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Visitation Street
Scritto da Ivy Pochoda
Narrato da Ray Porter
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Summer in Red Hook, Brooklyn, an isolated blue-collar neighborhood where hipster gourmet supermarkets push against tired housing projects and the East River opens into the bay. Bored and listless, fifteen-year-olds June and Val are looking for fun. Forget the boys, the bottles, the coded whistles. Val wants to do something wild and a little crazy: take a raft out onto the bay. But on the water during the humid night, the girls disappear. Only Val survives, washing ashore in the weeds, bruised and unconscious.
This shocking event echoes through the lives of Red Hook's diverse residents. Fadi, the Lebanese bodega owner, hopes that his shop is a place to share neighborhood news, and he trolls for information about June's disappearance. Cree, just beginning to pull it together after his father's murder, unwittingly makes himself the chief suspect in the investigation, but an enigmatic and elusive guardian is determined to keep him safe. Val contends with the shadow of her missing friend and a truth she's buried deep inside. Her teacher Jonathan, a Juilliard dropout and barfly, wrestles with dashed dreams and a past riddled with tragic sins.
In Visitation Street, Ivy Pochoda combines intensely vivid prose with breathtaking psychological insight to explore a cast of solitary souls, pulled by family, love, betrayal, and hope, who yearn for a chance to break free.
Azioni libro
Inizia ad ascoltareInformazioni sul libro
Visitation Street
Scritto da Ivy Pochoda
Narrato da Ray Porter
Descrizione
Summer in Red Hook, Brooklyn, an isolated blue-collar neighborhood where hipster gourmet supermarkets push against tired housing projects and the East River opens into the bay. Bored and listless, fifteen-year-olds June and Val are looking for fun. Forget the boys, the bottles, the coded whistles. Val wants to do something wild and a little crazy: take a raft out onto the bay. But on the water during the humid night, the girls disappear. Only Val survives, washing ashore in the weeds, bruised and unconscious.
This shocking event echoes through the lives of Red Hook's diverse residents. Fadi, the Lebanese bodega owner, hopes that his shop is a place to share neighborhood news, and he trolls for information about June's disappearance. Cree, just beginning to pull it together after his father's murder, unwittingly makes himself the chief suspect in the investigation, but an enigmatic and elusive guardian is determined to keep him safe. Val contends with the shadow of her missing friend and a truth she's buried deep inside. Her teacher Jonathan, a Juilliard dropout and barfly, wrestles with dashed dreams and a past riddled with tragic sins.
In Visitation Street, Ivy Pochoda combines intensely vivid prose with breathtaking psychological insight to explore a cast of solitary souls, pulled by family, love, betrayal, and hope, who yearn for a chance to break free.
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Recensioni
Starts off great; good writing, good story. However, it ends up in a mess, with lots of deus ex machinas.
Rating: 2Dan Simmons wasn't kidding when, in reference to this book, he described a cartoon in which a nineteenth century publisher was saying "How about if we bring out War, now, and then Peace next year?" This and Olympos are really one story in two volumes, not a book and its sequel.Millenia in the future, unknown forces have recreated the Trojan War on a terraformed Mars, along with the best Classics scholars from the nineteenth-twenty first centuries to study them. On the moons of Jupiter, semi-organic, evolving robots called moravecs have become concerned with the quick terraforming and high levels of quantum activity on Mars. On Earth, post-literate humanity is about to face the end of life as they know it.There are flaws in this story to be sure. The classics professor Hockenberry who is our narrator for the Trojan War chapters (until the plot threads meet, that is) is rather too sure that his perceptions of ancient Greek/Trojan society are correct and that all others are the result of looking at it through the wrong, modern lense, instead of acknowledging that he can't be sure that his perception of a mindset three thousand years older than his is correct, either. There is something of the male Mary Sue in having him sleep with Hellen of Troy when only making her acquaintence is necessary. However, the conversations between the moravecs, Mahnmut and Orphu, on Proust and Shakespeare more than make up for those flaws. Everybody with any interest in science fiction and the Trojan War should give this a chance.
Rating: 4Man makes war on the gods! Simmons brings together all these different threads: the moravecs, the humans, the post-humans, Shakespeare's sonnets, the Tempest, the Iliad, and he totally succeeds, in my book. I enjoyed every step of the way.
