Seven Types of Ambiguity

by Elliot Perlman

Overview

Seven Types of Ambiguity is a psychological thriller and a literary adventure of breathtaking scope. Celebrated as a novelist in the tradition of Jonathan Franzen and Philip Roth, Elliot Perlman writes of impulse and paralysis, empty marriages, lovers, gambling, and the stock market; of adult children and their parents; of poetry and prostitution, psychiatry and the law. Comic, poetic, and full of satiric insight, Seven Types of Ambiguity is, above all, a deeply romantic novel that speaks with unforgettable force about the redemptive power of love.

The story is told in seven parts, by six different narrators, whose lives are entangled in unexpected ways. Following years of unrequited love, an out-of-work schoolteacher decides to take matters into his own hands, triggering a chain of events that neither he nor his psychiatrist could have anticipated. Brimming with emotional, intellectual, and moral dilemmas, this novel-reminiscent of the richest fiction of the nineteenth century in its labyrinthine complexity-unfolds at a rapid-fire pace to reveal the full extent to which these people have been affected by one another and by the insecure and uncertain times in which they live. Our times, now.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781594481437
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	12/06/2005
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	640
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.30(d)
Age Range:	18 - 17 Years

About the Author

Elliot Perlman was born in Australia. He is the author of the short-story collection The Reasons I Won't Be Coming, which won the Betty Trask Award (UK) and the Fellowship of Australian Writers Book of the Year Award. Riverhead Books will publish this collection in 2005.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"An exciting gamble of a novel...bustling, kaleidoscopic, Rashomonian.—New York Times Book Review

"A cerebral dazzler of a psychodrama.—Entertainment Weekly

"A searing, serious character study...a love story, domestic drama, and a courtroom thriller.—People

"A psychological thriller that is, in short, dangerous, beguiling fun.—Newsweek

"A colossal achievement, a complicated driven marathon of a book...almost Shakespearean.—Observer [UK]

Editorial Reviews

"An exciting gamble of a novel...bustling, kaleidoscopic, Rashomonian.—New York Times Book Review

"A cerebral dazzler of a psychodrama.—Entertainment Weekly

"A searing, serious character study...a love story, domestic drama, and a courtroom thriller.—People

"A psychological thriller that is, in short, dangerous, beguiling fun.—Newsweek

"A colossal achievement, a complicated driven marathon of a book...almost Shakespearean.—Observer [UK]

From the Publisher

… all of this material is clearly dear to Perlman's heart, which brings me to what may be the most important aspect of his novel -- what would once have been called its soul. Perlman has been compared to Jonathan Franzen and Philip Roth, but he strikes me as less like them -- or like most contemporary writers, for that matter -- than like one of those energetic Victorian novelists who had ''the art of seeing all the world as the potentiality of fiction,'' to quote Nabokov again. There are traces of Dickens's range in Perlman and of George Eliot's generous humanist spirit. No, he's not there yet. He could use more humor, and he doesn't have to tell us everything he's ever heard or seen or read. All the same, this is an exciting gamble of a novel, one willing to lose its shirt in its bid to hold you. Be prepared to give it time. Be prepared to skim when you come to a particularly annoying digression. But most of all be prepared to stay with it for the long haul. It's worth it.
— The New York Times

Daphne Merkin

Constant love in the face of terrible odds-such is the old-fashioned but deeply satisfying theme in a thoroughly modern Australian import. Antipodean barrister and second-novelist Perlman (Three Dollars, 1999) collects award nominations at a Coetzeean rate, but those in search of an intelligent and intelligible read should not be put off by the prizes and the surrounding puffery. This is a love story in the 19th-century tradition, the kind that makes the real world seem a bit dim. Narrated sequentially by seven of the participants, the novel follows the disastrous consequences of an act of love. Intellectually and emotionally gifted schoolteacher Simon Heywood was stunned and disbelieving when Anna, the beautiful, brainy lover he met in college suddenly and without explanation dumped him. Ten years after the fact, he still hasn't accepted the rejection. It didn't compute for him then and it doesn't compute for him now, despite Anna's having married brash stockbroker Joe Geraghty and given birth to a son, Sam. There has been no contact between the former lovers, but Simon has followed Anna's unhappy life in an unhealthily close and secret way, seeking always to understand what happened and how he can recover her love, coming to care so much for her son in the process that, when he decides that Anna's failing marriage is not good for the boy, he kidnaps the child. In addition to Simon, the narrators of the calamity he sets off include Angela, a prostitute who loves Simon and services Joe; Alex, a psychiatrist who abandons impartiality in his concern and love for Simon; Joe and Anna Geraghty; and, finally, Alex's daughter. The emotional disaster is played out in court, and the aftershockscause crumblings years later. Long enough to tell everything that needs to be told, but never ponderous and never overdone. George Eliot down under.

Kirkus Reviews