A comic novel by the critically acclaimed author of Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World. Doug and 98 of his 99 brothers (George has run off with embezzled funds and a girl named Jane) gather in the huge family library for dinner, drinking, and some late-night football. Throughout the evening, the chaos grows into a complex web of conflicting memories, hurt feelings, rivalries, alliances, and shared awareness. 208 pp. Author tour. National publicity. Print ads. 20,000 print.
The Hundred Brothers: A Novel
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There are, as the title says, one hundred brothers in Donald Antrim's novel. This sprawling fraternity has gathered in the family library for a dinner and over the course of a few hours, the author serves up sibling rivalry, revelry, and mayhem in meticulous, unflappable style.
For the most part, The Hundred Brothers skates along on the strength of its comic ingenuity. Yet Antrim has some serious points to make about masculine pride, vanity, and terror--not by invoking them directly, but by inflating them to monstrous (and mirthful) proportions. And the narrator's comments about his rampaging kin often have a larger, melancholic resonance to them. Indeed, when he points out "the complexities of our interdependence and the sorry indignities that pass as currency between us in lieu of gentler tender," he might be talking about any family--even one in the single-digit range.
From Library Journal
In this unconventional novel, 99 of 100 brothers meet in the decaying library of their deceased father's estate to locate and bury the old man's ashes. The brothers range in age from 25 to 93, and their idiosyncracies vary even more widely. Doug, the narrator and family genealogist, navigates the winding road of relations, as well as the labyrinthine stacks of the huge library, the organization of which would send Dewey spinning in his casket. Antrim (Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World, LJ 9/15/93) crafts a comic nightmare of a family reunion, in which old hostilities renew themselves, cliques form and disintegrate with lightning speed, and the lines for the bar and buffet are so alarmingly long it's difficult to get a drink, let alone dinner. The search for the missing urn functions as a device to showcase Doug's delusions of his father's ghost, his (well-founded) fears about his character and worth, and his desire to share with his brothers the true meaning of dread?a favor they happily return. Recommended.?Adam Mazmanian, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
Format:Paperback
Most reviewers seem to focus on whether or not this book exemplifies post-modernism and whether or not that's good or bad. Unfortunately, I've never been able to figure out what postmodernism is, so I can't help ya there.
All I know is Pynchon and Delillo just confuse me, Vollman makes me laugh but I can't figure out what the hell he's driving at, but Antrim just makes me feel good all over.
Maybe it's the way he introduces all 100 brothers, in order, in about 5 pages, and then blithely writes the rest of the book as if you're going to remember who they all are. Which is a good hook, because, who hasn't been to a social function where you get introduced to a few dozen people within 5 minutes, after which you're supposed to remember everybody?
Maybe I just identify with the hapless, socially retarded dope of a narrator who just wants everyone to get along but ends up, well, no spoilers, in a unique and singularly undignified situation.
But it's not simplistic comedy - it's a bit like one of those Borges stories where you think, "ok, this is gonna be a quick read, only 12 pages" and then you find it takes a good 2 hours to make a bit of sense of it.
Well, you could compare it to a lot of things, but that wouldn't do it justice, because the best part is, it just ain't quite like anything you've read before.
By anonymous
Format:Paperback
I've already written a review for this novel. Please delete this review.
By anonymous
Format:Paperback
In the course of one evening, 100 brothers--ranging in ages but all born on the twenty-third of May--congregate at their dilapidated family library for drinks, dinner, and plenty of good ol' fraternal mayhem--not to mention the ritual Dance of the Corn King. Within this frenzy is narrator Doug, a not-yet recovering alcoholic and genealogist, with a skewed and strangely odd (though the dichotomy of the absurdly surreal with the all too familiar is a bit astonishing) perspective of the night's events.
Doug is no innocent amid his brothers, who range in careers from pschoanalysts to tripping tropical botonists. The fact that the narration comes from one just as sick and perverted as the rest of the crowd guarantees plenty of hilarity throughout the entire novel, enough to cause even the stodgiest reader a couple of unexpected laughs.
This novel confirms my belief that Donald Antrim is one of the most keenly intelligent writers of contemporary fiction. His acute observations of modern life and hilarious perversions of reality are concurrently odd and fascinating. After reading "Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World," and now this, I am immensely looking forward to reading "The Verificationist." Antrim is one author to look out for.
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4.1 out of 5 stars
Most recent customer reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
100 Brothers is not better than 4
What do you do when you can not write in depth about a subject or at least you can not depend on language to carry your work? Read more
Published on Feb 20 2004 by Adam Hardin
5.0 out of 5 stars
Original
Donald Antrim is profoundly original, as he continues to take the novel to a new place in literature. Not always a easy read but always fun and full of insights. Read more
Published on Nov 23 2001 by Kim F. Hill
1.0 out of 5 stars
Post-modern trash
If this is what post-modern lit is all about, I'd rather be a pre-classicist. This book is essentially one big chapter about a hundred brothers reuniting for a dinner. Read more
Published on Oct 31 2001 by Sai Li
5.0 out of 5 stars
Antrim: Barthelme's Brother (?)
In the post colonial imagination, Donald Antrim's phenomologically astute and wonderfully presumptuous masterpiece, The Hundred Brothers, shifts the mode of discourse and the... Read more
Published on Sep 28 2001
5.0 out of 5 stars
Antrimites of World, Unite.
Of fraternity, perhaps familial goings-on, is theme of book, of "The Hundred Brothers," two possible thematic streams exploding from literary epicenter of Antrim's... Read more
Published on Nov 28 2000
4.0 out of 5 stars
A modern classic: Exaggeration causes comedy and horror.
"A collision between 'The Brothers Karamazov' and the Brothers Marx," as the publisher suggests? Read more
Published on July 16 1998
5.0 out of 5 stars
A New Star is Born.
Donald Antrim is perhaps the most unique and brilliant voice in surreal tragi-humor (if such a category does indeed exist). Read more
Published on Jun 8 1997
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