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0 of 3 members found this review helpful.Touche, Forever
“Anybody who reads this book and utterly denounces it, as far too many seem to have done on this website, is an idiot, and I hope they choke to death on their own enormous ignorance and severe lack of imagination.
An amazon user wrote this on 2008-08-10.
This novel is a fiercely wise and loving reflection on the most base elements of human nature, pertinently humane, and made me laugh till I peed not just once, but countless times. It is the first book I think to lend to people, besides Brautigan's Trout Fishing in America.
I cannot wait to read it again and again. You suckers. ” -
1 of 4 members found this review helpful.
I'm trying to like this book...
“I am wading through the book and it has finally started to come together about half-way through. The story is disjointed with little character or story development. I don't expect a good book to be an easy, mindless read but it shouldn't be a chore to get through it either. But, I love post-apocalyptic stories and will continue to muddle through it. The second half is a bit better at least and I would give it 1 1/2 if it was an option.
An amazon user wrote this on 2007-12-18.
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0 of 9 members found this review helpful.
A Real Sleeper
“I just received this book, and could only read the first 10 pages, before I found myself falling asleep. I thought it would be a great book, however I am very disapointed in the way the book reads the story did not flow. The book kept moving back and forth from character to charcter. Since I can not return the book back to the vendor (not worth the cost - online) I will donate it to my towns local book sale. DO NOT READ if you want to stay awake. ”
An amazon user wrote this on 2007-10-19. -
5 of 5 members found this review helpful.
old weird America
“Matthew Sharpe's America here is the America of Blood Meridian, a childlike, exuberant, and reflexively violent America. The writing is simultaneously coarse and refined, broad in its obsessions, but cutting and precise in its arch vocabulary. It also keeps its sense of humor all the way through. As absurdist and outlandish as this post-Apocalyptic mashup is, it remains true to the metaphors of the Jamestown settlement. The characters are well-delineated, and it's easy to relate to both the "native" populations and the interlopers as they struggle with cross-cultural communication, one's responsibilities to one's society, and what it's like to fall for a stranger who can scarcely conceive of your roots. John Rolfe's stoned reading of a Rorschach inkblot is a tour de force, moving deftly from the scatological to the heartbreaking, all the while hewing to the novel's own self-made mythos. Sharpe is conscientious about paying off his enigmas, like the red skin of the tribesman, their ability to speak English, and the nature of the war between Manhattan and Brooklyn. He's also good about slipping in historical and cultural nuggets, both ancient and modern. My only issue was with the obvious difficulty of sustaining such an over-the-top narrative. The relentlessness did get to be a little wearing on the backside of the arc. ”
An amazon user wrote this on 2007-09-28. -
5 of 5 members found this review helpful.
A Weird and Funny Book
“Matthew Sharpe's Jamestown takes a story that Americans are at least tangentially familiar with--the disastrous founding of Jamestown in Virginia in 1607--and transforms it into a post-apocalyptic satire. All the familiar names are here Smith, Rolfe, Powhatan and Pocahontas, but now these adventurers and Indians, the survivors of some terrible past doom, find themselves in a blasted brave new world full of violence and uncertainty. This might not sound like the stuff of fall-on-the-floor-laughing comedy, but in Sharpe's hands, it is. Divided into several first-person chapters, Sharpe allows his characters to reveal this re-hashed history in every terrible detail, from the execrable conditions at the colonists' camp to the fatally hilarious encounters between the two groups. It isn't easy to juggle so many characters, but Sharpe does so ably with a mixture of wit, cynicism, and linguistic brio, not seen in letters since Nabokov. The first-person narratives by turns are terrifying, funny, and sad (and usually all of those at once), and it is to Sharpe's credit that even the most repugnant characters are not above our sympathies. Sharpe saves the real lit fireworks, however, for his Pocahontas, who here, is a fast-talking, intelligent, vulnerable, monologist. Trust me when I tell you won't find any "Color of the Wind" fluff, here. (The character's e-mail and instant message exchanges with her sort-of beloved, Johnny Rolfe, are hilarious send ups of e-culture.) She is the funny, cynical, tragic center of this novel and one of many, many reasons why you should pick it up.
An amazon user wrote this on 2007-07-05.
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