option is to appear in black face. He desperately wants to entertain and he is excellent at his trade, however, society forces him to perform a role that demeans the image of black Americans. Was it his obligation to give up his trade for the greater good of the image of African Americans? That is what he is faced with when black leaders confront him. It is interesting that Williams is a native of the Bahamas who does not experience realy racism untl he comes to America at age ll. One also wonders if Williams would have had a better life if he had folowed his dreams and stayed in Europe, where he has major successes, like many black expatriates have done over the years. Phillips uses the symbolism of ocean voyages, on which Phillips suffers, as an analogy of this crossing over.

One also wonders if Phillips is trying to say that all of the characters are subconsciously unable to accept their blackness but spend their life trying to accept the world as best they can. Is there an analogy here between Williams performing in black face and the resulting conficts and tradegies in his life and Michael Jackson who had changed his image to appear in white face?

Philllips innuendoes about Willaims sexaulity is also interesting. While Walker's sexaul promiscuity leads to his death from syphilis, Williams life of non sexual relaltions with his wife, leads to a tragic life for both of them. Or does Williams have syphillis also and does not want to infect his wife? The reader does not know. This is just one of the dark sides of this very dark novel. Is it his conflict over color or his conflicts over homosexuality that causes Williams to spend most of his off stage life in dark bars with a bottle?

While I enjoyed the book, I felt that there could have been additional character development, especialy about Williams' youth. Also his relationship with his father, a proud black man who only goes to see his son perform one time. He is so replused that he can never undertake it again.

The subject of Bert Williams is ripe for further investigation and analysis. While Phillips scratches the surface and raise interesting issues he merely perks the readers interest. It many ways he fails to get at the real character of Bert Williams. He portrayal of the dark side of Williams life is so dark, that perhaps we miss the real man.

Enriching.......2005-11-10

"Dancing in the Dark" is a fictionalize portrayal of the life of Bert Williams, an early twentieth century vaudeville and Broadway performer. Mr. Williams immigrates to America from the West Indies at an early age and takes to the stage in an effort to sharpen his talents and support himself. It isn't long before Mr. Williams learns that there is only role that the American audience is interested in seeing a black man play - ragged, dumb, high-stepping comedic "darkie". Early in Mr. Williams' performance career he meets George Walker, a starving street performer, and the two decide to team up and perform with medicine shows. Soon the two form their own company producing and staring in shows that play on Broadway and in Europe. As the success of Williams & Walker builds, the partners differ on the direction in which their performance company should move. Walker is forward thinking and would like for their shows to portray blacks, accurately, as the multifaceted, dignified people he knows them to be. Williams can't seem to move from the blackened faced idiot character that the white audience revels in observing.

Phillips does an admirable job with "Dancing in the Dark" which for this reader serves as a cautionary tale of sorts, warning of the dangers inherent in allowing others to define you. Both Williams and Walker are fully realized characters struggling with internal conflicts frustrations that must certainly have plagued black performers during the vaudevillian era. Phillips explores the affects of Williams' corked face buffoonery on his relationships with others, especially his wife and father, while at the same time examining the slow destruction of a soul trapped by the limitations that others have placed upon it. Williams' success definitely came at a price. How can you maintain a healthy self image when you earn a living that propagates the most negative and humiliating stereotypes of your own race; entertaining the very people who insist on keeping those stereotypes and daft images at the forefront of American minds?

For me, the atmosphere of the novel is somewhat melancholy, although Phillips' prose deftly renders the professional and emotional conflicts central to the novel. The narrative approach, used to deliver the story did create a bit of distance for this reader (third person unknown to first person, was there an interviewer narrating at one point?). However; the author's use of newspaper and magazine reviews drafted in the language and style of the era contributed greatly to the novel's setting. Including song lyrics and playbill text also added to the feel of the period. Most importantly, I learned a little about a period that until this novel I've only had a surface understanding of. I recall a few years back actually seeing some old footage of a corked faced performance and being very embarrassed by it. After this read, I can fully appreciate the embarrassment that the performer might have felt as well. A very enriching read. Enjoy!

