A Map of the World: A Novel (Oprah's Book Club): Amazon.de: Jane Hamilton: Englische Bücher

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Oprah Book Club® Selection, December 1999: In A Map of the World, appearance overwhelms reality and communal hysteria threatens common sense. Howard and Alice Goodheart, the couple at the center of Jane Hamilton's 1994 novel, have labored mightily to create a pastoral paradise in a Wisconsin subdivision. Their 400-acre dairy farm is the last in Prairie Center, and they're working flat out to raise their two young girls in a traditionally bucolic manner. Yet paradoxically, they strike their neighbors as unacceptably modern, and have been treated as interlopers since the day of their arrival. Howard, in love with his vocation, chooses not to believe that they've been frozen out. But Alice, flinty and quick to judge, finds things harder. And her job as school nurse doesn't work wonders for her reputation either. Happily, there's one exception to this epidemic of unfriendliness: their closest neighbors. Theresa and Dan, who also have two young daughters, function as a virtual lifeline for the embattled family.

But in June 1990, whatever idyll the Goodhearts have worked for comes to a permanent end. On a beautiful morning--marred by her 5-year-old's tantrum but still recuperable--Alice looks forward to taking her children and Theresa's youngest for a swim. Distracted for several minutes, she has no idea that the 2-year-old is no longer in the house:

Lizzy had run to the pond and splashed in. It had felt good on her hot feet and she kept running and then she was pedaling and pedaling. She tried to grab hold of the water, pawing for the metal bar, a ladder rung, her mother, but there was nothing. She clutched and flailed.... She sank. The trout that Howard had stocked in the pond swam along through the dark water. They noticed Lizzy out of the corner of their eyes. They had inherited the knowledge of that look, and they knew it by heart.

This is only the first of Alice's body blows. Next, she's questioned about one of her students, a memorably bad seed. On the verge of collapse, she cries out, "I hurt everybody!"--which will later be construed as a confession. Charged with sexual abuse and unable to come up with $100,000 in bail, she is forced to await trial in jail.

Narrated first by Alice, then Howard, and then Alice again, A Map of the World moves from intimate domesticity to courtroom drama with grace and subtlety. Hamilton wrote her book when accusations of abuse in schools and day care were peaking, yet this is not a modish work or an "issue novel" but a lasting creation of several complex lives. At one point, fed up with civil mechanisms, Alice tells her lawyer: "'Let Oprah be the judge.... Let Robbie and me, Mrs. Mackessy, Howard, Theresa, Dan, Mrs. Glevitch--let all of us come before Oprah. Let the studio audience decide. They're nice suburban woman, many of them, dressed for a lark. They have common sense and speak their minds.'" Apparently La Winfrey was listening, since she chose this beautifully observed novel for her book club. --Kerry Fried -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verf�gbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.

From Library Journal

This second novel by Hamilton (The Book of Ruth, LJ 11/1/88) is a stunning exploration of how one careless moment can cause irrevocable and devastating change. Alice Goodwin is caring for her best friend's children when two-year-old Lizzy Collins wanders to the pond on the Goodwin farm and drowns. The consequences of this tragedy reverberate through a small Wisconsin community, which never accepted Howard and Alice Goodwin. Theresa Collins, bereft at losing a child and a dear friend, draws on her Catholic religion and finds forgiveness. Alice, immobilized by guilt and grief and unable to function as a wife or mother to her own two daughters, is charged with abusing children in her part-time job as a school nurse. Lizzy's death is ever present-especially in the bond growing between Theresa and Howard while Alice is in jail-and the pain of it is echoed in Alice's primary young accuser and in Alice as a child, drawing her own map of the world after her mother died. Reminiscent of Rosellen Brown's Tender Mercies (1978), this compelling, multilayered fiction belongs in all collections.
Michele Leber, Fairfax Cty. P.L., Va.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verf�gbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.

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Ein thematisch wichtiges Buch aber strukturelle Schwächen 18. M�rz 2002

Von tazi

Format:Taschenbuch

Das Buch ist durchaus lesenswert und schneidet zwei wichtige Themen an: der Tod eines Kindes und die damit verbundene Schuldfrage sowie das irrationale Verhalten einer Gesellschaft im Hinblick auf vermeintlichen Kindesmißbrauch. In letzterem Fall wird sehr deutlich gezeigt, wie intolerant und grausam die (amerikanische) Gesellschaft auf den Verdacht des Kindesmißbrauchs reagiert, der obwohl unbegründet dazu führt, dass die Existenz der fälschlich Angeklagten und ihrer gesamten Familie zerstört wird und sie sich in der Anonymität einer anderen Stadt eine neue Lebensgrundlage aufbauen müssen. Sehr eindrücklich wird auch darauf hingewiesen, wie unqualifizierte Sozialarbeiter bzw. Psychologen Kleinkindern sexuellen Mißbrauch durch Suggestivfragen einreden können bis diese selber daran glauben, was katastrophale Folgen haben kann.

Erzählt wird aus zwei wechselnden Perspektiven, d.h. die Erzählerstimme der Angeklagten Alice und ihres Mannes Howard.

