Once I reached the end of this novel, my face was literally scrunched with confusion. Weisz seems to be the only individual in the novel truly affected by the absence and presence of this mysterious desk, so I don't understand why the author left his story to be told at the end. I loved the short stories throughout the novel, however, the connection of the characters to the desk was sometimes overlooked because the author focused on so many other aspects of the character's lives. Overall, the book was great, I wish I knew more about Weisz... I have always believed that people with the most shattered, dysfunctional lives are invariably the deepest thinkers. Their irresistible predilection for analyzing every feeling, every action, and every whim of fortune steers them into a despair that is wretched, but also rational. They look for symbols in random happenstance, convince themselves that they have profound, existential meanings, then chastise themselves for taking them so seriously when, of course, all symbols are merely empty projections of our own emotions upon inanimate objects. And yet…That’s how this kind of circular over-thinking works. In that way, the four diverse, first-person narrators of Great House by Nicole Krauss are each uniquely psychologically damaged – by unkind fate, or bad choices, or surly disposition, or just by preference. Although they are largely unaware of how they are interconnected by their personal experiences with one whopper of a desk, “an enormous, foreboding thing that bore down on the occupants of the room it inhabited,” they each, in one way or another, seem to carry it on their backs throughout the novel. The reader, who has access to their intimate mental states, cannot help but be impressed with the poignancy of their observations, not to mention the pathos with which they express them, while still wanting to slap them across the face and say “Snap out of it!” It’s beautiful and textured writing, but maybe a degree or two too self-indulgent. From one character to the next, the first person voice remains too similar in its style and tone of expression (with perhaps the only exception being the Israeli father, Aaron, who can be ruthlessly harsh), so that it doesn’t feel like four different people are writing the sections, but one person thinking about the same thing in four different ways. There’s a lot to think about in Great House. Just done think too much…
What do You think about Great House (2010)?
For twenty-five years, an American novelist has been writing at the desk she inherited from a Chilean poet who disappeared at during Pinochet’s reign; a girl claiming to be the poet’s daughter arrives to take it away, sending the writer’s life reeling. Across the ocean, in the suburbs of London, a man caring for his dying wife discovers, among her papers, a lock of hair that unravels a terrible secret. In Jerusalem, an antiques dealer reassembles his father’s study, plundered by the Nazis in Budapest in 1944. While this book sounds interesting, it is not. The writing is very metaphorical and flowery and each of the three sections intertwine so that it is hard to understand which story you are reading since they are all written in the first person. A huge waste of time!
—carla
For twenty-five years, an American novelist has been writing at the desk she inherited from a Chilean poet who disappeared at during Pinochet’s reign; a girl claiming to be the poet’s daughter arrives to take it away, sending the writer’s life reeling. Across the ocean, in the suburbs of London, a man caring for his dying wife discovers, among her papers, a lock of hair that unravels a terrible secret. In Jerusalem, an antiques dealer reassembles his father’s study, plundered by the Nazis in Budapest in 1944. While this book sounds interesting, it is not. The writing is very metaphorical and flowery and each of the three sections intertwine so that it is hard to understand which story you are reading since they are all written in the first person. A huge waste of time!
—JackThomas
Just awful. Don't waste your time. I only wish this app allowed me to give the book 0 stars.
—siddharth
