The Everlasting Story of Nory: Amazon.de: Nicholson Baker: Englische Bücher

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Sex and the adult cerebellum have tended to be Nicholson Baker's cherished subjects, and not necessarily in that order. In The Everlasting Story of Nory, however, he turns his literary microscopy in an entirely new direction, exploring the consciousness of a child. Nory, we are told, "was a nine-year-old girl from America with straight brown bangs and brown eyes. She was interested in dentistry or being a paper engineer when she grew up." This future dentist or paper engineer is also ensconced for a year in the English town of Threll, where her family is taking a sabbatical from life in Palo Alto.

Baker's novel is endearing, entertaining, and most of all, accurate. The author recognizes that an authentic nine-year-old is incapable of long, intricate narratives, so he divides Nory's story into short (and comically abrupt) chapters. He never credits Nory with precocious wisdom or insight. Instead, Baker concentrates on exactly how a nine-year-old mind works. There is, for instance, that wonderful literalism, which subjects a cliché to strict, heartbreaking scrutiny: "Nory suspected that the straw that broke the camel's back was an unsensible idea anyway, because first of all, stop and think of that poor camel. How could it happen? Doesn't he have something to say about the situation? Also, camels' backs are pretty strong things. If you've ridden on them, you know that they can support at least two people, if not three."

Nory slowly makes friends at school, where she's exposed to the usual level of childish cruelty. She fills us in on her family and plays with her kid brother, Frank (a.k.a. Littleguy). And for a large portion of the book she regales us with stories, which are short on narrative logic and long on amusing malapropisms. But this compulsive teller of tales worries about how to keep her material straight in her head: "You live your life always in the present. And even in the present, this day, dozens and hundreds of tiny things happen, so many that by the end of the day you can't make a list of them. You lose track of them unless something reminds you." No Nicholson Baker fan can read that rather touching thought without thinking of The Mezzanine and Room Temperature--novels in which the author seemed intent on recording precisely those "dozens and hundreds" of minuscule events. The Everlasting Story of Nory, then, is partially a meditation on what lasts, and what doesn't. "You can't mummify a nice memory in someone's head," Nory announces. You can, however, keep one alive, as Baker has done in this deeply charming and delightful book. --James Marcus -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe: Gebundene Ausgabe .

From Booklist

Readers familiar with Baker's earlier novels, especially The Fermata (1994) and Vox (1991), will expect another sexually daring tale, but Baker, ever wily, has veered away from adult erotica to beguile us with the inner life of a brisk-minded nine-year-old girl. Eleanor Winslow and her family have moved from the U.S. to England, and Nory, as Eleanor is called, is adapting to British nomenclature and school culture with extraordinary self-possession, good sense, imagination, and intelligence. She is, in short, a dream of a girl, and her lovely mind, as conveyed in Baker's impeccable and inventive prose, is a fanciful and entertaining place. Nory collects fans and rulers, wants to be a dentist, and loves to tell long, elaborate, intuitively wise stories about beetles, dragons, and little girls. She also believes ardently in justice and practices loving kindness spontaneously and courageously, deliberately befriending and steadfastly defending the girl everyone else picks on mercilessly at school. So perfect is Nory, she even finds her baby brother, Littleguy, amusing, as will readers, who will also laugh at Nory's hilarious tangles of thought regarding Achilles and his heel and Shakespeare and his name. Baker, a father in real life, likes nothing better than giving his readers a thrill, even one with a PG rating. Clearly smitten with his young heroine, he wants us all to bask in her glow, and we do, although his portrait of a sunny young girl reminds one of how much dumber and duller we become as we bow to the pressures of adulthood. Donna Seaman -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe: Gebundene Ausgabe .

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Kept waiting for plot. 7. Juli 1999

Von Ein Kunde

Format:Taschenbuch

Although this author did a great job of writing from the young girls perspective, a plot would have made the book much more fun. Still, the book was time well spent and many of the random thoughts going through Nory's head were amusing. I look forward to reading some more of his work.

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it was kewl! 11. Juni 1999

Von Ein Kunde

Format:Taschenbuch

"The Everlasting Story Of Nory" In the novel, The Everlasting Story Of Nory, Nicholson Baker tells you the many different stories of the life of an eleven year old girl named Nory. The novel is fiction but in some scenes it seems as if it were not a story that was made up out of a person's imagination. There are many scenes where the young girl, Nory, talks about what she wants to do when she grew old. At an early age she decided that she wanted to become either an orthodontist or a popup book producer. She chose these because she loved the many different designs on her friends' retainers and she really liked to read and make her own popup books. At about the age of 9 her parents decided to move to England and she then thought if she did become an orthodontist she would make a fortune because of many of the people having horrible teeth. As she attended school in England she met a young girl who was very nice but nobody seemed to be very fond of her. For some unapparent reason the young girl, Pamela, was always picked on by her fellow classmates. Later in the novel the other people in Nory's grade level, who were about the same age as her told her not to be friends with Pamela because she wouldn't be very popular if she did. But Nory ignored this and was brave even when she was picked on and she always stood up for Pamela. At the end of the novel we find out that people begin to accept Pamela as a normal human being and it wasn't a bad thing to be her friend. One of the main strengths of this book is that it uses a wide range of vocabulary that is not used in American English too commonly. Another strength of the book was how much detail the author went into when he spoke about how Nory would write stories and he would include them so you can see first hand how great of a writer she was. One passage that really stuck to me was when the two young girls were together at the end of the school year waiting for their parents to pick them up from school and Pamela handed Nory a note that said "thank you for being my friend"(p. 226). for some reason this made me feel like Nory really made a difference in the life of Pamela because without her she would probably have had to deal with many more bullies. I would recommend this book to practically anyone. It was a great novel and it was not too long. It was only 226 pages and it is really interesting so you will probably be hooked on it as I was. On a scale of 1 to 10 I would give this novel a 9.5.

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Almost as much fun as an actual 9 year old! 15. Juli 2000

Von Karen

Format:Taschenbuch

Nicholson Baker's literary abilities are praised all over the place - I'd like to praise his obvious parenting abilities. This book shows that he both remembers his own childhood and is paying intense, loving attention to his children. We get a great book - his kids get a great dad.

This book is insightful, brilliant, etc - it's also USEFUL if you have school age children in your life. When they can't talk yet, we know they're not rational; but it's so easy to forget that children look like they have a lot more figured out than they sometimes do. Hang out in the inside of Nory's mind for awhile, and remember how confusing and scary and wonderful and BIG the world was when you were small.

The book also presents a textbook example of parents allowing a child's good sense to guide her in a moral dilemma. Again, of course the literary value of the book is more important, but how fabulous to read a book with such a flawlessly moral tone as well.

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