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pollyched's review against another edition
4.0
It’s a bit slow at times, but ultimately, excellent. It’s funny and upsettingly timely (it’s basically about climate change). Peter is not a hugely realistic protagonist, but I think that’s part of his charm, he’s idealised but also so far from perfect, a sort of extreme version of lots of very pretentious teenagers.
franalibi's review
4.0
This is the last of the Penguin Women Writers novels I have read and none of them disappointed!
Birds of America in particular is a coming of age novel about a teenager called Peter who starts off going back to Rocky Port with his mother, and seeing societal changes in their absence. From the death of a Great Horned Owl to falling demand for kitchen utensils... Peter then goes to Paris for further study to avoid being drafted into the Vietnamese war.
McCarthy uses Peter as a tool for showing political and social issues of the 1970s. He is naive, innocent and above all introverted. But his views are strong, and I think they represent what the author thinks.
I thought this novel would be a little boring, but it wasn’t. It’s written in such a way that you see the issues highlighted through every day events like at a dinner party, through the means of looking at art and even the struggle of trying to get bean pots...
Birds of America in particular is a coming of age novel about a teenager called Peter who starts off going back to Rocky Port with his mother, and seeing societal changes in their absence. From the death of a Great Horned Owl to falling demand for kitchen utensils... Peter then goes to Paris for further study to avoid being drafted into the Vietnamese war.
McCarthy uses Peter as a tool for showing political and social issues of the 1970s. He is naive, innocent and above all introverted. But his views are strong, and I think they represent what the author thinks.
I thought this novel would be a little boring, but it wasn’t. It’s written in such a way that you see the issues highlighted through every day events like at a dinner party, through the means of looking at art and even the struggle of trying to get bean pots...
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