- Taschenbuch: 256 Seiten
- Verlag: Back Bay Books (19. September 2000)
- Sprache: Englisch
- ISBN-10: 0316782653
- ISBN-13: 978-0316782654
- Größe und/oder Gewicht: 14 x 1,9 x 21 cm
- Durchschnittliche Kundenbewertung: 3.7 von 5 Sternen Alle Rezensionen anzeigen (23 Kundenrezensionen)
- Amazon Bestseller-Rang: Nr. 1.308.264 in Englische Bücher (Siehe Top 100 in Englische Bücher)
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Reading The Dangerous Husband is like waking up to earthquake weather: Jane Shapiro's second novel exists in an atmosphere where something shattering is always about to happen. Its context is deceptive--New York in the '90s, a world of artists and writers (the narrator is a photographer), elegant dinner parties at chic apartments. But beneath the surface of this polished world there is trouble. Things are not quite right. For a start, the narrator's new husband, Dennis, cannot move two steps without tripping over himself. At one point he falls through a glass tabletop and almost maims his penis. He keeps an albino frog in a bucket in the basement. The frog floats there, colorless, a sign--but of what?
Shapiro is that rare breed: a truly funny writer who is also emotional and lyrical and deeply sad. Like Joy Williams, she seamlessly evokes a dark and unmistakable world. In The Dangerous Husband the narrator always feels like she is bluffing, playing the part of the wife, watching herself act the way a woman in love acts, wishing she could stop watching herself, wishing she could escape her acute and menacing self-consciousness. Shapiro describes loneliness in prose so precise it's breathtaking:
In loneliness, as we know, anyone who cares for you can become the object of a kind of vagrant love: dry cleaner, hair cutter, naturally any masseuse if you visit one; occasionally the doctor, always the nurse. If any of these evinces a bad attitude you can be crushed like a pip. Otherwise, depths of gratitude. The guy who fixes the frame of your eyeglasses (which you will have broken yourself, when you're lonely, by some method like forgetting they're in bed with you and fitfully rolling back and forth and crushing them in the night), this wonderful simple calm optician, holding up your own glasses in delicate fingers.As the story progresses, the narrator begins to fear her husband more and more, and fear isolates her further. While at times the plot edges into the implausible, Shapiro never lets it stay suspended there for long. Even when you can't believe her story, you trust her. By the book's end, I knew I would follow her anywhere. --Emily White -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verfügbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.
From Kirkus Reviews
Trading the Jersey suburbs of her acclaimed debut, After Moondog (1992), for the brownstones of Brooklyn, Shapiro outdoes herself to pull off an absorbing black comedy again featuring an excruciatingly muddled marriage. Here, though, as far as the bewildered bride is concerned, it's one that quickly winds up like being on death row with every appeal exhausted. When they meet at a Manhattan dinner party, the chemistry is perfect: she (nameless) is a lonely photographer struggling to make ends meet; he, Dennis, a recently fired sociologist now working on a novel, is lonely, toobut rich. So they move in together in his brownstone and soon marry. Her photographic chronicle of the early days shows the usual blissful postcoital images, but as weeks turn into months, bruises and bandages begin to appear on both of them, and the daily routine outside the frame increasingly comes to resemble a nightmare. More than clumsy, more than messy, more than weirdmore than terrifyingDennis's every movement leaves wreckage in its wake. In response, his spouse tries first to deny, then to cope, to no avail. When Dennis accidentally drops an iron skillet on her big toe, putting her on crutches and costing her an out-of-town photo assignment, she begins to think in terms of self-defense. By chance, she soon runs across a novelist moonlighting as a hit man, and makes arrangements to put Dennis out of her misery. She can't go through with it, though, and so runs away instead, taking his pet albino frog with her. Lonely again, she goes back home after a week, but matters get only worse: first, the frog, then the cat, then the dog meet untimely ends, and when Dennis breaks her arm she knows with chilling certainty that it's finally come down to her or him. Such goings-on have rarely been so outrageously, horribly funny and yet so eerily familiar: this is writing at its most nuanced and exquisite. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
-- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verfügbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.
