Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
---|---|---|
Searching... Amity Public Library | Fic Rabam | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
From the best-selling author ofPassage to Juneau--"Raban at his best," wrote Ian McEwan--an unsettling, tender, and always surprising novel set in Seattle at the turn of the millennium, when the high-tech Gold Rush threatens to overwhelm the actual world with its myriad virtual alternatives. Two immigrants, though, are drawn here by more traditional versions of the American Dream. For Tom Janeway--a Hungarian-born Englishman--it is the wife and son he thought he'd never have. For an illegal alien--Chick, as he comes to call himself--it is the land of opportunity he'd imagined back in Fujian province. Given the overheated service economy, mutual need introduces the writer--professor--NPR-commentator to this enterprising handyman, and each soon finds himself strangely dependent on the other. Because meanwhile, all around them, people are busily charting futures that are obscure to, or exclude, anyone else. Waxwingsmasterfully depicts the social realities of a boomtown in flux, as well as the illusions that distract its inhabitants from the most basic human impulse: to create a place we can call home. This is what Chick dreams of achieving, and what Tom must suddenly struggle to preserve. As the NASDAQ index spirals upward, street riots break out, a terrorist is arrested, a child disappears, a jetliner goes down--and the city, rimmed with feral countryside, begins to emerge in its true colors. The Washington Postproclaimed ofForeign Landthat "Jonathan Raban's achievements in this novel are nothing short of awesome," and withWaxwings--exquisitely written and hugely entertaining--he demonstrates more powerfully than ever before that he "invests his characters with such freshness and warmth, writes prose of such Wordsworth-like beauty, and does it all with such effortless mastery that he takes the reader's breath away."
Author Notes
Jonathan Raban was an award-winning travel writer, novelist, and critic. He was born in, Norfolk, England on June 14, 1942. He studied English at the University of Hull. He went on to lecture at Aberystwyth University. Then he taught in the creative writing department at the University of East Anglia.
His early writing was done while on vacation. He wrote fiction and journalism. In 1969, he moved to London and became a freelance writer and journalist, writing book reviews and literary criticism. He felt inspired by his friend, Robert Lowell. Who turned some of his own life experiences into art.
Raban's travel books included Arabia: Through the Looking Glass (1979); Old Glory (1981); Coasting (1986); Hunting Mister Heartbreak (1991); Bad Land: An American Romance (1996); Passage to Juneau (1999); and Driving Home: An American Journey (2011). He wrote three novels, Foreign Land (1985), Waxwings (2003), and Surveillance (2006).
He won many awards, the National Book Critics Circle Award, The Royal Society of Literature's Heinemann Award, the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award, the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award, and others.
Jonathan Raban died on January 17, 2023, in Seattle, Washington, of complications from a stroke, which he had in 2011. He was 80.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
A Hungarian-born British expatriate settled in dot-com-frenzied Seattle is the bemused protagonist of this inspired jumble of a novel, travel writer Raban's first since 1985's Foreign Land. Tom Janeway is a professor of writing, a novelist and a public radio commentator; his wife, Beth, works for GetaShack.com, a startup providing virtual neighborhood tours for prospective house buyers. They have a four-year-old son named Finn, and they appear content. Behind the happy facade, though, Beth has grown deeply unhappy with her self-absorbed husband, his immersion in books and his pretentious radio voice ("his fucking rolled r's")-she hankers after expensive cars, a bright new condo and honest attention. Unfolding in counterpoint to Raban's chronicle of the rather civilized collapse of their marriage is the story of a shady Chinese immigrant called Chick; he survives a horrific journey to America and becomes an off-the-books contractor who bullies Tom into employing him to renovate their gloomy old house after Beth moves out. Beneath the surface, larger currents are swirling, and Tom is suddenly swept up in them when he goes for a walk on a local nature trail and is misidentified as a suspect in a series of child murders. Chick's unpredictable antics sharpen the sense of menace, while a subplot about an egotistical British novelist who is considering a residency at Tom's college provides effective comic relief. Raban's caustic, affectionate commentary on the manic gyrations of millennial America unites these disparate plot lines, making his novel a wry paean to the cluttered, freewheeling lives led by the motley residents of an immigrant nation. (Sept. 30) Forecast: Raban, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1996 for Bad Land, is a Brit expatriate and Seattle resident himself. Waxwings was just shortlisted for the Booker, and should attract considerable attention as the author's first novel in nearly 20 years. Eight-city author tour. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
British-born Raban (Passage to Juneau, 1999, etc.) sends a poison-pen letter to his adopted homeland in this witty account of America at the turn of the millennium. The tale is set in Seattle, where expatriate English novelist Tom Janeway pontificates on NPR's All Things Considered and teaches writing at the University of Washington while his hotshot wife Beth counts returns on the IPO of her Internet realty business, GetaShack.com. The riots that recently marred the 1999 WTO conference have led the mayor to cancel all New Year's Eve celebrations, but for the most part (Y2K fears notwithstanding) everyone is looking forward to the new century with very little dread. Even Chick Lee, an illegal immigrant from China who nearly died as a stowaway on a container ship, has been able to evade the INS and make a decent living for himself as a day laborer in the boom economy. But there are intimations that the party may be winding down--not least being the arrest of an al-Quaeda terrorist caught trying to cross the border in a car full of explosives. And Tom's private life becomes a tangle of complications in short order. First, Beth (stung by some flippant remarks Tom made about the dot.com economy on one of his radio spots) leaves him, taking their four-year-old son Finn with her. Then Tom is identified as a suspect in a string of missing-persons' cases because he happened to be hiking in the woods where one of the missing was last seen. Meanwhile, Chick sets himself up as a contractor and brings a gang of Mexican illegals over to fix Tom's roof--just as the police investigation is heating up. Is the bubble about to burst? Or is Tom just going through a rough patch? We know, of course, but Tom doesn't. Sharper (and a lot faster) than The Bonfire of the Vanities, may well be one of the best accounts ever written of an American era. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Two disparate characters come together under unusual circumstances in this novel of Seattle during the start-up Internet gold rush of the 1990s. Hungarian-born Tom, a self-absorbed English professor and regular commentator for NPR, finds himself with a floundering marriage and an emotionally disturbed son--two situations he cannot comprehend. Chick is a recent Chinese immigrant who entered the country in a metal container with 30 other men, barely escaping the INS. He finds shady construction work and is dedicated to becoming a successful American citizen, even running his own off-the-books construction business. The two men form an unlikely partnership when Chick appears on Tom's lawn, practically forcing Tom to hire his motley crew to repair Tom's roof. Chick squats in Tom's basement and provides support when Tom is questioned as a suspect in the disappearance of a child. Readers will be intrigued with Chick and his experiences finding work, living quarters, and a legal identity. Slow to start, the story gets up to speed almost halfway through and peters out occasionally until the end. --Kaite Mediatore Copyright 2003 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Acclaimed for his nonfiction (e.g., Bad Land, Passage to Juneau), Raban returns to fiction with a tale set in Seattle. Here, professor and NPR commentator Tom Janeway, a Hungarian-born Englishman, forges a relationship with his handyman, an illegal alien from China. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.