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by George: A Novel von Wesley Stace
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by George: A Novel (Original 2007; 2008. Auflage)

von Wesley Stace

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1736156,521 (4.01)6
Fiction. Literature. HTML:In the illustrious history of the theatrical Fishers, there are two Georges. One is a peculiar but endearing 11-year-old, raised in the seedy world of '70s boarding houses and backstages, now packed off to school for the first time; the other, a garrulous ventriloquist's dummy who belonged to George's grandfather, a favorite traveling act of the British troops in World War II. The two Georges know nothing of each otherâ??until events conspire to unite them in a search to uncover the family's deepest secrets.
Weaving the boy's tale and the puppet's "memoirs," BY GEORGE unveils the fascinating Fisher familyâ??its weak men, its dominant women, its disgruntled boys, and its shocking and dramatic secrets. At once bitingly funny and exquisitely tender, Stace's novel is the unforgettable journey of two young boys separated by years but driven by the same desires: to find a voice, and to be loved.
"By George is one of those rare works of fiction with an essential triple helix â?? it's funny, it's clever and it's perfectly woven together with story. If writing is how we imagine not being lonely, as Wesley Stace suggests, then his conjuring trick as a writer is that he brings a large crowd along with him. This is a wonderful follow-up to his debut novel, Misfortune." â?? Colum McCann, author of Zoli and … (mehr)
Mitglied:tlarkin
Titel:by George: A Novel
Autoren:Wesley Stace
Info:Back Bay Books (2008), Edition: Reprint, Paperback, 400 pages
Sammlungen:Deine Bibliothek, Gelesen, aber nicht im Besitz
Bewertung:****
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by George von Wesley STACE (Author) (2007)

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My second book by Wesley Stace. His inventive, original plots and good old fashioned storytelling skills are a great combo. His main character (the human George) ages from 11 to 17 years, and I was amazed at how Stace was able to convey his gradual maturing, year by year, just through the character's thoughts and actions. The only weak point for me was that the boarding school section dragged a bit. (A little bit of being miserable at boarding school goes a long way.) This is one of those books that gets better the more I think about it. ( )
  badube | Mar 6, 2019 |
I liked this novel very much, but can't quite say why. It's about family and lack of family and a dummy and art and hiding behind art or within art and growing up a little and failing to. ( )
  randalrh | Aug 19, 2010 |
first line (of the prologue): "Half an hour later, George was on his knees in his bedroom, the door locked."

first line (of the first chapter): "I shall now do a little ventriloquism of my own."

Engaging and entertaining, if a bit less enjoyable for me than Stace's Misfortune. I was dismayed at how some characters are too easily forgiven (Echo), others too long unpardoned (Queenie), and others all but crucified (Joe). Overall, though, this is really quite good, and I'd definitely read more by Stace. ( )
  extrajoker | Jul 4, 2009 |
I love the layout of books like this one; one chapter is written in the voice of an eleven-year-old boy, and the next is written in the voice of a ventriloquist's made-to-order dummy (who warns that he should be called "boy" rather than "dummy.") The chapters are separated by forty-three years, so the back and forth can get a bit confusing; however, I enjoyed being forced to pay attention. No reader will quickly scan this book--nor would one want to!

The characters are all a bit quirky--much like real people. Nonetheless, I found myself looking forward to reading the "boy's" chapters. I learned a great deal about ventriloquism, along with bits about magic tricks and show business from the 1930s through 1980s, which made this an interesting read. The story is a complex family tale. I loved it!

There is some profanity. ( )
  smilingsally | Oct 6, 2008 |
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I AM THE ORIGINAL AUTHOR OF THIS ESSAY, as well as the owner of CCLaP; I am not reprinting this review illegally.)

Within long-form fiction, there is a particular thing that I happen to really love, something maybe a little difficult to explain but that I bet a lot of CCLaP's readers enjoy too; and that's when an author will pick a seemingly quirky topic, something that doesn't appear at first could be tied to a number of different periods of history, and then proceed to precisely tie the topic to a number of different periods of history, accidentally telling a Grand Story about society in general while along the road of the Quirky Story you originally thought they were going to tell. Maybe the best (or at least most well-known) example I can think of is Alan Moore's 1985 comic series Watchmen; the way he takes a supposedly niche subject like masked superheroes and instead tells a sprawling saga that lasts from the 1930s to the 1980s, showing how in fact each of the generations in those decades has had their own unique way of looking at the so-called "niche," which in turn says something unique about each of those generations and each of those time periods as well. The reason people go so nuts over Watchmen is not for the surface-level action-based plot of the story's latest generation of characters (although it is awfully inventive and entertaining, don't get me wrong); it's because Moore paints such a deep and incisive portrait of America itself through the various past generations of superheroes in his fictional world, tying together their similarities and differences into one giant uber-plot-engine that propels the story along as explosively as it does.

And hence do we come to by George, the second and latest novel by celebrated author Wesley Stace (Misfortune), who for those who don't know has already had an entire other celebrated artistic life as a musician under his stage name John Wesley Harding. (A cross-media genius; ah, how I do love featuring people like that here at CCLaP!) It is one of these stories like I'm talking about, in this case focusing on the topic of ventriloquism; a story you're led at first into thinking is going to be a quirky "indie-lit" one about an individual strange child, but then elegantly expands into a grand saga over the course of its plot, eventually reaching back into the footlights world of the Victorian Age itself. It's a book that holds untold complexities, a plot filled with sly cross-references that only slowly reveal themselves, an infinitely smart thriller which doubles as a deep character study which then doubles as a historical drama; a book I'm eternally grateful now that I picked up, in that this was yet another in a recent string of completely random novels I've recently checked out from my friendly neighborhood library, done for no other reason than because of simply liking the cover art (and in this case, the music of John Wesley Harding as well).

