Prague : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: Prolix
Review: It's about a group of young North Americans in Budapest at the time of the first Bush-Hussein war. They have sexual affairs of various persuasions. Karoly or Charles Gabor is from Cleveland and is the son of 1956 emigres. He is trying to profit by the opening up of Hungary to private enterprise and plans to acquire the publishing house of Imre Horvath, a heroic survivor of the German and Russian occupations.
The Gabor-Horvath plot doesn't start up until page 126, at which point the rest of the story is set aside and we are given forty pages of the history of the Horvath publishing house. Every now and then we come back to this plot, but mostly Phillips is interested in rich descriptions of Budapest topography and the psychological lives of his characters and the sociology of post-communist Eastern Europe. His style is rich and allusive, with much erudition about such subjects as jazz and pop music. For example "Stan Getz and Astrud Gilberto's duet" meaning the Girl from Ipomema.
The descriptions are often digressive. One scene is set in a night club in the basement of an old house. We are given the names of the jazz musicians in a mural on the wall and a three generation history of the occupants of the house.
A melodramatic ending is rather tacked on. Two important characters. Mark and Scott, disappear long before the end.
There is some quite wonderful bravura writing such as "the white March rain made acidic hissing noises as it drilled little siver-gray holes halfway into the depths of the crusty, brown-spotted banks of old snow " and some great dialog and humor, such as the final confrontation between John's two American loves, the shaven-headed artist Nicky and the pony-tailed embassy attaché Emily.
With so much good writing there may have been a problem of what to cut out but this could have been cut to half the size, and left with an inconclusive ending if the author could not think of a artistically logical one.


Rating:
Summary: In defense of a favorite
Review: I bought this book a little over a year ago and I finished it in about two sittings. Phillips has an amazing command of the English language, which I realize has turned many off to his style of writing. As a twenty year old English Major perhaps I am slightly biased in my enamoration with his verbose, precise use of words. The main criticisms, from what I can tell, are that his characters are "boring" and "unlikable". I tend to disagree. They are REAL, which often times does mean portraying poor habits (many have condemned John as an alcholic, as if some of the great writers we all idolize were saintly) and improper decision making. These individuals are no angels, not one of them. The fact that they have made so many readers uncomfortable is further indication of their power as characters in the novel and Phillips ablility to mine the human experience for real emotions, actions and indeed even failures. That, along with his great style and sense of humor, is what makes this novel the great work it is.

Rating:
Summary: while the editor slept
Review: Why doesn't Amazon offer reviewers the choice of Negative Stars? I could barely recommend one star for this novel. It delivers on none of its hype. The crushing weight of repetitive pages of uninteresting didactic journalism and history, surrounding characters who are without the flimsiest human appeal, left me wondering how Phillips has managed to start let alone continue his career. His characters ARE Gen-X, but should that reprieve a writer from investing them with depth? The devil has no soul either, but think what good writers have done with him. Phillips is one tall glass of water. And where oh where was his editor?Recommend this novel at your peril. Only your very best friends will forgive you.

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful prose-a promising first novel!
Review: 
Prague tells the story of a lost generation in Budapest. The city of Prague is a dream-the place that the characters believe would be better than where they are now. The story suffers from a lack of commitment to its protagonists-the story shifts from person to person. By the middle of the book I found it difficult to care about the night club crawling main characters who seemed to live to get obscenely drunk and smoke cigarettes. The mood of the story evoked an earlier time-perhaps the author emulates F. Scott Fitzgerald and attempted to write a neo-jazz age novel.

The almost protagonist, John (who I suspect is the author when he lived in Budapest) is longing for relationship in a world of rejection. His older brother hates him and he becomes obsessed with women who spurn him. The only one who tolerates him is an elderly night club pianist. The ending of the story is dreary and unsatisfying.

Despite these drawbacks, the author has the ability to describe fascinating characters and insert charming or heart-wrenching adjunct events in a way that keeps the narrative alive. I imagine that some of the faults of this novel are due to a new author's use of his own life narrative. I will definitely read his next novel--particularly if it really is fiction!

Rating:
Summary: Didn't pay attention to hype; Good but flawed read
Review: The first part of the is novel is entitled "First Impressions". If I had gone with mine regarding this book, I would have stopped reading after the following, too-self-consciously written, almost painful passage on page 10:

"A symbolic opening to the game, John noted, as if Gabor were holding himself up to the light, an illustration of candor. And yet it was an intentionally symbolic action. Indeed, John thought he could see that Charles liked the idea of his competitors/friends noticing the symbolism...."

There's nothing wrong with detailed story telling and character development, but I found myself straining to go on from here.

I decided to plow on and hope for the best. The second part of the book, which other reviewers here found painful, is where the story becomes interesting. These characters become three dimensional, if a bit over the edge, and become interesting when they most fully lose their idealism. Depressing, perhaps, but interestingly done.

In fact, this book held my interest until the somewhat awkwardly constructed ending which left too many loose ends.