Reviews for A Glance Away

The average rating for A Glance Away based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-04-07 00:00:00 Rui Araujo When reviewing a book I try to keep myself out of the argument. The purpose is to reflect upon the work, to enter its world in its own style. It's a process that often clarifies issues and prioritises arguments for the reviewer as much as it helps inform the review's reader. Whether I liked or disliked the book in question is an opinion that's perhaps less than irrelevant, because it adds a double confusion. You, the reader, don't know the book, but then you know even less about me, so what price my humble, unexplained, unjustified recommendation? I used to work on a market stall. Alongside household cleaners and soap powder, the stall also offered kitchenware and fancy goods, items to be considered considerably less often than weekly. Running up to Christmas, we also carried large, high cost toys, such as board games, construction kits and the like. The stall's owner handled that end of the business, leaving the dealings in shoe polish, soap, bleach and toilet paper to his minions at the other end. The minions, incidentally, were his daughter and me. If a potential customer dithered over a purchase, the vendor's shock tactic was to offer the reassurance of solidarity. "We've used it" or "We have one at home" were the phrases he used. "And we are happy with it" then followed in judgment. Often - more often than not - the punter smiled, purchased and so profit was pocketed. But there was nothing cynical about this process. The stall-owner came weekly to each pitch. He would take things back if they were broken - but usually not if they were merely disliked. People didn't bring things back if that was the case, except, of course, to exchange. And, given his household's general pursuit of novelty, he probably had tried out the products in question, at least for a while. He had, personally, what twenty-first century capitalism calls a brand. He was a trusted face - not a name, because none of his customers knew anything other than his first name - and his recommendations carried the authority of that trust. He did good business and made a good living, his punters' trust being well-placed. But as an internet reviewer, what might my opinion be worth to a browsing punter? If a reader regularly follows my opinion, of course, then a pattern might emerge and some conclusion might be drawn. The chances are, however, that you are not that reader, that you have stumbled almost randomly upon my thoughts and thus what I say is potentially worthless. I present a double unknown, an unread book and an untried, untrusted opinion. I am prompted to reflect on the nature of the internet book review because I have just finished A Glance Away by John Edgar Wideman. It's a short book but far from succinct. The style is often sparse, its words deliberated over, even missing for effect, unsaid on behalf of communication. On the fly-sheet it's a novel at the front and, in a quoted review at the back, an autobiography. I too was confused. But not by the style… There's a family. There are brothers. With apparent prescience of some stylistic devices used later by Toni Morrison to both define and characterise a specifically black culture that is both part of but also separated from the general, John Edgar Wideman allows the reader into a family's passion, conflicts and confusion. The brothers live different lives, meet different people and aspire to different ideals. There may be reasons, explanations, but what people think is largely hidden by a profound opacity. Perhaps the characters themselves are confused. Perhaps that's also the point. As an experience, A Glance Away is a powerful, sometimes provocative novel. But its detail often reads as obfuscation, demanded by its lack of continuous thread. Perhaps it's a book to read again, its challenge not met by a punter who was unfamiliar with its brand.

Review # 2 was written on 2010-01-10 00:00:00 Jonathan Dorval A Glance Away by John Edgar Wideman was not a book I was at all engaged in, or liked very much. It was a book whose characters I cared not at all about, and actually found them pretty pathetic. It is a book that came out of the 60s and 70s, and though I like those eras, some of the literature featuring characters that cannot communicate or change and who make their own damn lives miserable just leaves me cold. This book features two characters, Eddie, who I have a bit more sympathy for, is a young black man back to his urban home from a rehab stint in the South. And while I could be OK with Eddie being an addict, his inability to deal with an overbearing mother, or even have the slightest ability to say one word that would make the situation better, just evokes nothing but contempt and derision from me, especially as he knows how he could make this situation and his life better. The other character is Robert, a middle-aged queen, a professor who has devolved into alcoholism and pretended literary aspirations. Really he does not write at all, is scared to go into his classroom and feels like life has taken a dump on him. Guess what Robert, THAT is life! Get over yourself and your little petty difficulties...they are not that overwhelming! They can be pretty easily solved, at least many of them. But he is just wallowing in self-pity for supposed injustices. There is a bit of plot where these two meet, but most of the book is examining the two psyches of the men. And quite frankly, neither psyche in very interesting. I am glad it was a short book.