Beautiful Losers: Amazon.ca: Leonard Cohen: Books

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Customer Reviews

32 Reviews

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(5)
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Average Customer Review

4.3 out of 5 stars (32 customer reviews)

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars World of Beauty, Mar 4 2002

By

Sebastien Pharand (Orl�ans, Ontario, Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

This review is from: Beautiful Losers (Paperback)

Songwriter/singer/poet/novelist Leonard Cohen is a writer who, through the use of a few words alone, can send a thousand different emotions and images through your head. His writing is powerful and touching, though often too poetic. Beautiful Losers is, in fact, a poem disguised as a novel. It is a postmodernistic work of Canadian fiction that, although beautiful, refuses to make sense.

The story's nameless narrator is scarred by the death of his wife, Edith, and of his best friend, F. As the three were part of a very strange romantic triangle, the posthumous revelations the narrator comes to during the course of the story are highly revealing and often shocking. As he mourns his wife, he cannot hide the fact that he was also in love with F. and his strange view on life.

A historian in disguise, the narrator is also doing research on an Native saint named Catherine, who's story is an echo of the things the narrator has went through and is going through. As these four chracters entertwine, and as more and more painful secrets are revealed, we are forced into a chaotic world where sense does not exist, where order and sanity are always at stake.
A highly poetic effort, Beautiful Losers ins't a book that should be read quickly. Just like the prose, the reader should take his time while reading it. It's too easy to miss the great irony and humour behind all the darkness and sadness of the prose. Cohen created a world where surrealism, sexuality and violence are part of the ordinary, where order seems to fail with a shocking consistancy and where disorder seems to rule.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful, May 18 2001

By

Blahblahblah (Melbourne, Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Beautiful Losers (Paperback)

Beautiful Losers is really a poem disguised as a novel. The farther you get into the book, the more stream of consciousness it becomes. Basically, it is about a man who has suffered great loss finding redemption amidst the turmoil of 1960s Quebec. It also is the story about an indigenous woman obtaining sainthood during the turmoil of the age of exploration.

The only criticism I have ever heard when discussing this book with others is that it is vulgar (and only from one person), and he completely dismissed the whole book on this basis. That completely misses the point. It does get vulgar, but the novel is about ordinary people finding enlightenment within the physical world, with all its blood and detritous, and finding hope amongst suffering vs. going up into the mountains and seeking a guru or denying the body as evil like the Cathars. It is about the spirituality that can be found even in the physical world. As a result, if you read it in a bad mood, it may at first reinforce your mood, but it will ultimately pull you out the other end and help you get through.

The book is disturbing at times and requires careful reading, but it is ultimately beautiful.

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing to find this in print!, Aug 31 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Beautiful Losers (Paperback)

I read this book in the sixties during a painful, searching time in my youth. At the time, the book had a powerful formative effect. As I recall, it was extremely moving, but its most profound impact was not in the detail, but in a sort of metaphysical reaction to the story as a whole. As time past, and I thought I had learned all my lessons, "grown up," (though at times I would recall the character F as, like him, I would hum Great Pretender). So I really didn't give this sort of thing a thought any longer. But now, it seems to me again that Cohen has something to teach about the lessons that maybe I didn't actually complete as well as I thought. I would like to hear more about his life in his zen retreat. I'm glad this book is back.

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Most recent customer reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars leonard cohen
Written more like poetry then a novel, Beautiful Losers was for me a very good book but also not very easy to read. Read more

Published on Feb 2 2010 by tiziana

2.0 out of 5 stars I Love This Guy, but He Really Should Stick to Music
I bought this book out of reverence for the man who wrote Bird on a Wire and so much other incredible, passionate music. Read more

Published on Aug 23 2001 by TomTommyC