Rating:  Summary: A love story Review: This is a love story: the funny, sad, sweet and frustrating marriage and divorce of the comedy twosome Carter and Sharp, complete with a honeymoon at the fabled Falls of the title. It is the memoir of Mose "Mike" Sharp, the skinny straight man of the duo. Although Mose and Rocky successfully chase women all over vaudeville, Broadway and Hollywood, the great romance of both of their lives is with one another. Filled with exasperation and affection it is a straight man's love letter to the talented fat man who got all the good lines. The novel works because the relationship at its core keeps our interest. Mose and Rocky frustrate each other, support each other, deeply and genuinely love each other but, in the end, betray each other.Despite the many sad events in the lives of these characters, the book could never be called maudlin and is often downright funny. Carter and Sharp are comics, remember. There is a wry wit to Mose's memoir and much of the dialogue is so clever it is worth reading twice, just too savor. It's fun without being lightweight.
Rating:  Summary: Highly recommended Review: This is the story of an unlikely friendship in which Mose Sharp is the straight man indeed. A good-looking stagestruck Jewish kid from the midwest, his career is going nowhere (he comes perilously close to getting hooked off stage) until he meets fat, funny Rocky Carter, whose knockabout comic career set to take off. Rocky sees something in Mose, and together they launch Carter and Sharp, the fat-guy-skinny-guy comedy team to beat 'em all. On stage and off, Mose's life is transformed by his partnership with talented, outrageous, big-hearted, demanding Rocky. In their thirty years together that friendship will be tested at many twists and turns, and when that friendship ends the reader feels its loss almost as much as Mose does. Sorry if the first paragraph makes "Niagara Falls" sound pretty morose. It's not. Elizabeth McCracken balances skilfully on the tightrope between yearning and yucks to make "Niagara Falls All Over Again" more than a show-biz novel or a nostalgia piece. She builds on the inventive voice first heard in "The Giant's House" to reach one of those rare levels where although you're tickled by these guys' foibles, in the center of your chest you feel the hurt and longing behind the jokes. "Niagara Falls" will move you and make you laugh. What more can you ask of good fiction?
Rating:  Summary: Great book about Friendship Review: To be honest with everyone I did not like the book at all. Others may think differently though. It did not grab my attention nor my interest. I did read the whole thing and I found out that it was a very touching story. It talked about all the things the characters had to go through to become famous and the way your life changes when you reach that point. The relationship between the two main characters was really nice I liked how they worked together. It was as if they were married to each other even though one of them was the head of the two of them. The novel showed how friends can take advantage of you and your life and basically become the person you worry about when you make big important life decisions. I definately do not see this novel as being a new England Novel even though Elizabeth McCracken is from New England. A lot of my friends did enjoy the book so even though I mentioned I disliked it others will find it highly interesting.
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