Average customer rating:

Of Race, Cruelty, and Survival
Moving
A true storyteller
Blacks and Jews : Kin through struggle
Blending of Time and Characters for a Single Theme

The Nature of Blood
Caryl Phillips
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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The European Tribe

ASIN: 0679776753
Release Date: 1998-04-28

Amazon.com

Like his earlier works, the novels Cambridge and Crossing the River, Caryl Phillips's The Nature of Blood is made up of several stories that take place over a large span of time. The result of this innovative technique is that themes, characters, and incidents resonate against one another, and history is seen not as a straight line but as a circle or a spiral. In one story, a Jewish man abandons his family to fight for the state of Israel. In another, the Moor Othello, another soldier who has left his family, comes to Venice. There, he visits the Jewish ghetto and finds himself astounded that "they should choose to live in this manner." Phillips's most daring feat in this provocative and thoughtful novel, however, may be to write in the first person about a Holocaust survivor just after World War II.

Book Description

In his most ambitious novel to date, Phillips creates a dazzling kaleidoscope of historical fiction, one that illuminates the dark legacy of Europe's obsession with race and blood. At the center of The Nature of Blood is a young woman, a Nazi death camp survivor, devastated by the loss of everyone she loves. Her story is interwoven with a cast of characters from both the present and past: her uncle Stephan, Othello the Moorish general, three Jews in 15th century Venice, and an Ethiopian Jew struggling for acceptance in contemporary Israel. Tracing these characters through disparate lands and centuries, Phillips creates an unforgettable group portrait of individuals overwhelmed by the force of European tribalism.

"An extraordinarily perceptive and intelligent novel, and a haunting one."--New York Times

Customer Reviews:

Of Race, Cruelty, and Survival.......2005-03-07

The Nature of Blood is an extraordinary novel that embeds individual stories within the larger history of racial politics in Europe. Stephen is a doctor and a militant living in Palestine just before the creation of the state of Israel. A doctor and an indoctrinator, he visits refuge camps where Jews wait to gain entrance into Palestine. The novel then leaps back in time to another camp, though this one more horrific: the concentration camp where young Eva barely lives, physically weak and emotionally numb. Here, she meets Gerry, one of the Americans who liberate the camp, and he becomes a small, tenuous lifeline. Eva's story forms the heart of the story, as we glimpse both happier times and the depth of the psychological toll her short life has taken. The novel then tumbles even further back in time, to 15th century Venice, where Jews live in walled ghettoes and can be accused of crimes based on rumor. Here, we meet Othello, who explores Venice as a new resident, acutely aware of his outsider status in Venetian society. Phillips briefly delves into other lives: Malka, an Ethiopian Jew who has traveled to Palestine, only to find that her skin color makes her unemployable; and Servadio, a Jewish banker unjustly accused of sacrificing a Christian boy.

These disparate stories are connected through centuries of European mistrust of outsiders, a wariness that periodically gives rise to bursts of hatred and cruelty. The betrayed can become the betrayers. While history gives these stories context, the characters give them power. Eva's unreliable narration evokes the brutality of the Holocaust as powerfully as the details themselves. Stephen's decision to return to Palestine has significance and poignancy, especially because we realize what happens to those he leaves behind. The historical aspect lends a sense of predestination as well - an inescapability - because the reader knows that Othello will become irrationally jealous and will kill both Desdemona and himself, that Eva's adolescence will be cruelly interrupted by the Nazis, that Palestine will become Israel, and that racism and the fear of the other will continue indefinitely throughout the future of humanity.

The Nature of Blood is not a long novel, but its impact is huge. I highly recommend it for readers of literary fiction who are likely to find the elegant prose as engaging as the stories themselves.

Moving.......2003-03-14

I read this book for a general lit class first semester of last year and became entranced by it. This book is magnetic, it pulls you in and you are left to helplessly turn the pages while your eyes devour each carefully chosen word, which are strung together to make an unforgettable novel. I am a biochemistry major, but have a profound love of reading and writing. When I had to write a paper on this novel last year, i found the maximum of 10 pages stifling. There is just so much to this book, the literally angles and interwoven humanity through each masterfully-crafted tale contained within it, leaves one open to a vast sea of topics on which to write. I hope to one day teach a class which intertwines literature and science, this will certainly be a book on the list. Everyone should be exposed to the extreme humanity of this novel.

