Most helpful customer reviews
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Arguably Raymond Chandler's best novel., Jul 1 2004
The Long Goodbye is a novel with lots of meat on its bones. The plot is engaging and complex, the characters are all extremely colorful, the dialogue is superb and the descriptive passages are in a league of their own. Chandler also provides us with an abundance of social commentary while exploring a number of important themes.
One of these themes is the nature of friendship. At the start of the book, Philip Marlowe, a well established literary character notorious for being a cynical loner, finds a friend. The friend's name is Terry Lennox and he's what could be described as a lovable lush. When Terry confesses to committing a brutal crime, Marlowe is unable to believe his friend could ever be capable of such a thing and, against all odds, looks to vindicate him.
Along the way, Marlowe meets Eileen and Roger Wade, an unhappily married couple who belong to roughly the same privileged social circle as Terry. A fabulously successful writer of romance novels, Roger is also a tormented alcoholic. A good deal of the book is concerned with examining the Wades' dysfunctional marriage.
This is a wonderful book, full of insight and bursting with humanity. It is a marvelous showcase for Raymond Chandler at the height of his literary powers. Highly recommended.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Complex noir book by genre master, Jan 16 2004
"The Long Goodbye" is unlike most of Chandler's other novels. It's longer. It's loaded with more description, internal life, and character investigation. Its plot -- though seeming more random -- is actually tighter and more pointed than his earlier work. In some ways it's more ambituous and revealing than his other work. In other ways, it contradicts his earlier writing style. But no matter how you look at it...it's awesome.There are a couple of things I've always admired in Chandler. First, he conveys everything in scene. After an obligatory physical description, everybody is characterized through dialog or action. As a result, the plot flies by, and we are treated to a very concrete, participatory read. Second, Philip Marlowe tells us almost nothing about himself or his background or even what he's thinking, but we know him better than we know ourselves, thanks to the gritty voice, the nature of his observations, and the conclusions he makes about his world. "Goodbye" does these things, but slides more towards self-introspection. There are lengthy passages where Marlowe spends time by himself. These passages could seem awkward to the die-hard hardboiled detective fan, but they work. They also show Chandler's writing ability. In "Goodbye," a writer of popular novels plays a prominent role. Roger Wade writes romance best-sellers; he despises his own genre novels and aspires to write more literary fiction. As a reader of "Goodbye," it's easy to see the paralells between Wade and Chandler, and "Goodbye" seems to be an attempt to write something "literary." But based on the success of "Goodbye" on its literary merits, it's evident that Chandler wrote the hardboiled dectective novels because he wanted to; not because he couldn't do anything else.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Philip Marlowe . . and 'all my children.', Aug 19 2003
Certainly The Long Goodbye is one of the top ten mysteries written, maybe even the top three. It has that tremendous yet subtle notion of pathos, loyalty, the purity of truth, (perhaps uniqely American) 'stick-to-it-iveness' or relentlessness, and a gritty, scarred, hero.And certainly Marlowe is the father of a whole bunch of bastard children. Spenser, the oldest, his brother Dave Robicheaux, the darker cousins Lucas (Davenport) and no, not Elvis but Joe Pike. Juxtapose that against the beauty and insight of Chandler's writing, his voice resonating with the truth about, say relationships. He writes about the war-hero, shattered after the trauma of death, through the words of his wife: "I love my husband. Not as a young girl. That's passed. That man I loved then died in the war. But I love him." The names and notions intertwine. Marlowe's loyalty to Terry Lennox is the stuff of The Knights of the Realm. The women are tough and knowledgeable. The time is past. Or is it? Top shelf writing from a man who wrote little but said a lot.
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