Rating: 5Ilium by Dan Simmons.Wow. This is a severely heavy book. Not only in size, but in depth. Greek mythology, time travel, physics, robots. Its all in there. Seriously. And connected to each other. And thereâs a sequel, which I got from the library today.Now, as heavy as this book is, I liked it. Didnât love it. Not putting it on my âTo Buyâ? list. At least not yet. Have to wait until I finish that sequel.But anyway, I really cant give a good summary without giving the book away. Hereâs what Amazon said:âGenre-hopping Dan Simmons returns to science fiction with the vast and intricate masterpiece Ilium. Within, Simmons weaves three astounding story lines into one Earth-, Mars-, and Jupiter-shattering cliffhanger that will leave readers aching for the sequel.On Earth, a post-technological group of humans, pampered by servant machines and easy travel via "faxing," begins to question its beginnings. Meanwhile, a team of sentient and Shakespeare-quoting robots from Jupiter's lunar system embark on a mission to Mars to investigate an increase in dangerous quantum fluctuations. On the Red Planet, they'll find a race of metahumans living out existence as the pantheon of classic Greek gods. These "gods" have recreated the Trojan War with reconstituted Greeks and Trojans and staffed it with scholars from throughout Earth's history who observe the events and report on the accuracy of Homer's Iliad. One of these scholars, Thomas Hockenberry, finds himself tangled in the midst of interplay between the gods and their playthings and sends the war reeling in a direction the blind poet could have never imagined.Simmons creates an exciting and thrilling tale set in the thick of the Trojan War as seen through Hockenberry's 20th-century eyes. At the same time, Simmons's robots study Shakespeare and Proust and the origin-seeking Earthlings find themselves caught in a murderous retelling of The Tempest. Reading this highly literate novel does take more than a passing familiarity with at least The Iliad but readers who can dive into these heady waters and swim with the current will be amply rewarded. --Jeremy Pugh --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.â?That covers about a quarter of what the book is actually about. I read that review, and realized very quickly that I was in over my head. But donât let that scare you off. I really liked this book.Three stars on LibraryThing
Rating: 4Mars and Venus in the Bedroom by John GrayHave liked the series and thought I'd just read all of them. Found it funny how a woman dresses what goes through the man's mind at the time.Lot of helpful information that is easy to understand about how things are going and how you can make a difference.I received this book from National Library Service for my BARD (Braille Audio Reading Device).
Rating: 5A really unique tale, I loved it.
Rating: 5Dan Simmons wasn't kidding when, in reference to this book, he described a cartoon in which a nineteenth century publisher was saying "How about if we bring out War, now, and then Peace next year?" This and Olympos are really one story in two volumes, not a book and its sequel.Millenia in the future, unknown forces have recreated the Trojan War on a terraformed Mars, along with the best Classics scholars from the nineteenth-twenty first centuries to study them. On the moons of Jupiter, semi-organic, evolving robots called moravecs have become concerned with the quick terraforming and high levels of quantum activity on Mars. On Earth, post-literate humanity is about to face the end of life as they know it.There are flaws in this story to be sure. The classics professor Hockenberry who is our narrator for the Trojan War chapters (until the plot threads meet, that is) is rather too sure that his perceptions of ancient Greek/Trojan society are correct and that all others are the result of looking at it through the wrong, modern lense, instead of acknowledging that he can't be sure that his perception of a mindset three thousand years older than his is correct, either. There is something of the male Mary Sue in having him sleep with Hellen of Troy when only making her acquaintence is necessary. However, the conversations between the moravecs, Mahnmut and Orphu, on Proust and Shakespeare more than make up for those flaws. Everybody with any interest in science fiction and the Trojan War should give this a chance.
Rating: 4Man makes war on the gods! Simmons brings together all these different threads: the moravecs, the humans, the post-humans, Shakespeare's sonnets, the Tempest, the Iliad, and he totally succeeds, in my book. I enjoyed every step of the way.
Rating: 5I really enjoyed this book. Its a shameless tribute to Shakespeare, set in the far distant future of Earth with Greek mythology thrown in! Complex, puzzling and fascinating all at once. Great characters and great setting. SciFi at its best.
