- Paperback: 368 pages
- Publisher: Vintage; Vintage Contemporaries ed edition (May 26 1998)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0679768386
- ISBN-13: 978-0679768388
- Product Dimensions: 13.5 x 2.5 x 20.6 cm
- Shipping Weight: 308 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,918,496 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
Writer Philip Caputo masters here the difficult but powerful novella form--one that combines the economy and exactness of the short story with the momentum and weight of the novel--to create the three superb narratives that make up Exiles. The stories (titled "Standing In," "Paradise," and "In The Forest of the Laughing Elephant," and telling the stories of a barber in Connecticut, a shipwreck survivor on a wild Australian coast, and a squad of American soldiers in the Vietnamese jungle, respectively) are unrelated on the surface--but all three travel in a weird emotional terrain of alienation reminiscent of Flannery O'Connor.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
From Publishers Weekly
Despite an absorbing premise, multiple adventures at sea and ashore, and a succession of colorful characters, this account by Pulitzer Prize-winner Caputo (Rumors of War) of a nautical voyage from Maine to the tropics, and from innocence to disillusionment, lingers in the doldrums before acquiring the tragic velocity of its denouement. In 1901, in an apparently quixotic character-building exercise, "grim and intransigent" Boston Brahmin Cyrus Braithwaite banishes his three adolescent sons (16-year-old daredevil Nathaniel, sharp-tongued Eliot, 15, and rational but timid Andrew, 12) to sea for the summer in the family schooner, the Double EagleAwith food supplies, $30 and orders not to show their faces until September. When an old salt advises them, "Keep yer hawsers free fer runnin', yer eyes on the weathah, an' remember that any idjit kin crack it on but the wise man knaowsta shorten sail on time," however, it's obvious that their plan to try to emulate their father's early career as a wrecker will bring them all the disaster the sea can deliver. Storms, fog, sharks and alligators, encounters with unscrupulous people from every social strata and other misadventures all build toward the inevitable, presaged hurricane, two tragic deaths and the wreck of the Double Eagle. Once the long-awaited hurricane finally hits, off the coast of Cuba, Caputo generates real excitement and suspense as the romantic salvage venture concocted by the three boys and their Yale sidekick and crew member becomes a life-or-death test of character. But the chapters on the trip from Maine to the Florida Keys are thickly coated with local and historical color, including dialect-heavy oystermen and sponge-harvesters. The gothic subplot of Cyrus's motives and the Braithwaite family's secrets, played out against the Civil War's aftermath and the Spanish-American War, adds ballast on a vessel already laden with a heavy cargo of Original Sin, inherited character flaws, parents who destroy their children and the decline of America's "barons of mercantile aristocracy," whose guilty secrets haunt them down the generations. The concatenation of all these elements may daunt some readers; others will appreciate Captuo's meticulous research and his Conradian vision of America's past. 40,000 first printing; BOMC alternate. (Nov.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Worth every penny as an intro to a good writer,
By
This review is from: Exiles (Paperback)
I read this book about two years ago while sailing in and around Vancouver Island. The book made me forget that I was on such an adventure. "Standing In", the first of three novellas contained within, absorbed me and effected me so deeply that I can remember the exact feelings I felt at the various places on the boat. Buy the book for that story alone. Amazing. The others are good too, but do not compare with the first.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Good, very good and great.,
By A Customer
This review is from: Exiles (Hardcover)
This is a spectacular book. The opening novella is the weakest of the bunch, but is more than made up for by the other two. "Paradise," the second, is a perfectly told slice of mounting tension that lies somewhere between Robert Stone and Alex Garlard (closer to the former). Caputo nails the dialect and sense of place, amazingly so (having visited that part of the world, I'm particularly impressed). The final novella is a masterpiece, one of the best things written about the war in Vietnam, a dark vision that reads like a rollercoaster ride.
5.0 out of 5 stars
As good a book of short stories as any published last year,
By A Customer
This review is from: Exiles (Hardcover)
Caputo does not hesitate to write from anyone's point of view, or about any place, and his is a fullness of vision that seems in very short order in today's literary scene. These stories call upon an intimite knowledge of the kinds of human frailty and types of strength and ways we endure, and Caputo's portrayal of human beings pinned between the choices that harvest life or invite death will haunt even the most jaded reader. "In the Forest of the Laughing Elephant," especially, brings to mind both APOCALYPSE NOW and THE THINGS THEY CARRIED without seeming derivative of either of them, and can stand alongside any work about the madness of war, not just Vietnam. This is a book to read and be affected by--a reminder of why we ever decided to read in the first place.
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