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Indlæser... The Tattoo Artist: A Novel (udgave 2006)af Jill Ciment
Work InformationThe Tattoo Artist: A Novel af Jill Ciment
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Bliv medlem af LibraryThing for at finde ud af, om du vil kunne lide denne bog. Der er ingen diskussionstråde på Snak om denne bog. I ended up liking the main character and feeling sympathetic towards her and Phillip even though they were both horribly arrogant and well, I don't think anyone really liked Phillip except for Sara and I think even she was having her doubts. What bothered me though was the way they got their tattoos and how they got stuck on the island. I don't know, it just didn't fit to me. Why would anyone force something sacred, not something done in hate, onto a couple foreigners that damn near destroyed your village and killed your granddaughter? The book itself is short, an easy long weekend read. After an interminably slow set-up, this amazing novel moves into high gear for its second half and never thereafter loosens its grip on the reader. Because Ciment uses a first-person flashback narrative, the reader knows going in that the protagonist, Sara Ehrenreich, is a woman returning to 1970s New York after a 30-year involuntary sojourn on a remote Pacific island, and that her body is now covered in elaborate tattoos. Just how this all came about and what it says about Sara in particular, art in general, and the care and feeding of the human soul overall, makes up the rest of the book. When we first meet Sara Rabinowitz, she is one of the numberless, faceless seamstresses in New York’s garment district, the daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants and a budding Socialist who falls into a sexual relationship with Philip Ehrenreich, whose talents in the bedroom far exceed his artistic ambitions. The slow building of this relationship and the circumstances that drive them to an ill-starred journey to collect Polynesian ceremonial masks on behalf of a collector form the first half of the book. Teasing flash-forwards from Sara may be the only thing that can drag the reader through this tedious set-up, but the slog is rewarded when the pair finally reaches the island of Ta’un’uu. Their expectations are shattered when, instead of finding naïve and simple natives eager to trade primitive art for New World trinkets, they find themselves immersed in a culture as alien, detailed, and potentially dangerous as any science-fiction construct ever developed. Their rookie mistakes and unwillingness to adapt to the circumstances they find lead to a tragic accident with horrific ramifications. Sara’s initially reluctant entry into the society within which she and Philip are now irrevocably marooned undergoes a change as deep and permanent as the tattoos which lead her to literally embody the island notion of breath as soul, music as life, and art as an indelible component of both. Utterly unique in concept, this is a journey through time, space, and being itself. For 224 pages, the author does a good job navigating such starkly different worlds but I would say the premise would be better suited in a book of 800 pages or more; I wished to go deeper into the 30 years that molded Sara into an elder on the Ta'un'uu island, wanted to delve more into the concept of "what is home" and yet, unfortunately, 224 pages can only afford so much. Beautiful premise, which left me wanting more. Solid 3.5 ingen anmeldelser | tilføj en anmeldelse
In 1970, Sara Ehrenreich boards a small plane and returns to New York City with much fanfare; she will be featured in Life magazine. She has not left Ta'un'uu–the South Seas island upon which she and her husband, Philip, were marooned during a storm–in more than thirty years. Sara doesn’t know that man has landed on the moon. She has never seen a ballpoint pen. Her body is covered, head to toe, in tattoos. Flashback: it’s 1918 and Sara, a shop girl and aspiring artist, meets Philip, a wealthy member of the avant-garde elite. The two fall in love, marry, and collaborate to make art, surrounded by socialites and revolutionaries–until the Depression cripples not just Sara and Philip, but most of their patrons. When Philip is offered a job gathering masks from the South Seas, they jump at a chance to escape America’s sorrows, traveling to Ta’un’uu for what they think will be a week’s stay. The rest is history–a history Sara records on her skin through the traditional tattoos that become her masterpiece and provide an accounting of her days. Narrated in vivid and starkly moving prose, The Tattoo Artist reminds us of the unforeseeable forces that shape each human life. No library descriptions found. |
Forfatter-snakJill Ciment chatted with LibraryThing members from Aug 15, 2009 to Sep 1, 2009. Read the chat. Current DiscussionsIngenPopulære omslag
Google Books — Indlæser... GenrerMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC-klassificeringVurderingGennemsnit:
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This is an interesting and touching story, A unique one as well. The author uses descriptive language without getting flowery. I flowed with the main character's emotions. While it didn't make a huge impression on me I found it a gently satisfying story. ( )