Rating: 4A remarkable sci fi novel that displays an incredible amount of knowledge and a very sly sense of humor and drama. If you are a fan of The Iliad, this almost 600 page epic (and there's a sequel!) will confuse and delight you immensely. There are three points of view: a historian is who on site (on Mars) tracking the actual progress of the Trojan War (did I say "on Mars" yet?) as it compares to Homer's epic poem; a duo of Shakespeare and Proust-loving robots, and a human whose non-epic goal is to seduce his first cousin. All converge in, on, and around Mount Olympus, which has also migrated to Mars. An outstanding adventure on every conceivable level.
Rating: 5Started out slow, but boy does it build, and becomes an incredible book. It does not disappoint.
Rating: 5This book is entertaining but unfortunately leaves almost nothing resolved. The entire book is a prelude to a war, but by the end we don't even know who most of the combatants in the war really are. It also dragged somewhat in the middle, but I felt the characters were strong enough to keep me interested.
Rating: 4Well done!!! I really enjoyed this book. I was totally drawn in to the story, the colorful characters, and the narration itself. Excellent narration, perfectly executed. Beautifully written. Very well developed characters that I couldn’t help getting involved with and attached to. The relationships between the characters even more so. Heart warming as well as heart wrenching.
My only regret in all this is my own inability to really give this book the truly great review it deserves!! Needless to say, I loved the book, am truly impressed by this author, and will be seeking out her other works as well.
Rating: 5My only regret in all this is my own inability to really give this book the truly great review it deserves!! Needless to say, I loved the book, am truly impressed by this author, and will be seeking out her other works as well.
Rocked My World
Homer, Proust, Shakespeare & Robert Graves – does it get any better? Literature freaks like me will love (or hate) this story of how robots and aliens hijack the Trojan war - while infantilized future human cattle watch. Sound strange? You bet.
You don’t have to know the classics to enjoy this fat, satisfying science fiction read (but it makes the “jokes” so much funnier – there is even a nod to Oz). I couldn’t put it down, and I’m anxious to read the sequel.
Rating: 5Homer, Proust, Shakespeare & Robert Graves – does it get any better? Literature freaks like me will love (or hate) this story of how robots and aliens hijack the Trojan war - while infantilized future human cattle watch. Sound strange? You bet.
You don’t have to know the classics to enjoy this fat, satisfying science fiction read (but it makes the “jokes” so much funnier – there is even a nod to Oz). I couldn’t put it down, and I’m anxious to read the sequel.
The concept is very interesting. The execution, though, isn't so good. I didn't really care about the characters, and it took me a while to get what was going on. The little Shakespeare analysis rather annoyed me: off your soapbox, Dan Simmons, and just write a story.
Rating: 3An amazing Sci-fi story. I'm not a Sci-fi reader, but I saw a good review of this book and thought I would give it a crack. I'm glad I did. The story jumps between the battle between Greece and Troy in ancient times, space faring robots on a mission to Mars and futuristic Humans on a journey to discover their ancestors. Really well written and hard to put down.
Rating: 5Simmons combines a retelling of The Iliad with a post-apocalyptic science fiction story in Ilium. The Greek gods have set up a new Mount Olympus on a terra-formed Mars and have enlisted the aid of resurrected 20th century scholars in observing how closely the Trojan War raging below corresponds to Homer's telling of it. (Obviously, some manner of time and space travel shenanigans must be going on here, the exact nature of which is part of the narrative thrust of the book). Meanwhile, a group of Wellsian Eloi-esque humans in our far future begin to question their easy but culture-less existence and a band of sentient robots in Jovian space detect technology-what-shouldn't-be coming from Mars and set out to investigate. The writing is gripping, the world-building fascinating, the characterization good enough, and the plot races ahead, spooling out fresh revelations and clues about What The Snarking Heck Is Going On at just the right pace. Literary and cultural references also abound, with Shakespeare, Proust, and (obviously) Greek mythology playing major roles in the narrative. Nothing at all gets resolved here, and I dearly hope that I will find resolutions when I get into the sequel, Olympos. Ilium comes very, very close to a five-star read for me, but I found myself a bit bogged down in the last two hundred pages or so and a little weary at the thought of having to go through another 700 pages of this to get the answers. I admire what Simmons has done here greatly and mostly I enjoyed reading the novel very much, but there is still that nagging "we're never going to get there" feeling. Simmons's delight in reveling in the gruesome details of death and dismemberment also seemed out of place here. This isn't a horror story; why the insistence on rolling around in violent descriptions whose only purpose is eliciting a visceral reaction? Finally, the book was proofread badly and while I certainly wouldn't say it was rife with errors, the ones that do occur, even if only once or twice (such as spelling a character's name incorrectly or swapping out a Greek character name for the Roman equivalent), were sloppy enough to lower my estimation of the whole book.All that being said, Ilium is a cracking good read and well better crafted than many books that would fit that description. Recommended to anyone who already likes this sort of thing and to anyone who has been meaning to give some science fiction a go.
