FREE: THE PERFECT MAN~by NAEE, MURR~~NEW CONDITION~~

The listing, THE PERFECT MAN~by NAEE, MURR~~NEW CONDITION~~ has ended.

Adult/High School–This book could accurately be described as gothic fiction, a coming-of-age novel, or a melodrama. Indeed, it succeeds so intelligently and precisely in blending these genres with a cast of multigenerational characters that readers are left transfixed. Twice abandoned by irresponsible, callous relatives, Raj, 12, is abruptly left in the reluctant hands of romance novelist Ruth, the girlfriend of a deceased uncle. Raj, India-born and London-raised, is the ultimate outsider by the standards of his new 1950s Pisgah, MO, home. Although he is a derisive clown and a brilliant mimic, he desires to be accepted into the fabric of the town. Murr writes: as a child he would spend hours imagining himself as ruggedly handsome, laconic, and dangerously impulsive as the men of Ruth's romances. Brutally powerful, morbidly sensitive, he was the perfect man. Ultimately, however, his inability to achieve such a personal ideal or to homogenize with the community is his salvation from the darkness of Pisgah and the corrupt adult world. The novel leaps seamlessly among perspectives, story lines, and time periods. Murr becomes almost playful in a dizzying carousel of dualisms: youth and maturity, intensity and detachment, sanity and madness, aggression and passivity, male and female, life and death, helplessness and power. These extremes are easily reached, discarded, and compounded through a parade of deeply complex characters. It is then the quieter, individual moments of thoughtfulness, imagination, and compassion that allow some characters a sense of faith and glimpse of humanity. This title will appeal to a wide range of readers-----------------EXCELLENT LIKE NEW!~