A true storyteller.......2002-08-02

Caryl Phillips knows how to tell a story. He's a citizen of the world and I appreciate his imagination and perspective.

Blacks and Jews : Kin through struggle.......2001-12-28

when i got this book, i didn't think i was going to be overwhelmed. sure, the premise was noble, but i expected it to be dry and preachy

boy was i wrong...

instead of telling you prejudice is wrong, caryl shows you in four plot lines, ecah worthy of their own novel. eva's story is the most compelling. we get to see the horror of the holocaust and how it shapes her life; even after eva is away from it, the nightmares continue. othello's story is interesting because we see the jews through his eyes as he tries to assmilate in venetian society, denying his identity in the process. you can also learn about the history of the jews and how they came to be a maligned people.

while none of the stories ever come together, they share a common thread : prejudice; how it affects the victims and the perpetrators. the parts of the novel which phillips graphically shows the holocaust horror took my breath away and made me angry that humans commited the crimes they did...

Blending of Time and Characters for a Single Theme.......2001-05-09

Caryl Phillips' novel, The Nature of Blood, is an unusual read with its four major storylines shifting the readers focus around the globe and through time. The amazingly wonderful thing is how the author is able to adroitly pull all of these threads together to create a marvelous whole. The tales of prejudice tell a horrifyingly universal story but the individual characters within the stories speak of some hope amidst the anguish. It is a cleverly crafted work that turns history on its head in showing how times change but human emotions remain steadfastly consistent, both good and bad. A short, interesting, powerful read.

Average customer rating:

good, but then it fails
Unrealistic...
Well worked, thought provoking and historic
Find a different book!
Brilliant. Phillips is a modern master.

Cambridge
Caryl Phillips
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0679736891
Release Date: 1993-02-02

Book Description

One of England's most widely acclaimed young novelists adopts two eerily convincing narrative voices and juxtaposes their stories to devastating effect in this mesmerizing portrait of slavery. Cambridge is a devoutly Christian slave in the West Indies whose sense of justice is both profound and self-destructive, while Emily is a morally-blind, genteel Englishwoman.

Customer Reviews:

good, but then it fails.......2004-10-05

The narrative of Emily Cartwright is marvelous. I found myself easily believing I was reading an account written by a young woman in the 18th century, with matter of fact observations on race and men consistent with that time. The language is a delight to read, but as I was pleasantly carried along I began to wonder where the story was going. When a character using the occult entered the story, I had hope of the plot thickening but, alas, it didn't. Part II, which seemed very contrived and rushed, was disappointing.

Unrealistic..........2003-10-30

I felt that this book was unrealistic. What I feel Phillips tried to do was put modern-day morals in an old-fashioned tale. It was deffinetly as if he tried to make a story about what went on during a time of uncertainty about the abolition of slavery and the emancipation of slaves. It was almost as if Phillips tried to add a "Scarlet Letter" appeal to the book, In the beginning the novel was well written and understandable and I thought would lead to a good novel, however around 100 it got unreadable. you could not understand what Phillips was doing with the novel. This book was unrealistic and that is my main problem with it. how it is such an unbelievable plot it is ridiculous to read.

Well worked, thought provoking and historic.......2001-05-08

I enjoyed Cambridge. The story is told from multiple perspectives which would explain the open ending. Who's version is the truth? How are their interpretations of events determined by their different cultural backgrounds? How do these multiple versions of a history comment upon the historical representation of actual Caribbean and African colonization? The characters are complex and contradictory - likeable and detestable all at once. One gets a glimpse into colonial life, attitudes and beliefs - not just one sided but as they probably were, complex, multiple, and contradictory. Caryl Phillips has done his research, the prose is authentic for the time, his work is based upon historical evidence (there is a recent dissertation that describes his historical influences). A good and well worth read.

