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Indlæser... The Regretsaf Amy Bonnaffons
   Ingen Der er ingen diskussionstråde på Snak om denne bog.   ) Kiramke | Jun 27, 2023 |   ) purplepaste | Feb 18, 2023 |  ) BibliophageOnCoffee | Aug 12, 2022 |  ) Lemeritus | Sep 5, 2021 | ) CarrieWuj | Oct 24, 2020 |
Just when you think there’s no new way to write about heartbreak, along comes Amy Bonnaffons with her smart, spooky debut novel “The Regrets,” in which a hip, single Brooklyn librarian falls for a sexy ghost.... By the time Rachel and the book reach their conclusions, some readers may long for a lengthier, more complicated story. Others may be satisfied with this one’s evanescence, its haunting irresolution a reminder of our fleeting time on Earth. There are a million ways that a novel about a woman engaged in a torrid sexual relationship with a ghost can go wrong, and not many ways it can go right. In the hands of another author, The Regrets could have become something like the movie Ghost as reimagined by Nicholas Sparks. But Bonnaffons resists sentimentality and treacly reflections on love — her novel is open-hearted, but never cloying or dewy-eyed. That's partly because she writes with a straight face, never indulging in whimsy and always taking her characters seriously. And the writing itself is flawless — it can be difficult to pull off a love story, especially when one of the lovers is a ghost, but Bonnaffons does so with confidence and real insight into what it means to be totally infatuated with another person.... The Regrets is a miracle of a love story, a brilliant novel that asks perceptive questions about the line between love and (literal) possession, about what we're willing to do for love, and what it feels like to be "photographic negative of a person, an absence given form, a loose ache of consciousness attached to a cheap facsimile of a body." In Amy Bonnaffons’ debut novel, The Regrets, death comes back to life. Thomas Barrett, who has just died in a motorcycle accident, returns to his old life in a vessel much like his living body. His mission is to create an “exit narrative,” which his life story lacked due to an accidental encounter with an angel of death when he was a boy. Once this exit narrative has been established, Thomas can move on to the afterlife, whatever that may be. The book however, unique in its creative rendering of a post-death experience, is not so much about death at all, but the idea of moving on from the past....The end of the novel leaves readers guessing. Loose ends flail and questions about Thomas’ exit narrative and his regrets remain. Bonnaffons has written a creative, high-concept narrative about relationships that never fully connect. In the end, however, everyone must move on. The tension of an ephemeral romance and impending loss will keep readers turning the pages, and the luminous prose is vibrant with penetrating observations, whether about moments that are a “crucial node in the universe’s vast plan” or about dying—with or without regrets. This sexy, witty novel about life, death, and love’s power will enchant readers. A surreal love story about the courtship between a living woman and a dead man... It is a plot that could be—that should be—unbearably twee, oppressively quirky, in love with its own melancholy. Instead, Bonnaffons’ (The Wrong Heaven, 2018) first full-length novel is a rare pleasure: a philosophical rom-com too weird, too bodily, too precise, too fun to get bogged down in trembling sentiment. Deep and deeply funny. DistinctionsNotable Lists
"Reality and dream collide in Amy Bonnaffons's dazzling, darkly playful debut novel about a love affair between the living and the dead. For weeks, Rachel has been noticing the same golden-haired young man sitting at her Brooklyn bus stop, staring off with a melancholy air. When, one day, she finally musters the courage to introduce herself, the chemistry between them is undeniable: Thomas is wise, witty, handsome, mysterious, clearly a kindred spirit. There's just one tiny problem: he's dead. Stuck in a surreal limbo governed by bureaucracy, Thomas is unable to 'cross over' to the afterlife until he completes a ninety-day stint on earth, during which time he is forbidden to get involved with a member of the living--lest he incur 'regrets.' When Thomas and Rachel break this rule, they unleash a cascade of bizarre, troubling consequences. Set in the hallucinatory borderland between life and death, The Regrets is a gloriously strange and breathtakingly sexy exploration of love--and jealousy, and heartbreak, and redemption. It's also the story about the cataclysmic force of fantasies, the way we use other people to escape ourselves, and the painful, exhilarating work of waking up to reality." -- No library descriptions found. |
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 Google Books — Indlæser...GenrerMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyLC-klassificeringVurderingGennemsnit: (3.14)
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