And indeed, this is probably the best place to start; that unlike someone like, say, Ethan Hawke (whose books in my humble opinion mostly get unfairly maligned, but that's a whole other essay), Stace is a cross-media artist who doesn't stick out as one, who doesn't need excuses from his fans like, "Yeah, but you should hear him sing!" In fact, you could leave Stace's stage name off this publication altogether and still be left with one of the most smartly-written books I've read in the last year, a complex jigsaw puzzle with a thousand little pieces that all need fitting together, all of which Stace does long before you've even realized you should be noticing in the first place. It is essentially the story of the mighty Fisher family, almost all of whom have been British on-stage performers at one point or another -- from the mysterious and dramatic Valentine Vox of the 1800s Brighton circuit, to his flamboyant and controlling granddaughter Echo Endor, all the way to her grand-grandson George in the 1970s, with another dozen people thrown in along the way and a dozen subplots for good measure.

It is a dense story when all is said and done, a layered story that weaves in and out of itself numerous times over the course of 380 pages, but one that always seems deceptively simple under the talented hands of Stace. It is the story, for example, of Echo's son Joe Fisher, a henpecked closeted adherent of mysticism, brow-beaten by his mother into an unwanted career as a ventriloquist himself, while personally only interested in the occult-like edges of so-called "pure magic;" it is simultaneously, though, the story of the aforementioned George (Joe's grandson), whose own dysfunctions regarding 1970s-era British boarding schools leads him tangentially (and at first unknowingly) down the same roads as Joe half a century before. It is the story of secret loves and secret lives; an examination of power dynamics within strong families; a look at the way the term "popular entertainment" has been defined in the UK for the last hundred years. And in being all of these things, it is also a look at the UK itself over the last hundred years, and of the way you can examine its entire society in general based on the various ways over the decades it's reacted to the concept of a wooden dummy sitting on the leg on a voice-throwing stage performer.

Yeah, I know, I'm being awfully flowery and vague today; and that's because to spell out the plot of by George in detail is to do a real disservice to those who haven't yet read it, in that I would not only reveal a lot of spoilers right from the beginning but also do a terrible job at recounting its hundreds of brilliant little moments. I guess I can say this, though, and in fact is probably an important thing to point out; that you shouldn't be fooled by the semi-eerie vibe to which this book hints at the beginning, including not only that creepy cover art but also the fact that half the story is narrated from the point of view of the multi-generational dummy itself (the "George" of the novel's title, to be precise, not to be confused with the human George of the 1970s). This is no slasher tale, nor does anything beyond the realm of everyday physics take place here; indeed, the otherworldly tone turns out to be more about developing the characters than anything else, in that an obsession with the occult is one of the shared traits that runs through all the Fisher family members over the generations, as is a debilitating shyness that leads so many of them to living their lives through their dummies in the first place.

That's the real reason to read by George, to be frank, is to watch Stace's masterful handle over this intriguing and multi-branched family tree; to see him pick up family traits like it was genetic material and then have them manifest in slightly different ways from person to person. As the 1970s George examines all these family trails over the course of the novel, as he digs into the greater and greater mysteries at the core of the Fisher travails, not only he but we can see all the various ways these long-lost relatives have shaped the boy we now know; how he can be controlling and demanding like his great-grandmother, intense and antisocial like his grandfather, meticulous and inventive like the secret father he never knew. And by the end, we realize that the story we've been following is both the story of a particular boy, a particular family, and of the country that shaped them all in general, a literary feat that is difficult to pull off but that Stace does here naturally and gracefully. It's a truly exceptional read, a truly surprising delight as well, a book I have hardly any caveats regarding other than the usual one that it's not for everyone. Wow, I'm telling you, just look at what pleasures there are to be had by occasionally taking random chances at the library or bookstore!

Out of 10:
Story: 10
Characters: 9.9
Style: 9.4
Overall: 9.7 ( )
1 abstimmen jasonpettus | Jan 21, 2008 |
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AutorennameRolleArt des AutorsWerk?Status
STACE, WesleyAutorHauptautoralle Ausgabenbestätigt
GIRAUDON, PhilippeÜbersetzerCo-Autoreinige Ausgabenbestätigt

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Half an hour later, George was on his knees in his bedroom, the door locked.
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Fiction. Literature. HTML:In the illustrious history of the theatrical Fishers, there are two Georges. One is a peculiar but endearing 11-year-old, raised in the seedy world of '70s boarding houses and backstages, now packed off to school for the first time; the other, a garrulous ventriloquist's dummy who belonged to George's grandfather, a favorite traveling act of the British troops in World War II. The two Georges know nothing of each otherâ??until events conspire to unite them in a search to uncover the family's deepest secrets.
Weaving the boy's tale and the puppet's "memoirs," BY GEORGE unveils the fascinating Fisher familyâ??its weak men, its dominant women, its disgruntled boys, and its shocking and dramatic secrets. At once bitingly funny and exquisitely tender, Stace's novel is the unforgettable journey of two young boys separated by years but driven by the same desires: to find a voice, and to be loved.
"By George is one of those rare works of fiction with an essential triple helix â?? it's funny, it's clever and it's perfectly woven together with story. If writing is how we imagine not being lonely, as Wesley Stace suggests, then his conjuring trick as a writer is that he brings a large crowd along with him. This is a wonderful follow-up to his debut novel, Misfortune." â?? Colum McCann, author of Zoli and

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