Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #380415 in Books
• Published on: 2007-06-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 250 pages

From Publishers Weekly
More than a decade after the publication of his story collection Song of the Silent Snow, Selby (Last Exit to Brooklyn) returns with a breathless and unconvincing tale of the fall and redemption of Bobby, a black teenager in the Bronx. At the start of the novel, Bobby and his girlfriend, Maria, are attacked by a Hispanic gang in punishment for their cross-ethnic dating. Bobby is beaten with a chain; Maria has lye thrown in her face and eventually dies. Refusing to be hospitalized, Bobby falls into the care of Moishe (aka Werner Schultz), a widower who survived the concentration camps (he claims, however, that he is not a Jew) and the death of his son in Vietnam. While Bobby plots an elaborate revenge against the Hispanic gang, Moishe seeks to impress on him the dangers of hatred and the importance of forgiveness, lessons he learned in the camps. Best read as a sort of fable, Selby's novel renders few details of ghetto life: the characters' incessant slang rings false, and the story's exact moment remains fuzzy (though the fact that the street weapons of choice appear to be knives and chains rather than semi-automatics would seem to put it somewhere in the past). Selby's characteristically chaotic prose removes the story even further from reality. What the novel does have is genuine passion, and Moishe's deep belief in forgiveness and acceptance win our sympathy, if not our belief.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Famous for his 1964 Warholian masterpiece, Last Exit to Brooklyn, Selby hangs his sixth novel on a sometimes precious plot made famous in the 1966 Henry Hathaway film Nevada Smith. Five pages into the book, South Bronx teenager Bobby and his girlfriend, Maria, are jumped by four Latinos led by Raul, who beat Bobby with a chain and throw lye into Maria's face. When she is disfigured, Maria commits suicide, and Bobby, who has taken refuge with Holocaust survivor Moishe, vows revenge. Moishe teaches Bobby about the debilitating effects of hate; when the opportunity comes for Bobby to kill Raul, he rejects it. One reads Selby's work for the style?his prose seems like verbal jazz riffs?and the story is secondary. Though not for the faint of heart, this book is recommended for literary collections and those strong on contemporary urban stories.?Harold Augenbraum, Mercantile Lib. of New York
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
The first novel in 12 years from the once-notorious author of Last Exit to Brooklyn is an embarrassingly cartoonish amalgam of West Side Story, Edward Lewis Wallant's The Pawnbroker, and--I kid you not--Dickens's A Christmas Carol. It's the story, told in Selby's characteristic long, claustrophobic paragraphs filled with unpunctuated run-on sentences, of a young black teenager rescued from the murderous hatred that threatens his own life by a lonely concentration camp survivor. Bobby and his Hispanic girlfriend Maria are savagely beaten by a gang of spic muthahfuckahs and left in the street to die. Maria does not survive, but Bobby is rescued by an elderly widowed handyman, Werner Schultz (who for obscure reasons calls himself ``Moishe''), who restores him to health, then tries to dissuade the anguished kid from seeking revenge. As Bobby regains his strength, Moishe gradually reveals the details of his family's imprisonment, their liberation from the camp and new life in America, and the loss of Moishe's only son to the Vietnam War. Bobby subsequently tracks down Maria's murderer, but, at the crucial moment, is unable to kill him. This simplistic novel's flaws are too numerous for brief summary. Suffice it to say that glaring improbabilities (Moishe's basement apartment contains, among other wonders, a workout room and Jacuzzi) and unrelenting sentimentality make it impossible to believe in the reality of Selby's characters, much less feel anything for them. Brief glimpses of Bobby's fatherless family and Maria's grieving women relatives are only token attempts to vary a sluggish narrative that resorts to such bathetic effects as a cleansing snowstorm that briefly obliterates the city's grime and Moishe's makeshift Christmas celebration, which presumably dries up the last remaining flecks of Bobby's ``righteous'' anger. Almost 40 years ago, Selby produced a white-hot vision of America's mean streets that remains a classic illustration of realistic fiction at its most brutally eloquent. It's becoming increasingly apparent that he's fated to be remembered as a one-book wonder. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

this is just as good as his other work
hubert selby jnr. is far, far from a one book author, as the room, requiem for a dream and this prove. this is a deeply emotional story of a black boy severely beaten by a group of hispanics and his girlfriend left scarred when they throw lye in her face. the boy finds himself in the care of an elderly german who tends to his wounds and tries to comfort him in his grief when the boy discovers that his girlfriend has been driven to suicide because of the attack. the boy then seeks revenge on the gang, taking it in turns to track them down. the elderly german, realising that the boy is being consumed by hate tries to make him realise that love is more important by showing him the good things in life. the one downfall in this story is the repetetive use of the words crying and laughing to describe the boys relationship with the old man but as with all hubert's work, this stays with you long after you have read it and plays on your mind a lot.

Deserves better than the Kirkus Review
Okay, let's face it. *The Willow Tree* isn't Selby's finest novel. *Last Exit to Brooklyn* remains his masterpiece, followed closely by *Requiem* and *The Room*. This latest story tends to be a bit maudlin at times, although in the main the actual language is just as gripping and intense as one finds in Selby's other works. It's a good read, with occasional great moments.

The reviewer from Kirkus quoted above breathlessly trashes the book, and snidely concludes that Selby is a one book author. This piece of invective deserves response. Even if Selby WERE a one-book-author (which I don't think he is), so what? My goodness! How many of us are gifted enough to write even one enduring book in our lifetimes? Very few. Yet the reviewer (whom I'm betting is probably a frustrated novelist turned English prof) trivializes such a contribution. How bizarre! It's tantamount to saying that had Tolstoy written only *War and Peace,* he's be a loser because "only" a one-book-author.

Liberate yourself from "professional" literary reviewers, as well as from the commodity ideal of literature, which has it that more is better. Read Selby and make up your own mind.

Hope reigns supreme.
It is easy to want a book such as this to be about dirt and grime and nothing but "the hood." It can then be classified as "keeping it real." But where is the story in that? What's the point of having such a story? So Selby has "A Christmas Carol" type theme running through it, very good I say. Dickens was a bit of a scribe in my opinion and no less unsubtle than Selby in trying to create social change.

Bobby, the main character, is beyond redemption. Thirteen years old and already out of control. He seems to feel nothing for anyone and sees life only in terms of what he can get or what others can take from him. His environment is oppressive and offers no sanctuary. Through his experiences with a rather surreal holocaust survivor he finds a form of salvation by allowing himself to stop hating and to begin to forgive.

Selby is tight with his writing throughout, so much so that one cannot help but be relieved at the fate of some of the characters, especially Maria. My stomach was in knots with the pain of her mother and grandmother.

Not a great novel, but one that tries to be more than just a straight narrative and I think largely succeeds, very much in the mould of Tom Wolfe, or perhaps the other way around.

Read it and feel the relief at the nice ending, hell, maybe our societies will work out ok. Hippy? ME!