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Lädt ... The General and Juliavon Jon Clinch
Top Five Books of 2023 (594) Lädt ...
Melde dich bei LibraryThing an um herauszufinden, ob du dieses Buch mögen würdest. Keine aktuelle Diskussion zu diesem Buch. This novel centers around the life of Ulysses Grant, Civil War general and American president. It focuses on his family life, especially his relationship with his father-in-law, wife Julia, and children. I found the dynamics between Grant and his wife Julia's family, who had strong Southern sympathies, to be particularly interesting, especially when an enslave woman who was serving Julia escapes. I do wish the novel had dwelled more on these clear contradictions within Grant and those closest to him, but this book keeps the story moving along. While I wanted more about Julia especially, this novel does make for an interesting read, especially for those interested in the American Civil War. ( ) Engrossing fictional biography of General Ulysses S. Grant, covering his meeting with Julia Dent, a Southern belle, later his wife, the Civil War years, with his part in it, postwar years, including those as president, his part in Reconstruction, and scandals. He was involved, due to his naivety in matters financial and too trusting nature but insisted on paying back every cent of his monstrous debts. To that end, though suffering from throat cancer [from many years of smoking cigars--20 or more a day] he persisted in writing his memoirs, urged on by Julia and by Mark Twain. I liked that the author covered his personal life with Julia and his family. Brilliant writing style. Very readable. The General and Julia takes us back and forth in time with Ulysses S. Grant and his beloved wife, touching on the high and low points of his life, featuring the final "Forty Days and Forty Nights" during which he labored through pain and drug-induced disorientation to finish the memoirs he hoped--and Sam Clemens promised--would assure his family's financial future after the General was gone. The prose is never flowery, nor even poetic, and yet Clinch can take my breath away with a simple turn of phrase. Describing the rising KKK, for instance, there's this: "...they are organized the way a hurricane is organized, madly a-spin around a terrible void. That void is hatred, and it draws every weak and broken thing to it." Why has no one ever put it quite so succinctly before? Even in this relatively short and intentionally limited treatment of his life, it is clear that Grant was more than a General, less than a god, human to the core. This is an engaging, poignant portrait of a man whose genius served him well in certain phases of his life, but whose generous nature left him vulnerable to exploitation. Clinch's talent for "raising the dead" (his own words) in historical fiction places him at the top of my list of greatest living American authors. Zeige 3 von 3 keine Rezensionen | Rezension hinzufügen
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Ulysses S. Grant reflects on the crucial moments of his life as a husband, a father, a general, and a president while writing his memoirs and reckoning with his complicated legacy in this epic and intimate novel from the author of the "masterly" (The New York Times Book Review) novel Marley. Barely able to walk and rendered mute by the cancer metastasizing in his throat, Ulysses S. Grant is scratching out words, hour after hour, day after day. Desperate to complete his memoirs before his death so his family might have some financial security and he some redemption, Grant journeys back in time. He had once been the savior of the Union, the general to whom Lee surrendered at Appomattox, a twice-elected president who fought for the civil rights of Black Americans and against the rising Ku Klux Klan, a plain farmer-turned-business magnate who lost everything to a Wall Street swindler, a devoted husband to his wife Julia and loving father to four children. In this gorgeously rendered and moving novel, Grant rises from the page in all of his contradictions and foibles, his failures and triumphs. Moving from blood-stained battlefields to Gilded Age New York, the novel explores how Grant's own views on race and Reconstruction changed over time. Another work of "must-read modern literature" (Charles Frazier, New York Times bestselling author) from historical fiction master Jon Clinch, this evocatively crafted novel breathes fresh life into an American icon. Keine Bibliotheksbeschreibungen gefunden. |
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Google Books — Lädt ... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyBewertungDurchschnitt:
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