Rating: 4This is possibly the first science fiction book I've come across that rewards its readers for being ridiculously well-read. Allusions to Proust, Shakespeare's sonnets, "The Iliad", "The Time Machine," "The Tempest," "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich," and Judeo-Christian mythology are all woven into the tapestry of this novel. There are probably many more that I simply did not catch."Ilium" is intelligent, earnest, and funny, leading the reader on a deliriously intricate ride between far-flung plots which seem impossible to fit into one single novel. However, Simmons managed this feat with ease. As the plot kept getting weirder, the author increasingly imbued the characters with more humanity and empathy, so that I truly cared about their fates through the climax of the story. Even better, the development of the characters occurred naturally and believably because of the events of the plot, not out of convenience or necessity as a plot device. Simmons ably made it a joy for the reader to try and put all the pieces together. Overall, the effect was like mashing up a traditional science fiction novel with a sudoku puzzle. It was a great ride, but it was also an active read.Be ready to have the sequel standing by on your shelf, however, because he definitely leaves the reader hanging at the end of the book. I've never so enjoyed being in the dark.
Rating: 5Even though I wasn't prepared for the mythology in this tale I enjoyed it thoroughly and am now rushing forward to "Olympos" to find out what happens and more importantly what happened really.
Rating: 4loved the idea. sci fi, meet the olympic gods!!! good "inbetweener" for the sci-fi to fantasy (or vice versa) readers.
Rating: 4An interesting book but I am afraid it kind of fell down in some places for me. I've been spoiled by the splendour of Hyperion. Although Ilium does have some unique and compelling elements it is both too epic to not have a completed and ending and too complicated to be completely enraptured with.Simmons does use his wealth of literary knowledge throughout this work however it is often disjointed and incongruos. To me this was like reading three books at the same time. We have the Trojan War played out and witnessed by a contempary human. We have Shakespeares sonnets and The Tempest driving a different set of characters and events completely and also a smattering do Proust.Although the story does attempt to tie the three different threads together it is left unfinished. However, the attempt to read this took so much effort in places and much of the literary discussion and conversations about quantum physics felt like filler or info dumps that I'm not particularly inclined to read the sequal.There was just so much going on and so many characters to follow. I did find some of the action and characters interesting and did read the whole thing hoping to get somewhere conclusive with them but felt left down at the end that I would be expected to work my way through 600+ more pages toward any resolution. I might try to read Olympos but not for a while as it seems like too mammoth a task.
Rating: 3This is my new favourite by Dan Simmons, having previously read his Hyperion duology and The Terror. The pace is fantastic and nearly every chapter contains another fascinating twist or revelation. It is definitely not the kind of book that leaves you sitting around waiting for something to happen. The book jacket is one of the best I've ever read: extremely obtuse and tells you very little, but within seventy-five pages it makes perfect sense while giving nothing away.Since events of Homer's Illiad come strongly into play, you might get more enjoyment if you're at least familiar with the major events of that epic, though I wouldn't call it a requirement. I've never read Homer but I had enough familiarity with it to appreciate the parallels in this novel. If you were truly setting out to do all the background reading then you'd also have to cover Faust, and Shakespeare's The Tempest. Something like A Brief History of Time wouldn't hurt either to understand some of the science better, but that's even less necessary.I don't know if Mr. Simmons would appreciate it, but I kept picturing Pixar's Wall-E during the Mahnmut chapters...
