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cnidariar3x's review
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
eboweshulman's review
2.0
Reading the reviews made me feel like I missed something, but it fell flat for me.
alexowens's review
5.0
Stunning, sprawling and very beautiful! Some won’t like the pace but it’s a gorgeous study of characters and the time, of social interactions and circumstances. It’s very clear in the writing style that Schulman is, among other things, a playwright, and that honestly adds to the benefit and she is so able to weave the plot and dialogue into something so captivating. Definitely recommended for an intriguing, if slightly different and unexpected read.
raynerayne's review
5.0
"If there is one thing I have learned it's this: When you leave someone, you have to leave them with a place to go. If they have no place to go, they can't leave."
his_reidness's review
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
rpmirabella's review
5.0
I LOVED this book! So dramatic, so heart-wrenching and psychologically true. Schulman creates terrifyingly real human beings, capable of love and cruelty in equal measure. The novel is a page-turner, sneakily funny, torturous, and detailed about its time and place. I will treasure the time I spent with Bette and Earl, and give this novel as a gift to all my reader friends.
bwluvs2read's review
3.0
Schulman offers a stylistic and realistic look at New York City in the 1960s through the eyes of a single, independent woman who does her best to maintain the world as she has built it around her. The arrival of her young cousin from her home town throws her life into chaos. The characters are real and likable, facing real problems. The downside to this novel is that it moves EXTREMELY slowly. I had a very hard time staying engaged. The pace of the plot does accelerate towards the end, and the last chapter does offer some stunning insight, but honestly the last 3 chapters were not worth the battle to get there. Definitely for the adult reader.
meganmilks's review
5.0
This is one of the best novels I have ever read. Elegantly structured, it settles the reader in easy, then startles them continually with what both its characters and author are capable of; and is stylized as a novel of the late 50s, with a certain drollness and a number of winks to the contemporary moment. I am taken in by the novel's ethics, the way it teaches its readers, through its characters, how to be in relation to one another.
The central relationship, I should note, is a long friendship between a white cis straight woman and a black cis gay man; and Schulman is as attuned to the chasms between their points of view and experiences as she is to their comfortable overlaps, what they can and can't learn from one another, the limits to their exchange, the ways in which their different motivations and desires become incompatible and yet, potentially, traversable.
Schulman notes in her afterword that The Cosmopolitans is informed by Balzac's Cousin Bette and Baldwin's Another Country -- I also see James in here, specifically The Beast in the Jungle, which focuses on the relationship between a possibly closeted gay (or, in other interpretations, asexual) white man and a straight white woman, his lifelong companion. This narrative corrects James's withholding of May's point of view and imagines that such a relationship--one defined by nonsexual lifelong friendship--may be not a mask or pretense, but a valued, prioritized relationship, a space where truth can be found and honored.
The central relationship, I should note, is a long friendship between a white cis straight woman and a black cis gay man; and Schulman is as attuned to the chasms between their points of view and experiences as she is to their comfortable overlaps, what they can and can't learn from one another, the limits to their exchange, the ways in which their different motivations and desires become incompatible and yet, potentially, traversable.
Schulman notes in her afterword that The Cosmopolitans is informed by Balzac's Cousin Bette and Baldwin's Another Country -- I also see James in here, specifically The Beast in the Jungle, which focuses on the relationship between a possibly closeted gay (or, in other interpretations, asexual) white man and a straight white woman, his lifelong companion. This narrative corrects James's withholding of May's point of view and imagines that such a relationship--one defined by nonsexual lifelong friendship--may be not a mask or pretense, but a valued, prioritized relationship, a space where truth can be found and honored.