Shadow Country
By
Matthiessen, Peter
- Download the Free Excerpt » (Requires MobiPocket Reader)
| Price: | $16.00 |
| Rating: |
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| Categories: | General Fiction |
| ISBN: | 9781588368249 |
| Publisher: | Random House, Inc., Random House Publishing Group |
| Language: | English |
Summary
Peter Matthiessens great American epicKilling Mister Watson, Lost Mans River, and Bone by Bonewas conceived as one vast mysterious novel, but because of its length it was originally broken up into three books. In this bold new rendering, Matthiessen has cut nearly a third of the overall text and collapsed the time frame while deepening the insights and motivations of his characters with brilliant rewriting throughout. In Shadow Country, he has marvelously distilled a monumental work, realizing his original vision. Continue reading...
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Helpful Customer Reviews
Shadow Country
Martin (San Pedro, CA)
Mon Nov 09 2009 19:00
I'm just a bit up and down on this one, ending to the 'up' of middle.
The author's approach is to describe one fictonal EJ Watson's life from several perspecties, essentially written in three sections. They were originally three seperate books, and combined/sshirtened into this form. Th...more...
Bookmarks Magazine (The United States)
Thu Jan 08 2009 07:57
Critics described the three stand-alone Watson novels as magnificent epics, and Shadow Country, a seamless weaving and slimming down of these works, as a masterpiece. As in all his writing, Matthiessen offers a beautiful homage to place—the raw, untamed Everglades of the late 19th century—while ...more...
Michael (Minneapolis, MN)
Thu Nov 19 2009 18:39
First let me say that this is an extraordinary book. The writing is masterful. The characters are colorful and the sense of who they are is right on. This book is a collection of first person vignettes about the legend of a person named E.J. Watson who settled along the southern gulf coast of Florid...more...
Ryan (The United States)
Wed Mar 18 2009 10:59
This is the fiction National Book Award winner for this year. Though daunting in size, this book is thoroughly enjoyable and readable. The setting is unique--backcountry Everglades farm communities around the turn of the 20th century. It's a long one (~800 pgs), and I just finished "book one...more...
Bill (Raleigh, NC)
Mon May 25 2009 23:23
This is a work of historical fiction about the life and death of an actual figure, E.J. Watson, who was killed by an angry mob in the Florida Everglades in October of 1910. Epic in nature, the novel covers the time period of the reconstruction through the great depression. Readers will be ...more...
Dubin (Brooklyn, NY)
Wed May 27 2009 09:28
Really interesting read, but I wish I had read it as three books instead of one collected book.
The gimmick of the book is that it essentially retells the same story three times, the life and death of real-life Florida sugar-baron E.J. Watson.
The first book tells the story f...more...
Blake (Carrboro, NC)
Wed Jan 21 2009 15:16
I am usually not a fan of National Book Award winners. And after reading Marilynne Robinson's "Home," I didn't think anything could top it. But they got it right this year. Matthiessen's trilogy is a book that (if I know anything about myself) will haunt me for a long time. It is one of th...more...
Kathy (San Francisco, CA)
Sun Mar 01 2009 14:04
I really loved this book. I didn't know anything about the Watson legend before I started reading it, but it didn't matter. It's formatted as a trilogy so you hear mostly the same story from different points of view -- when I say it like that it sounds repetitive, but Matthiessen did a good job of ...more...
Tim (Lincoln, NE)
Fri Jan 23 2009 21:35
"Shadow Country" is one of those books I describe as "nearly great." (For our purposes here, that would translate to 4.5 stars if the rating system allowed). I owned the first book in the original trilogy that this book distills/subtracts from/adds upon, but never read it. I susp...more...
Dad (The United States)
Sat Dec 20 2008 08:48
Shadow Country won the National Book award this year, but I don't think it should have. The book is a rewrite of three novels Matthiessen published about 30 years ago. He claims he dropped about 400 pages from the original, but in my mind 400 was not enough. The book could easily have been abo...more...
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