Find a different book!.......1999-08-26

the following is a comment on Cambridge that is displayed on the first page. "Brilliant...(a) masterpiece (by) a profoundly talented novelist" - Village Voice I would beg to differ. I cannot even think of a place to begin describing my intense, deep hatred toward the book Cambridge by Caryl Phillips. I think that it might have been more fun, and less painful to gnaw my arm off and beat myself with it. I found the story's characters confusing. I didn't even know the main character's name until the Epilogue (page 177). The title character, Cambridge, didn't seem important enough to name the book after, and I didn't understand his personality. Nor could I interpret what Stella's (another key character) intents were. I also thought that plot was filled with gaps, and was never concluded. I finished the book with many unresolved ends. The book reads as poetry. For example: "I stepped out into the night to breathe the delicious mildness of the air, and to refresh my spirit (46)." I found this not only difficult to read and distracting to the plot, or lack there of. More importantly than that, I don't think that anyone speaks like that, not even in the books intended time period. This made the book unbelievable to me. Because I could not read more than 20 pages at a time without falling asleep, I couldn't get into the book. When Phillips used African American speech habits they too were not believable. for example: "Misses, misses, you please to bye me a comb for me to tick in my head (Phillips 124)," When Phillips made a character talk, I thought it was awkward, and it broke the mood of the paragraph.

I would Strongly suggest finding another book.

Their Eyes Were Watchin God, by Zora Neale Hurston is a book that I would suggest for a better read on a similar topic.

Brilliant. Phillips is a modern master........1999-07-24

Caryl Phillips gives new meaning to the term "literary fiction". His prose rings and resonates, his themes are timeless, and his vision is limitless.

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Europe through the eyes of a Black Englishman
My Island Man
A Thoughtful Analysis of European Culture

The European Tribe
Caryl Phillips
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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A Distant Shore

ASIN: 0375707042
Release Date: 2000-05-02

Book Description

In this richly descriptive and haunting narrative, Caryl Phillips chronicles a journey through modern-day Europe, his quest guided by a moral compass rather than a map. Seeking personal definition within the parameters of growing up black in Europe, he discovers that the natural loneliness and confusion inherent in long jorneys collides with the bigotry of the "European Tribe"-a global community of whites caught up in an unyielding, Eurocentric history.

Phillips deftly illustrates the scenes and characters he encounters, from Casablanca and Costa del Sol to Venice, Amsterdam, Oslo, and Moscow. He ultimately discovers that "Europe is blinded by her past, and does not understand the high price of her churches, art galleries, and history as the prison from which Europeans speak."

In the afterword to the Vintage edition, Phillips revisits the Europe he knew as a young man and offers fresh observations.

Customer Reviews:

Europe through the eyes of a Black Englishman.......2000-09-22

Phillips' travels, which occurred before the fall of Communism, cover Morocco, Gibralter, Spain, France, Italy, Netherlands, Ireland, Germany, Poland, Norway, and the Soviet Union.

Any travel narrative needs a 'hook' or a theme, and Phillips' is to seek out things that he can particularly relate to, as an Englishman of Black descent. He identifies with the plight of European Jews, and in other countries he highlights encounters with local Blacks. He seems to be straining for material at times, and oddly, rarely goes out of his way to seek out the local Black community, instead relying on happenstance. Yet, as he points out, the results of the Caribbean diaspora are everywhere: Even in northern Norway, he encounters another emigrant from the English-speaking Caribbean. Norway is also the occasion where the author loses his temper due to one-too-many racist incidents, and the target of his eruption is, of all things, a Norwegian customs officer. Phillips is paranoid about the revival of fascism in Europe, but perhaps that's understandable as he recounts racist slights and insults (some quite shocking to this white reader) that occur during his travels, as well as from his life in the US and UK.

My Island Man.......2000-08-08

I stumbled across "European Tribe" and decided to read it not only because it was written by someone born in my island (St.Kitts & Nevis), but because it describes places that I long to visit. Caryl Phillips uses a thought provoking style to tell of his travel around the world. As I journeyed with him I enjoyed his vivid and frank language and also his analysis of the different cultures. I also appreciate Caryl Phillips' use and revelation of historical facts and theories to tell his story. I will recommend "European Tribe" to anyone interested in a black man's expereince with various cultures of the world.

