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Canada has had a bumper crop of poet-novelist switch hitters: Margaret Atwood, Robert Kroetsch, Anne Michaels, Michael Ondaatje. Their novels are sure to dazzle with their language, but some readers may lower their expectations of plot and character. Similarly, Cohen the poet will snare you with his introverted, confessional prose, so easily lent to the aphorism. "Grief makes us precise." "What is most original in a man's nature is often that which is most desperate." "I am not enjoying sunsets, then for whom do they burn?" These dagger-like pensées, along with the sheer inscrutability of F., will sustain those readers who don't like sunshine (again, it's very claustrophobic inside this book), while plot purists may find the masturbatory plot, well, masturbatory. --Darryl Whetter --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
From Library Journal
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
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Most helpful customer reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
World of Beauty,
By
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.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Beautiful,
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.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Amazing to find this in print!,
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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