- Paperback: 243 pages
- Publisher: Grove Press (July 13 2010)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0802144950
- ISBN-13: 978-0802144959
- Product Dimensions: 20.8 x 13.7 x 2 cm
- Shipping Weight: 340 g
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #297,348 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4.5 out of 5 stars (10 customer reviews)
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
An astonishing book, July 6 2009
By Michael Ehringhaus - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Convalescent (Hardcover)
The Convalescent is an astonishing novel about small things, the events and people who, unnoticed, molt into the universe, right before our eyes. Jessica Anthony has given us a gift, a verdant, acutely smart, wickedly humorous novel, axenic and wise well beyond its pages. Rovar Pfliegman, the hero, loves without being loved, steals without repentance, and is, on first meeting, disgusting to all senses. However, his presence throughout the novel becomes etched into an enduring, joyful melancholy and onto the psyche we indite to protect the damaged little spiritus inhabiting each of our lives.It would be difficult for me to typecast The Convalescent. While it is not a novel for everyone, it is a novel about everyone. It draws its strength from the weakest among us, from the humid, at times fetid, Rovar and his small world flush with a dominion that become ours. In the end, there is an ecdysis, the shedding of ego, that internal diathesis, as Rovar's world, our world, emerges, sonorous and pure. Which is fine.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
I will never think about a mother's water breaking in the same way again, July 31 2009
By Matthew Coldwell "Mac" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Convalescent (Hardcover)
I love the world created in The Convalescent. Although I don't want to detract from the unique voice Jess Anthony has in this story by comparing her to a lot of other writers, I will say I wouldn't be surprised to see a Kilgore Trout or T.S. Garp standing in line to purchase some of Rovar's steaks. It is a world of melancholy, humor, and the sublime. And although I'm hardly a sickly midget of Hungarian descent, Rovar's world became my world while I was reading this. A pretty nifty trick.It is a difficult thing to create characters like Rovar or his giant counterpart and ancestor Szeretlek without taking advantage of the reader's emotions, but I never felt dirty or used by this story. Rovar through his observations and insight has a way of turning those who pity him within the story into condescending asses and ultimately the most pitiable characters in the book. I think it is partly this trait in Rovar that keeps you from following suit.
The intertwining of the modern age and the 12th century history and myth is seamless. At the same time this story recognizes its modern lineage (the second section of the novel is titled Metamorphosis, for example), there are echoes of the primal stories we have been telling since before Szeretlek's age. The troll under the bridge, the ugly duckling, the loosely defined boogeymen in black suits that lurk on our periphery are all invoked in this story. It is a modern folk tale as much as it is a modern novel.
The next time I read about a stuffy Nobel judge or some European critic decrying the pausity or decline of American literature and how it lacks nuance or sophistication, The Convalescent will be the middle finger I reply with.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Warmed my Eastern European soul>, July 12 2009
By J. F. Stafura "poetic badger" - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Convalescent (Hardcover)
An excellent book that uses two slices of time separated by 1000 years to show us that no matter how much our world has changed, we have remained emotionally fragile.The writing is excellent and elegant, and the character's more subtle actions were very familiar have grown up in a first generation Hungarian home. Jessica Anthony's history of the Magyar's travel from the Ural Steppes to Eastern Europe is one of my favorites, a literally magical journey.
If you like intelligently written books that use history and great language to tell us about ourselves through people that we could never imagine ourselves being The Convalescent is your kind of book.
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