In 1964, Berger gave us the wonderful gift of the novel "Little Big Man", wherein the 111-yr-old Jack Crabb begins telling us his life story, starting with how his family was killed by the Cheyenne while traveling across Nebraska. 35 years after "Little Big Man" was published, Berger gives us a ...
Smarter people than I have noted that the Captivity Narrative is America’s first indigenous literary genre. For what it’s worth (not much!) I happen to agree. Stories about white men, women, and children taken by the Indians have been told on these shores since long before the United States came ...
Berger chronicles small-town America of the 1930s in his narrative of the feud between the Beelers of Hornbeck and the Bullards of Milville. A major film based on "The Feud" is to be released in the autumn of 1989.
The time is the 1930s. Buddy Sandifer, dressed in his natty white flannels, baby-blue shirt, striped tie, tan-and-white shoes, and coconut-straw hat with polka-dot band, is falling into one of his moods. Owner of a used-car lot and father of a fifteen-year-old son with a penchant for sex manuals,...
Chuck Burgoyne is no ordinary houseguest. The Graveses (father Doug; wife Audrey; son Bobby; and daughter-in-law Lydia) have gotten used to his polite manners and gourmet breakfasts. But one morning at the Graveses' summer home, Chuck fails to appear. When Chuck finally does surface, he is no lo...
Suburban regular guy Earl Keese confronts the yawning pit of chaos in the persons of Harry and Ramona, a younger couple who have just moved into the only other house on their dead-end street. Literally overnight, Earl's painstakingly controlled world is turned upside down. Soon he is engaged in g...
Fed up with the sarcastic, opinionated, and disrespectful women he comes across, Ellery Pierce decides his only choice is to build the perfect woman. A technician at an animatronics firm, Ellery has the experience and tools ready at his fingertips. After years of experiments and fine-tuning, Elle...
It is the 21st century. In New York City the worst fears of future shock have become daily realities for its inhabitants. There are frequent pollution alerts and detention centres are located. Georgie Cornell goes to work in a white tailored blouse and pleated skirt. Only Georgie is a man.
The author of "Little Big Man" and "The Feud" here explores the shifting and elusive line between fantasy and reality.
When a mother and daughter--both paragons of virtue--are savagely killed in their home an investigative frenzy ensues. In traditional Berger style, what is a murder mystery on the surface reveals itself to be a tale of much deeper meaning. Here Berger takes on friendship, family loyalty, and the ...
I've found Berger's Reinhart novels to be a mixed bag. He was never able to match the quality of the best of them (the second novel, _Reinhart in Love_), and hit a particular low point with the third, _Vital Parts_. This novel, however, shows us a more mature Reinhart and a more mature Berger as ...
Fred Wagner, who longs to be a best-selling novelist, meanwhile earns his livelihood writing mail-order catalogue copy that hawks obscene beer mugs, ballpoint pens that double as flashlights, and calendars that not only identify National Scalp Care Week but also feature a special inspirational mes...
CRAZY IN BERLIN is the first novel in the saga of Carlo Reinhart. American literature has produced a number of flawed heroes, but none more memorable than Carlo.Reinhart is a young army medic, stationed in Germany during the early days of the Allied occupation. Large, generous, kind-hearted, he c...
The acclaimed author of Little Big Man is at his most unusual in this retelling of the Greek Oresteia trilogy through the lives of a seemingly ordinary small-town American family. When a returning WWII hero is murdered by his adulterous wife and her lover, his son Orrie slays them both in this da...
Given the current context, his addiction was as bad as ever, with food replacing the alcohol of civilization. It was all he could do not to puke again. But he forced himself not to do so, and thus established at least some difference between what he had been and what he was. Too much of another d...
“Shtreckfooss,” said he, clicked his heels, and raised and lowered Reinhart’s hand once only before dropping it. He wore an ankle-length white laboratory coat and stood in the foreground of a room full of rectangular devices along with vessels of glass. But nothing revolved or whirred; there were...
The late model Bentley that had previously occupied the lift had been lowered and temporarily abandoned, demonstrating the impracticality of the guys, for this car belonged to an independent client of theirs who paid them a king’s ransom for routine servicing, whereas they would get no fee from R...
His other works include Arthur Rex (1978), Neighbors (1980), and The Feud (1983), which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Berger was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, the son of Thomas Charles, a public school business manager, and Mildred (née Bubbe) Berger. Berger grew up in the town of Lockland, Ohi...
NOW WHEN WE LEFT SIR Launcelot he was living like a beast in the wild, and though he had lost his weapons and armor he was yet the most formidable man in the world, and when he was attacked by lions and boars and great serpents he destroyed them with his bare hands or he crushed them with great t...
Absolutely inexcusable,” said Splendor Mainwaring, as Reinhart drove around the courthouse block and passed the entrance to the jail on the back street. “But in my defense let me say I thought you would immediately recognize my voice.” “How could I recognize you with that fake lisp?” Reinhart dem...
which is to say, janitor of a large apartment building in the middle of the city. He had had this job since as long as he could remember, and he hated it, and the tenants he served, more every year. He spent most of his days sitting in an old overstuffed chair, down in his rent-free one-room grou...
Death on the Grand GIVEN THE KIND OF early life I had had, I was generally a real light sleeper, but on this morning, maybe having a premonition that what- and whenever anything happened concerning Sitting Bull, I wouldn’t be able to stop it, I was not woke up by what must of been the considerabl...
Brocket said calmly, “I’m going to shoot you.” John tried to impose control on himself. “Just listen. My wife and children are in terrible danger. Please check on them! I’ve never tried to kill anybody in my life. I’ve spent most of the day saving other people from being k...