A Thoughtful Analysis of European Culture.......2000-07-24

In his narrative, The European Tribe, Caryl Phillips writes about his experiences as a black British intellectual traveling mostly in Europe. He starts in Casablanca and works his way north visiting such places as Paris, Venice, and Amsterdam, finishing up in Russia before returning to England. This book was originally written in the early eighties, so Phillips is describing some places still behind the Iron Curtain. But this edition does include an afterword written in 1999. In his rational way, Phillips comments in the afterword, "Europeans are human beings. They are subject to the same insecurities, the same inability to forgive, the same prejudices, the same disturbing nationalism, the same cruelties, as any other people" (132). This is a good travelogue, but it is also an enlightening book for people whose main reading about the black experience has been from the viewpoint of African-Americans.

Average customer rating:

A New World Order: Essays
Caryl Phillips
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0375714030
Release Date: 2002-04-30

Book Description

The Africa of his ancestry, the Caribbean of his birth, the Britain of his upbringing, and the United States where he now lives are the focal points of award-winning writer Caryl Phillips’ profound inquiry into evolving notions of home, identity, and belonging in an increasingly international society.
At once deeply reflective and coolly prescient, A New World Order charts the psychological frontiers of our ever-changing world. Through personal and literary encounters, Phillips probes the meaning of cultural dislocation, measuring the distinguishing features of our identities–geographic, racial, national, religious–against the amalgamating effects of globalization. In the work of writers such as V. S. Naipaul, James Baldwin, and Zadie Smith, cultural figures such as Steven Spielberg, Linton Kwesi Johnson, and Marvin Gaye, and in his own experiences, Phillips detects the erosion of cultural boundaries and amasses startling and poignant insights on whether there can be an answer anymore to the question “Where are you from?” The result is an illuminating–and powerfully relevant–account of identity from an exceedingly perceptive citizen of the world.

Average customer rating:

Extremely well written but not a picker-upper.
This is any life, a retrospective
Haunting Story
Alienation and displacement in contemporary England
And now a word from the Alienated ...

A Distant Shore
Caryl Phillips
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Literary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

The Nature of Blood
Crossing the River
The Atlantic Sound
White Teeth: A Novel
Dancing in the Dark

ASIN: 1400034507
Release Date: 2005-03-08

Book Description

Dorothy is a retired schoolteacher who has recently moved to a housing estate in a small village. Solomon is a night-watchman, an immigrant from an unnamed country in Africa. Each is desperate for love. And yet each harbors secrets that may make attaining it impossible.
With breathtaking assurance and compassion, Caryl Phillips retraces the paths that lead Dorothy and Solomon to their meeting point: her failed marriage and ruinous obsession with a younger man, the horrors he witnessed as a soldier in his disintegrating native land, and the cruelty he encounters as a stranger in his new one. Intimate and panoramic, measured and shattering, A Distant Shore charts the oceanic expanses that separate people from their homes, their hearts, and their selves.

Customer Reviews:

Extremely well written but not a picker-upper........2007-01-22

A remarkable story, superbly told. It started off as a slow moving, melancholy, depressing story about a retired teacher - Dorothy Jones - whose only friend, if you can call him that, is Solomon the black neighbour, who drives her to her doctor's appointments. However, by the end of the story I had to give kudos to the author, who definitely pulled off a masterpiece.
The author is especially great at descriptions and incidentals- the portrayal of some cultural differences as well as sad commentary on the state of womankind as depicted by Dorothy.

This is any life, a retrospective.......2005-05-07

The work warmed me, massaged my frontal lobes by the third chapter. I was intrigued by the way the book was drawn, prettier than flashback. The story plays like an accordian, folding in on itself, each part touching the others by the book's end.

The characters develop in hunking displaced quarters that beg the reader to forage her heart for compassion. This is how we live and grow, it says -- one scene at a time, life event by life event.

