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pizzamcpin3ppl3's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
inspiring
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
boreasword's review against another edition
4.0
A Joycian bildungsroman seeding stock for the Beats and other modern American authors. Rambling, stream of consciousness, coming of age in the South. A product of it's time, this is not PC. Some of the prose is Proustian--nostalgia of youth and ponderance of life and death.
alisonjfields's review against another edition
3.0
Someone in one of the reviews on this page remarks that this book hasn't aged well. That may be true, though, to my mind, it doesn't seem anymore antiquated than most of its peers. What's more true is that this book hasn't aged well for me, personally. I read it when I was fifteen, a high school student in Asheville, living a couple of miles, as the crow flies from Wolfe's Old Kentucky Home. Which is sort of surreal experience. My neighborhood was referenced in the book (albeit by a different name) and I had a very keen sense of the geography. In 1991, downtown Asheville was still early in the process of revitalization that would turn a city largely unchanged from 1931 into the uber-trendy resort town it since become (and I hardly recognize). I'd spent hours of my childhood sitting on the porch of the Wolfe House, while my mother sketched its windows from the bench on the sidewalk out front. I knew the ladies that ran the museum and I went through the house so many time I could draw you a map from memory. When you're from Asheville and have even the most remote literary aspirations, it is assumed that you will get around to reading Wolfe, specifically "Angel." And it will mean something to you. Just as it is assumed that you may get to a point when you can't go home again either.
At fifteen, I thought this book was brilliant and meaningful, an assumption helped by the fact that the first love of my life also loved this book. At thirty-three, I think "Look Homeward Angel" is a little purple, definitely overwrought and should have been cut by half in its current form. But "Angel" is definitely a young person's book. And I almost think the very things I find most taxing about it now are the things I loved the most about it when I was a kid.
At fifteen, I thought this book was brilliant and meaningful, an assumption helped by the fact that the first love of my life also loved this book. At thirty-three, I think "Look Homeward Angel" is a little purple, definitely overwrought and should have been cut by half in its current form. But "Angel" is definitely a young person's book. And I almost think the very things I find most taxing about it now are the things I loved the most about it when I was a kid.
annaha99's review against another edition
challenging
dark
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
Content Warnings
Moderate: Racial slurs
bccoulter's review against another edition
2.0
Not my cuppa tea. Like Faulkner and Kafka, both of whom I love, Wolfe's writes from within the narrator's real time experience of the events, which can be both disorienting and fascinating. Unlike others, Wolfe writes as if he is getting paid by the word. Some sentences are so packed w/ verbiage, they are literally incomprehensible.
Vivid character development and sense of time and place - good as they were - didn't compensate for me for the tedium.
Vivid character development and sense of time and place - good as they were - didn't compensate for me for the tedium.
ariskat's review against another edition
inspiring
reflective
medium-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
4.0
jdn_in_sat's review against another edition
2.0
While I didn't read this in long sittings, I don't think I would have wanted to. It turned out to be more of a slog than I anticipated. Some interesting moments, but over all just not what I'd hoped for.
expatally's review against another edition
4.0
I can't remember how I stumbled onto this book, but I'm so glad I did, mammoth though it was. Beautiful, poetic, Wolfe managed to make me fall in love with his unloveable characters.
dooo's review against another edition
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75