Requiem for a Dream

Rating:
Summary: Amazing
Review: After seeing the movie, I decided to give the book a try, and am I ever glad I did. As disturbing and dark as this book it, I believe Selby is able to show the reader how to feel compassionate for those that most people are usually disgusted with (drug abusers for instance.) This book has stayed with me ever since I finished it.

Rating:
Summary: Emotionally Exhausting
Review: I actually came to read this book by stumbling across it on this page. I was searching for something else when I came across a link for this book. I have read Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby Jr, I enjoyed it but didn't think it was spectacular. So when I read some of the other reviews for this book I thought maybe this was being hyped up a little......Boy was I wrong!!

This is an incredible novel.

The characterisation is as powerful as in any novel I can remember. The book is based around three characters, their dreams and their addictions. It starts off quite gently - fairly standard scene setting with drug use and associated culture and just as I was thinking this was going to be only an average novel....BANG! It really kicks in! You all of a suddenly realise how absorbed in their world you are, how much you care about these characters and how much you want them to achieve their dreams.

But Selby shows masterfully, how addiction removes choice from your life, how, because of addiction, dreams will never be achieved and how you will even stop caring about these dreams. The title of the book says it all.

Of the three main characters, Sarah's descent is the most frightening. It shows so clearly how closing your eyes and dreaming can be almost as destructive as addiction itself.

This is not for the faint hearted - I felt emotionally exhausted and a little disturbed when I had finished this, but what a book!

Rating:
Summary: An amazing, and sad, journey
Review: If you were interested enough in the book to come to this page and read this review, chances are that you will like this book. The marvelous characters and shocking imagery propel the stories of each addict to it's shattering conclusion. Selby has somehow paced the book so perfectly that you can feel the natural degression of the characters until you are finished and then look back. It's amazing to see how they started and how they ended. By far my favorite parts dealt with the Sara Goldfarb character and her addiction to diet pills. Her chance to be on a television game show is so important to her that she loses sight of everything around her. As good as those parts were, that doesn't mean the passages about her son and his two friends equal dive isn't interesting. The book is simply fantastic, and instead of being a preachy "Don't do drugs" novel it is a heartfelt and harrowing look at a group of people who have been dealt a bad hand in life. I would not hesitate to reccommend this book to anyone.

Rating:
Summary: Harrowing, depressing, poetic...life changing
Review: I read this book after having seen the film, which stung my emotions and slapped my brain like no other film has, and made the person behind me (a 30 year old male) shake and weap at the end. When a film is so amazingly powerful, dramatic, and harrowing, and it all came from a source, that being Selby's Requiem for a Dream(The book above of course), there has to be something truly amazing at work. This book has changed me. The film set me up for the book, and woke me up to life, while the book drove in that spike, that echo saying..."Wake up! Stop starring at things and live! Stop dreaming about how things will be, and go out there and make it happen! Stop lying to yourself and those around you...be true."

My way of living changed one night, after thinking about the novel I had just finished(Requeim) and reflecting on the film which I had seen a few weeks prior. The next day I was a differnet person.

This book is rich in soul, human emotions, and is a downright masterpiece. I think the new intro. by Selby is beautiful, and sums up the book. The American Dream is dangerous. Dangerous to our souls, our spirits, our minds, our way of living. The characters in the book are living in a dream while in reality they are setting themselves up for failure. They take themselves to hell in believing their "dream." Sadly, we follow them, and hopefully you will wake up after reading this book.

A few notes: The film is also a masterpiece of direction and I highly wish those film lovers, like myself, all go see it, or buy the DVD May 22nd! The actors in the film by Aronofsky are so amazginly perfect for the characters in the book it blew my mind. Some of the best casting, and acting ever.

A few more notes: After finishing RFAD, I sat there looking at the closed book. I wanted to hug the book and tell the characters it will be okay, I am here for you! My god! When is the last time a book has done this to you, or has it ever? The characters are so amazingly human, and sad, that even though you would maybe never hug them on the streets in real life...after reading this book, and his others, you feel for the ones you cared less about before. This book should change you, wake you up, and if read correctly, maybe you will want to tell Sara, and Tyrone, and Marion, and Harry..."It will be okay, I am here for you!"...even after the book is over, leaving you in the pits with the characters.

Read it now, be prepared though.

*****Selby, if you read this review, thank you from the bottom of my heart. Thank you for allowing Aronofsky to make the film of the book for I was exposed to your books through seeing the amazing film. I miss the characters in the book, and I hope one day they will be okay already ;). RFAD has made me a better person, and I thank you for writting it.

Rating:
Summary: Addiction is an equal-opportunity destroyer . . .
Review: This novel is one of the most apt texts that I've read regarding the nature of selective human awareness. The majority of the public deludes themselves about their stations in life less abjectly than the characters in "Requiem," but that makes the subject no less salient or dangerous. A must-read, but not for the squeamish about reality.

Rating:
Summary: Only a brilliant novel could make you feel this sad
Review: This is truly a timeless masterpiece by author Hubert Selby Jr. In fact that's one of the many depressing things about this book is the fact that though it was written in the late 70's, people have not wised up any in the 20 plus years since.