And haven't we all? Would any of us recognize our 40 year-old selves if our life movie were played for us at 14? Unlikely, but the view from there to here is dramatic, and Phillips has drawn that line back to a distant shore.

Haunting Story.......2004-12-05

This was a deeply moving story. The struggle of Solomon and how he came to England haunts the mind. While Dorothy and her story haunts the spirit. This was a powerful drama. The end left me in tears and full of sorrow. A story not easily forgotten.
Reviewed by:
Dawnny

Alienation and displacement in contemporary England.......2004-09-18

"A Distant Shore (ADS)" is Caryl Phillips' beautifully mature and emotionally resonant new novel about life in contemporary England. The story's protagonists, Dorothy and Soloman, can't come from more different backgrounds. She's white, he's black. She's a lonely retired schoolteacher with deep family secrets, including a broken marriage, to haunt her. He's the sole survivor of a family wiped out by ethnic cleansing in an unnamed African country and an illegal immigrant desperate to begin a new life in civilised and democratic England. They are both "outsiders" in their own social context and outsiders recognise if not seek each other out in their subconscious yearning for human contact. Their dim lives brighten up albeit briefly when they intersect before fate rudely steps in to despatch them to their own black holes. Significantly, even their shared loneliness could not bridge the gap in their ethnic and social differences when they tried to connect but sadly failed. Unbeknown to them, they would never get a second chance.

Phillips tells his story backwards with time scale detours in between. The final outcome comes as a shock when it is revealed less than a quarter of our way through. We then backtrack into the past when Soloman was Gabriel and we follow his escape route out of hell into the land of milk and honey. Dorothy, who disappears for much of the middle section, returns in the final third to reveal her own private hell from being repeatedly used and humiliated by men, including a male colleague and an immigrant grocer, who aren't interested in anything but a casual sexual relationship. Her fragile mental state takes a turn for the worse after she arrives a little too late to nurse her estranged and dying lesbian sister and goes into terminal decline when her friendship with Soloman is cruelly ended.

Phillips' narrative technique parallels the novel's theme of alienation and displacement. The early Dorothy sequence suggests she's an unreliable narrator before we finally realise she's indeed in mental decline. The quick cuts as we leap backwards and forwards in time is fused together expertly and seamlessly, so we don't find it confusing.

Blighted by racism and parochialism, Phillips's contemporary England isn't a pretty sight. You may not die from ethnic cleansing in England but all the same, it's a society fraying at the edges from the pressures of new social forces at work. Yet the deep, deep sadness at the heart of ADS is tempered by the realisation that in life, there's always kindness and goodness to be found in the most casual or unlikely of places and persons (eg, Soloman's sponsors from the north have absolute hearts of gold).

"A Distant Shore" is an excellent novel that will appeal to readers who love books that speak of deep and personal truths. Those who enjoyed Clare Morrall's "Astonishing Splashes Of Colours", one of last year's Booker Prize nominees, will also love "A Distant Shore".

And now a word from the Alienated ..........2004-09-05

I found this book a fascinating look at 2 people who find themselves unaccepted by society and their dealings with both the external and internal demons. I was very impressed even within the first pages, where the primary character, Dorothy, an aging music teacher who can barely cope with her already extremely limited world of subdivision life. She emerges with her almost monotonic voice, punctuated with her jabs of intolerance of the undisciplined society around her. She is a woman no longer young, of a past with issues with her bigoted family, plagued by loneliness, not able to connect.

The scene shifts astonishingly to the point of view of an African who escapes oppression, from a prison cell, giving the viewpoint of a newcomer to a society where rejection is the norm. The exploration of this oppression, external, contrasts with the self-inflicted oppression of the female character, Dorothy.

Philips is a wonderful writer, unusual in the clarity and the freedom that allows his characters' voices to emerge. Dorothy was presented with complexity and compassion. The story is skillfully woven between past and present, with threads presented in one place explored, seamlessly, from platforms a further level removed in the narrative.