Während man bei Alice stärker die Möglichkeit hat in ihre Gedankenwelt einzutauchen, bleibt ihr Mann Howard trotz des Mittelteils, indem seine Stimme die Geschichte weitererzählt, sehr schemenhaft und flach. Ich konnte mir nie so richtig einen Reim auf diesen Mann machen und der Versuch der Autorin mit einer männlichen Erzählstimme zu sprechen, erscheint mir persönlich als nicht geglückt.

Zuweilen liest sich das Buch auch sehr langatmig und man ist gelangweilt. Am interessantesten für mich war der letzte Teil des Buches: Alices Untersuchungshaft und ihre Erfahrungen im Gefängnis sowie der anschließende Gerichtsprozess.

Insbesondere anfangs habe ich mich gefragt, warum dieses Werk auf der Liste von Oprah Winfreys Buchempfehlungen auftaucht, weil es doch seine Durststrecken hat. Gegen Ende des Buches konnte ich mich eines leichten Verdachts nicht erwehren, als ich las, wie eine der Gefängnisinsassinnen in euphorischer Begeisterung von der Fernsehfigur Oprah Winfrey spricht, der selfmade woman, die es in der amerikanischen Gesellschaft bis an die Spitze gebracht hat und der Figur als leuchtendes ROLE MODEL, fast schon als weiblicher Messias, erscheint. Diese Lobhudelei ging mir etwas zu weit.

Summa summarum, aufgrund der heißen Eisen, die angeschnitten werden, sehr empfehlenswert zu lesen, aber man muß beim Lesen strukturelle Schwächen in Kauf nehmen.

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Very gripping and melancholic 25. Juli 2000

Von Kathrin Wood

Format:Taschenbuch

This book is a "must read" in many ways: It is wonderfully written, full of emotions and feelings but NOT one of those romantic pieces written for frustrated women! The way that the author presents different views by writing the book out of the eye of Alice first, of her husband Howard later and then back out of her eyes gives this story a certain energy and a very distinctive and psychologically interesting taste. It is a book about hopes and dreams, family and friendship, love and hate and most of all foregiveness. It really gripped me and made me see life from a different angle at least for a short time and I hope I will be able to remember the essence more often.

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Little 6 Year Old Rob is the Real Victim 3. Januar 2000

Von Mozella Rainwater Sunshine

Format:Gebundene Ausgabe

Review: A MAP of the WORLD for Amazon.com (2/2/00)

To this date, 2/2/00, I have read all the reviews and no one mentioned the fact that little six year old Rob Mackessy is the real victim in A MAP of the WORLD. More about Rob later.

Because A MAP of the WORLD was Oprah's Book Club choice for December, I thought it would be a zingingly-hot-page-turner. But I was disappointed for the first hundred pages. By that time, I had to keep reading to see if there was going to be a logical conclusion. The wordy style, was boring. Alice was stupid and weak. Howard robotic and out of touch with reality. However, after I put it down, I couldn't put it out of mind. In hindsight, I came to empathize with and appreciate Alice and Howard and the author as I would myself, my friends and my loved ones.

I realized that the reason the story at first appeared dull and boring is because it was so much like real life. In real life, most of us are just plain people doing all our regular run of the mill unexciting chores and jobs, existing from argument to love making to job to pay check to bills to obligations: washing dishes, watching the news, chauffeuring the kids to scout meetings, dance classes, etc.

No matter what ethnic background, education, social or financial position, we're all just plain, imperfect beings trying to make it through life the best way we can in an imperfect world where unimaginable things can and do happen to us. Any of us can be suddenly dragged into unexpected situations for which we have no experience or reference for understanding and dealing with intelligently and triumphantly. In such circumstances all anyone can do is to keep breathing and survive whatever the path and outcome happens to be.

While trying to find closure to a devastatingly sad tale, I wrote a poem, The Ballad of Alice Goodwin and sent it to Oprah's Book Club. And still I am rereading parts of the book and suffering with Alice, Howard, Theresa, Dan and little Rob, the saddest victim of all. Little six year old Rob, for whom his mother and her associates are turning into a criminal, a petty liar, deceiver or otherwise sleazy sort.

I recommend this book to anyone who wants to see how quiet, shy, non-publicity-seeking, common folk, the mind-their-own-business-type-folk, can wake up one day and find them selves the main news of the day accused of committing a crime.

I recommend this book to anyone who wants to view and learn vicariously from the painful experience of others. And then ask yourself and your friends, "What would you do in a similar situation?"

This story, A MAP of the WORLD is moving. Guaranteed to get into your heart and guts. To make you wonder and visualize what poor little Rob will grow up to be, the crimes he is likely to commit, the mental hospitals for the criminally insane that he is likely to spend time in. Given what he has seen, heard and otherwise experienced by age six, I would like to suggest that Jean Hamilton write a follow up on the outcome of this character.

A MAP of the WORLD stirs the emotions and teaches lots about life in the late twentieth century.

Yours truly, Mozella Rainwater Sunshine.

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