The book isn't so much about drug abuse as it is about people striving to make a dream come true and in effect killing any chance they may have had to obtain it.

The story follows widow, Sara Goldfarb, her son Harry and his 2 friends. Sara's dream to be on television turns into more of a nightmare after she begins taking diet pills. Harry, Marion, & Tyrone's dream is pretty simple- to score some uncut heroin in order to resale it and live off the money. Their plans too go awry when winter comes and their aren't enough drugs to go around.

Some people may not want to read such a devastatingly dark novel but the beauty of it is how real it is. Selby makes you care for characters you shouldn't who put themselves in bad situations that you can see coming, if only they could. Honestly, I can't praise this book enough.

Rating:
Summary: Haunting
Review: After seeing the movie and reading the book, I believe this is one of the most haunting stories I have ever read (seen). I find myself continually re-discussing scenes with others who have seen the movie or read the book. The movie is excellent, but I also recommend reading the book to get a insider look into these wonderful yet pathetic characters. After completing this book, I went out and bought all of Selby's other titles.

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful and Shocking
Review: This book is excellent.
Howard Selby is a wonderful writer. <i>Requiem for a Dream</i> is intricately written in dialogue. This is at first difficult to get used to. The general lack of compulsatory punctuation also attributes to this. Selby is a master at recreating the pain of his dreamers.
I read it after I saw the movie, and though reading it was not as strong as the images on the screen, I was still deeply affected.
The predicament of Sara most moved me. I found myself crying in horror and in empathy near the end of the book: not wanting to read on, yet feeling compelled to read on, as if her situation would turn around.
This book explores drugs and dreams in all aspects of the social sphere. Black & White, Male & Female, Rich & Poor, The Young & the Old, etc. It explains how drug abuse, no matter how innocent, can destroy anyone, from an old woman to a rich young girl.
Each person in the book ends up doing things that in the beginning they abhorred of other addicts. Each of them has a dream, which they hope to obtain through their drug use, yet each falters differently.
I can especially associate with Marion. She is a girl who is better off and dreams of running a coffee house and doing something creative with her sketching/photography talent. However, she sits around dreaming of her ideas, yet never goes out an accomplishes anything. Everytime she picks up her paintbrush, her inspiration seems to falter and she resorts to dreaming.
Her fate, in my opinion, (along with Tyrones) is the least brutal than that of the Goldfarbs.
READ THIS BOOK, SEE THE MOVIE, you wont regret it.
I have also reviewed the movie if you are interested in reading that. i can be found at [e-mail].

Rating:
Summary: when dreams fall flat on their face
Review: Hubert Selby Jr. weaves a masterful tale about the lives of four individuals who have lofty dreams, and how these are shattered by the use of drugs. The book is not only a commentary about the devestating affects of drugs, but also demonstrates how the pursuit of wealth and fame can destroy your soul.

One of the main characters in the novel is Sara Goldfarb, a lonely widow who loses her grip with reality when she is called to be on a television show. To make a good impression on television she vows to lose weight. When a boiled egg and lettuce diet fails she consults a quack doctor who prescribes uppers to decrease her appetite. She soon sheds the pounds, along with her sanity. The story intertwines her dizzying descent into addiction with her son's herion addiction.

The dialogue between characters is terse and explosive. Selby masterfully depicts how each character builds walls to blind them from the truth of each of their respective addictions. Selby holds nothing back and is not afraid to show it how it is.

I highly recommend this book to anyone.

Rating:
Summary: Aronofsky's Audacious Adaptation
Review: Brilliant screenplay adaptation of Hubert Selby's gutwrenchingly beautiful novel "Requiem for a Dream" by writer/director Darren Aronofsky (Pi). Requeim is a story of four lost souls, all addicted to their own twisted version of the American Dream, whether in the form of heroin, television, or wealth and of their inevitable downfalls. Despite infuriating misconception, Requiem is not a "drug" film (or novel). The drug addiction, while portrayed starkly and powerfully, is not the point of the story. It is, instead, the obsession with material goods and the persual of false happiness that novelist Selby and screenwriter Aronofsky are concerned with. Aronofsky takes a seemingly unfilmable novel, full of long, disconnected interior monologues and turns it into a ferociously visceral descent into hell, all the while remaining faithful to the source material, as well as retaining it's haunted, subtle soul. Indeed, the most powerful scene in the frantic, intense screenplay is the quietest, when junkie Harry Goldfarb (stunningly realized in the film by erstwhile no talent Jared Leto) pays a visit to his television obsessed mother, Sara, (Ellen Burstyn in the performance of the year) and discovers, in a brilliantly written monologue, the true depths of her lonliness. It's the sole moment of connection in a work filled with isolation and despair. For all its darkness, however, it's a testament to Aronofsky that the screenplay (and the film) are never intolerable, at least not unintentionally so, and are even filled with an adrenaline rush of sorts, albeit a dark one. An amazing and accomplished work (from a classic novel), by a filmmaker destined to become one of the greats. Recommended for fans of the novel as well as the film, or just anyone interested in great screenwriting. (If you haven't yet read the novel, however, I suggest you start with that first).