Average customer rating:

If you like tennis, you'll love "The Right Set"
Witty contemporary overview of Tennis icons

The Right Set: A Tennis Anthology
Caryl Phillips
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Anthologies | Genre Fiction | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0375706461
Release Date: 1999-07-27

Amazon.com

Divided into nine sections ("The Great Match," "The Old Guard," etc.), The Right Set moves easily down the line through time and culturally across court from the noblesse oblige of white flannels on green lawns to the smoldering tempers of Jimmy Connors, John McEnroe, and Venus Williams. In between, James Thurber volleys a smashing winner with his courtside observations of Suzanne Lenglen and Helen Wills; Ted Tingling waxes movingly on Bill Tilden; Grace Liechenstein celebrates Billie Jean King; and Arthur Ashe deftly takes apart his most formidable opponent--skin color--in "The Burden of Race." John McPhee's superb Levels of the Game--a book-length report on a match between the fluid Ashe and the mechanical Clark Graebner at Forest Hills--is happily excerpted twice.

If the pieces themselves range from the sparklingly witty (see Martin Amis's "Tennis Personalities," positively radioactive with observations like "Laver, Rosewall, Ashe: these were dynamic and exemplary figures; they didn't need 'personality' because they had character") to the curiously quaint (check out Wills's 1928 essay on etiquette), editor Phillips doesn't let his anthology cohere as a unit because he doesn't get in there and rally with it: first, his introduction is less sure-footed than Sampras on clay; second, he provides no context for the individual pieces or the writers who penned them. Which is too bad, because he's assembled a collection of tennis nonfiction that offers both power and touch--and an awful lot of memorable prose. --Jeff Silverman

Book Description

From stately lawns and gentlemen players to Andre Agassi and Venus Williams: 65 great writings on tennis that chronicle the transformation of the sport.

Since its inception, tennis has embraced traditions more patrician than plebeian. But times--and tennis--have changed. The game once reserved for royalty has moved from estate lawns to the concrete courts of the city. Old guard amateurs have given way to prodigies plastered with corporate logos. And while barriers of gender, race, and class have been shattered, the modern plagues of self-promotion, the paparazzi, and challengers of ever-escalating talent loom large.

In The Right Set, award-winning novelist and editor Caryl Phillips presents a collection of writings on the remarkable evolution of a gentleman's pastime into a sport of jet-set players of athletic and psychological genius. Here are the stories of champions, from the Renshaw twins to "ghetto Cinderella" Venus Williams. Here, too, are volleys between tradition and innovation--debates on everything from etiquette and earnings to André Agassi's rejection of the customary tennis whites. Insightful, informative, wonderfully entertaining, The Right Set is as colorful and surprising as the game itself.

John McPhee on Ashe vs. Graebner
David Higdon on Venus Williams
James Thurber on Helen Wills
Martina Navratilova on Bad Losers
Martin Amis on Smashing the Rackets
and more

Customer Reviews:

If you like tennis, you'll love "The Right Set".......2002-12-20

"The Right Set" is the tennis equivalent of "The Best Sports Stories" annual series except that it contains 44 great pieces written in the past 75 years.
My favorites are "Ladies of the Evening" by Martina Navratilova, "Tennis Personalities" by Martin Amis, "The Davis Cup" by Arthur Ashe, "Tilden: The American Mountain" by Ted Tinling, and "Becker" by Gordon Burn.
Since virtually every great player and important issue are
covered, I suggest you read a story or two a day to extend your reading pleasure.
If you like tennis, you'll love this treasure of a book.

Witty contemporary overview of Tennis icons.......1999-06-15

My wife loves for and lives for tennis. That's why, when I give her this book for her birthday in three weeks, she will have an even better insight into the soul of her well-known tennis heroes and heroines. This compilation is a bright, insightful commentary of the state to Tennis today; its nine sections involve description of virtually all facets of the game, including tradition, history, personalities, etc. I know of no other recent publication that one can read and leave with the smug satisfaction that comes with "expert-level" knowledge. You may not exactly qualilfy for being a ref at Wimbledon after reading The Right Set, but you will feel as if you could.

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Authors

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