- Paperback: 240 pages
- Publisher: Vintage (Mar 30 1999)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0679763759
- ISBN-13: 978-0679763758
- Product Dimensions: 13.3 x 1.3 x 20.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 272 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,015,657 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
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 --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Library Journal
Baker's Nory (Eleanor) Winslow is an imaginative nine-year-old American girl who is spending a school year in England with her family. Naturally, she attends a British school while there. Baker (The Fermata, LJ 1/94) follows Nory's trials and glories throughout the year, focusing entirely on the child's inner life and perspective on the new world around her. Often, her thoughts center on her friends, especially, one named Pamela who is being made the butt of a campaign of bullying and mental cruelty by her schoolmates. Nory bravely refuses to give in to pressure to be cruel to Pamela, even risking becoming unpopular herself. Unfortunately, Nory is a little too Shirley Temple-ishly good to be an entirely sympathetic character, and her family is utterly perfect. Furthermore, the stream-of-consciousness device of describing Nory's thoughts, while occasionally charming, becomes "everlastingly" tiresome. Not an essential purchase.?Kay Hogan, Univ. of Alabama Lib., Birmingham
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Most helpful customer reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
Indeed, Everlasting,
By
This review is from: The Everlasting Story of Nory: A Novel (Hardcover)
The everlasting story of Nory starts well. I was hooked to the first pages who offer something unique and different - a good look into the mind of a nine year old girl. It seems that all parents spend time in one stage or another discussing the issue of how their children think... here is a serious effort to answer this question. Although Nory seems at times like a too mature person (with too-good-to be true parents) who spends a lot of time dwelling about "heavy" issues (she is very concerned with the way Achilles mother held him while dipping his body into the river and not - as Nory thinks would have been better, by cradling him in her arms and stepping into the water with him), but also about subjects I am more familiar with from my kids such as problems with other children, nightmares and trying to be "a good girl". All in all Nicholson Baker does give us pretty good directions. However, once the thrill is over, and the appreciation to Nicholson Baker's genius (no sarcasam here) wears out, you are left with a somewhat tedious feeling. This happened to me around middle book where I realized this book is taking me forever to finish and I had to struggle through the rest of the book wishing that something would finally happen or that the book would end already. The story could have been interesting had it centered around Nory's social life at school and the many problems it presents - especially Nory's relations with Pamela, a very unpopular girl which Nory seems to like. These parts and the real life conflict they present are indeed interesting but the story is filled with the many stories Nory invents - which are, to say the truth, not so interesting for an adult. It is like the feeling you have after spending too much time with your kids... you do love them, but sometimes you crave for an adult conversation.
2.0 out of 5 stars
2 1/2* Too Long For Its Content,
By
This review is from: The Everlasting Story of Nory (Paperback)
Nicholson Baker is a very original writer, and he excels here at writing about a young girl's observations and fantasies in the third person. The main problem is that the myriad observations-- divided into 54 short excerpts-- fail to advance a plot, although we do get deeper into Nory's head. It just gets very tedious after awhile.I would recommend this as a book from which to read snippets, but Baker would have done better to write a shorter book, or to have some semblance of a plot. Although the style and characters are quite different, try "Zazie Dans Le Metro" for another, more interesting look at young female adolescense. It's offbeat and ultimately more satisfying.
5.0 out of 5 stars
the challenges of being 9 years old,
By Ellen Etc. (Northern California, USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Everlasting Story of Nory (Paperback)
Here's a challenge: write a book for adults about a 9-year old girl of medium intelligence who is happy, well-adjusted, and very creative, and make it interesting. This book is full of anecdotes in the stream-of-consciousness style of Nory, whose main problems are handling bad dreams, adjusting as an American child in an English school, missing her old best friends, and trying to figure out how to stop the bullying of one unfortunately scapegoated classmate. Baker tells Nory's stories as she tells them to herself, with the anachronisms that a creative young child would put in. It makes one wonder how life would have been different if we'd had better parenting.
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