Rating: 5After the tedious Quicksilver, Ilium was a welcome change. It's a wonderful blend of science fiction and Greek myth.As Simmons' Hyperion was infused with Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, so Ilium works from Homer's Iliad. One of the central events of the book is the siege of Troy. In Ilium, however, the gods are more science fiction than fantasy--they accomplish their majestic feats via nanotechnology and quantum manipulation. And the events in the Iliad are only a rough third of the events in Ilium.The book opens with the words of a twentieth-century Homeric scholar, in a very deliberate reference to the opening of the Iliad. That scholar has been resurrected by the gods and sent to observe the unfolding of events that shaped the Iliad. The following chapter introduces humans living on Earth several thousand years past the 20th century, in a world largely abandoned--the "post-humans" meddled with the planet, cleaned up some of their mess, and left it to the old-style humans, whose lives they continue to regulate. The third chapter sets the stage for the third storyline, involving sentient organic/inorganic machines that live and work among the moons of Jupiter.Into all three storylines, the reader is dropped without much backstory; the shape of the world in which the characters live must be gleaned from details in the story's telling. And the threads don't tie themselves together until a distance into the book.The single best thing about the book, however, is the writing. Simmons does a very good job of taking these disparate threads, blending them together while painting the backdrop for the story, and weaving a thoroughly engaging tale.Ilium certainly deserves its Hugo nomination. I can't speak to whether it should win, since I haven't read most of its competitors, but if it does, I'll not be disappointed.
Rating: 4What a strange and wonderful book. This may be the weirdest book I've ever read. That is a good thing.While Kurzweil's "Singularity" is frightening this book fleshes out the nanobot infected characters and actually make some of them sympathetic. The two Moravecs were my favorite. Both their story and characters.While I will forgive Simmons for having his time travelers utter modern phrases I think in the long run that will date the book.Instead of alternating two narratives there are three in this book. I usually hate this method but here I'll be forgiving.Such a wonderful twist on things- weaving robots, the Trojan war and immortality a.o. into one coherent story. Simmons must be a watcher of classic Star Trek. Also in parts it reminded me a teeny bit of Gregory's Tudor series where she fleshes out historical characters and gives them plausible motives. Ilium takes fractured fairy tales to a whole new level.It wasn't clear to me what was so awful about the firmary that it needed to be destroyed.Favorite snippets;"I'd give half my Proust library if I had jsut one of my six eyes back.""But what kind of freedom is it? The freedom to mock everything?""He'd never run, even as a child. It was an absurd thing to do.""I don't know what is going to happen next. It's wonderful."
Rating: 4Hyperion was by far Simmons' best attempt to blend sci-fi with classic literature. This reworking of the Trojan myth is fun at times, but also a bit forced.
Rating: 4Marvelous concept of a story weaving ancient greek history, mythology and science fiction into one story -- great concept and story line
Rating: 5Ilium is an epic, dealing with the fate of humanity. The opening is the classical opening of the Illiad adjusted to fit the personal story of one Thomas Hockenberry, PhD, who finds himself documenting his field of study long after his death, on the plains of ilium. Simultaneously, there's a finite number of humans still living a stable, yet dull life on Earth proper and cybernetic mining robots in the depth of space.Such is the setting, and Simmons once again masters telling an epic story, again dealing with the fate of mankind after a technological singularity event.The characters, the story, the setting, they all come together to form a simply great work, only slightly marred by the length of the story.
Rating: 5As usual with Simmons it was a fast read. I was hooked from the begining and cant wait to read the next book. I did notice some similarities with the Hyperion books so I wonder about the connection.
Rating: 4Horribly uninteresting, even with my special interest anything historic/Greek. The persons were uninteresting at best, pathetic at worst. Did the writer only write this so he could go to bed with the world's most beautiful fictional character?If you ever come by my house you can have my copy.
Rating: 1How can one resist a book in which things that probably used to be human are role-playing the Iliad, sentient robots set out from Jupiter to investigate, and pampered, ignorant people on Earth somehow get caught up in the eddies thereby generated?
Rating: 5