Attachment |
| | | | Title: | Attachment | | Author: | Isabel Fonseca | | Publisher: | Knopf | | Type: | Book / Hardcover | | Publication Date: | 29 April, 2008 | | ISBN / ISBN-13: | 0307266915 / 9780307266910 | | List Price: | $23.95 | | You Save: | $7.66 | | Amazon Price: | $16.29 | |
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Product Description
The author of the classic Bury Me Standing now gives us a riveting first novel that reaches from the Indian Ocean to London and New York, and into the most confounding precincts of the human heart.
Jean Hubbard is a syndicated health columnist, her British husband, Mark, a successful advertising executive, and after more than twenty years together they revel in a sabbatical on a remote tropical island. But when Jean discovers a salacious love letter addressed to Mark, she realizes that she has misdiagnosed some acute pathologies in her own life. The long idyll of their mutual ease is over—but a more vivid and compelling quest has just begun. Looking for answers, Jean goes undercover with a surreptitious e-mail correspondence that propels her on to alarming, and illuminating, adventures of her own in her adopted home of London and her native New York.
Assured, funny, tender, and provocative, Attachment is unflinching in its depiction of desire, of the responsibility that comes with age and family, and of the impulses that color and disrupt our lives even as they reveal, ever more clearly, the nature of love.
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Very Disappointed 01 June, 2008 I read Fonseca's non-fiction study of the gypsies, which had an engrossing subject but was not well organized. I had hoped that her interesting life had led her to write engaging fiction, and I was moved to buy the book after reading about it in the New York Times.
From the start, I was not at all convinced by the character's behaviors. I needed much more psychological background about what would drive a woman to pretend to be her husband and correspond with the "other woman." It is unclear why the woman chooses not to confront her husband.
The characters of this book did not feel fully evolved. The dialogue, especially that of the American characters, did not read as truly American in style. Much of what they said resembled English phrasing (where Fonseca now lives) rather than American. When the characters are in New York, one should feel that through the language.
Characters in the book exit and enter scenes clumsily. Sometimes someone has seemed to have left the scene, but suddenly, there they are again. I beleive the editors did Fonseca a disservice by not catching more of these little inconsistencies.
I was really ready to enjoy this book, but is feel flat with me. I really tried to make myself read it, but why, I am not sure.
- Reviewed by customer ID: APU08H5I7212X
Attachment - What Is It? 19 November, 2008 Attachment connotes different things. How a bout a flying bird, carrying a blank document in its beak? Sort of like "a message in a bottle"? No? For that reason I almost didn't pull the book off the shelf and take it home with me. That's the New York publishing world for you, specifically Alfred A. Knopf, silly, misinformed, if not damn right stupid. I never read the synopsis on the inside jacket--more foolishness from ad-men (women). What I do do, is look at the author's photograph on the back flap, and see if I can discern who they are, and what they may have to say about the way things are. (Pictures are worth a 1000 words ... sometimes. Faces and foreheads anyway.)So what is this book about, "Attachment," a novel by Isabel Fonseca? The act of fastening two things together, like a gate to a post? There is that. A document, a written file or picture "attached" to e-mail? There is that, too. More of that than the other, but mostly, it's about the bond between humans--the primal bond--and how that infiltrates all aspects of the human lifespan: A parent to a child; a child to a parent; a woman to her body; a man or a woman to a woman's body; a person to his or her work; a person to a place. The primal bond is about safety and security and trust, and ultimately, about the two most basic of questions: Is it safe? And, Who am I? Or in the protagonist's mind, "... am I truly alive, am I truly loved?" (Who are you? I am somebody! Who are you? I am some body.)There is confusion here in this story, inconsistencies. If by design or an accident of the author's unconscious? I don't know. I'd have to interview her to get a better sense. Some of the story doesn't add up. Can an attachment be partial? A gate, sort of fastened? An attached picture file misunderstood? The primal attachment insecure? I suppose so.Is it safe? I don't know. Who am I? I don't know. Who are you? Can I trust you?
- Reviewed by customer ID: A2M06R4XHW82ON
Dreadful 31 August, 2008 Worse than boring... boring with delusions of Serious Insight. The main character's life is so dull that she extrapolates from ordinary events a series of crises to serve as a sort of vacation from her own monotony. But rather than realizing this or showing any insight or growth whatsoever, we are presented with each of these imagined and proximal tragedies as major plot points even though none of them ever go anywhere or amount to anything. I finished the book only to see if she really was going to complete an entire book consisting entirely of false alarms as the plot, and sure enough, she did. A terrible waste of time and paper.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A2HJEP3BH2XR6R
Terrible! 01 December, 2008 I read this based on good critical reviews. Boy, was I disappointed! I found the main character to be completely unlikeable and not fully developed. Indeed, none of the characters were relatable or likeable. It also seemed like the author started many different plots and dropped them just as quickly. This book isn't worth your time or energy and I echo the other reviewers who wondered how it even got published.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A317TPJ0ZWOR88
Endless Puff 25 May, 2008 Having read the endless puff about Fonseca in the New York Times and other publications, I was expecting a graceful and intelligent piece of work. Attachment is neither. How this talentless woman ever got this book published in the first place is beyond me. (Marriage to a famous author, anyone?)
- Reviewed by customer ID: A5SG99BQUJSKX
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