In diesem Buch
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Einleitungssatz
We were introduced at one of those theatrical, poignant Manhattan Thanksgivings, a splendid party (singular guests, including small precocious chess-playing children and a cousin of Jim Jarmusch's; cornucopia of gourds wildflowers pouring down the center of the trestle table; old family silver bought at a yard sale in Maine) in the clever, threadbare Horatio Street home of our shared acquaintance Lydia, a magazine editor who bravely orchestrates holiday feasts for the friends who have become her family and always takes in strays: This guy and I were the strays. Lesen Sie die erste Seite
Buchdeckel | Copyright | Auszug | Rückseite
We were introduced at one of those theatrical, poignant Manhattan Thanksgivings, a splendid party (singular guests, including small precocious chess-playing children and a cousin of Jim Jarmusch's; cornucopia of gourds wildflowers pouring down the center of the trestle table; old family silver bought at a yard sale in Maine) in the clever, threadbare Horatio Street home of our shared acquaintance Lydia, a magazine editor who bravely orchestrates holiday feasts for the friends who have become her family and always takes in strays: This guy and I were the strays. Lesen Sie die erste Seite
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Kundenrezensionen
Die hilfreichsten Kundenrezensionen
Format:Gebundene Ausgabe
The protagonist's marriage starts out with the delicious, isn't-love-wonderful and didn't-we-invent-it? sensation so many of us will recognize from those early, giddiest moments of a new relationship. With stunning quickness and ferocity, the marriage begins a downward spiral that makes the unthinkable -- murder -- seem like a plausible way out. All these terrible things that happen: are they truly accidents, or are they intentional acts that look accidental? You begin to see how women who are highly educated and accomplished can feel hopeless and trapped in an abusive or bad relationship, and how "truth" can be so hard to discern in that setting. A dark, ambiguity-filled look at marriage and human behavior, leavened with enough wit and humor to keep you from dropping the book in despair.
Format:Gebundene Ausgabe
Love at first sight. The narrator (age 40) and Dennis (age 40). Wild days on the beach in Jamaica. Marriage. But it quietly becomes evident that Dennis is accident prone. Forever falling down, running into walls, spilling his coffee, dropping his food. By now the wife is included. A smashed and broken toe. A broken arm. Bruises all over. Friends stand at a distance and then disappear. Two pets are killed and a car demolished. The wife not only is disgusted, but becomes afraid of her life.
What is she to do? Get rid of him!
Hire a killer. Investigate poison. Buy a large hunting knife.
This book is not only extremely well written, but also full of imagination and with endless humor. A book one can truly enjoy.
Format:Gebundene Ausgabe
At first, I thought about giving up on the book. The relationship between the characters--particularly their sex life--seemed nothing but unpleasant. Toward the end, however, it became both funny and menacing, which I assume was the author's intent all along. This mood should have emerged earlier, however, to make some of the protagonist's decisions plausible. The degree of their isolation was difficult to believe, as well. Couldn't she just have gotten a job and made friends through it? That's what the rest of the world does, after all.
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Disappointed
I guess I just don't get it-I expected a black comedy, but all I read was simply black. I didn't find Shapiro's narrator either believable or likable. Lesen Sie weiter...
Veröffentlicht am 9. Mai 2000 von Jody M. Keene
Absolutely wonderful!
The very best book I've read in the past year. A wise and witty parable of what we all go through when we marry - the irritations, the compromises, the misunderstandings, the... Lesen Sie weiter...
Am 20. Januar 2000 veröffentlicht
Quirky, amusing, unusual read
I found The Dangerous Husband at the library. I finished it in a day, because I had to find out how she got out (if she got out) of the situation. Lesen Sie weiter...
Am 16. Januar 2000 veröffentlicht
A Witty and Mordant Triumph
The Dangerous Husband is one of the funniest books I've read in the last two weeks. Jane Shapiro has written an over-the-top look at one strange contemporary marriage in which we... Lesen Sie weiter...
Veröffentlicht am 11. Januar 2000 von Jonathan Harrington
High expectations, somewhat disappointed
After recently reading Shapiro's debut novel "After Moondog" I was eagerly anticipating a delightful read with "The Dangerous Husband". Lesen Sie weiter...
Am 6. Januar 2000 veröffentlicht
Is it possible that anyone could be that clumsy?
Dennis was one clumsy character. I'm surprised this man was still allowed to be in the free world! The Dangerous Husband is hilariously funny---she makes a serious situation, like... Lesen Sie weiter...
Veröffentlicht am 4. Januar 2000 von CoffeeGurl
How To Abuse Your Wife Without Even Trying
Author Shapiro presents a new kind of husband: the involuntary wife abuser. Dennis is so physically clumsy that he cannot help falling on top of, and dumping heavy objects on his... Lesen Sie weiter...
Veröffentlicht am 8. Dezember 1999 von Robert Derenthal
insightful, fun, and honest
Jane Shapiro's narrator consciously thinks the thoughts most of us bury under our acknowledged and publicly presented selves. The familiarity of the evil she represents shook me. Lesen Sie weiter...
Am 22. November 1999 veröffentlicht
Funny, tender and desperate: I loved it.
I'm usually a fan of heavier fiction, but "The Dangerous Husband" really works well as light black comedy. Lesen Sie weiter...
Am 19. November 1999 veröffentlicht
Sounds absurd, but I've been there. It's real!
I, too, had a relationship with someone who could not help but be clumsy and inept, although he tried his best. My situation was also pathetic, as was the heroine in this tale. Lesen Sie weiter...
Am 6. November 1999 veröffentlicht
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