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Central Square: A Novel Hardcover - 1998
by Packer, George
- Used
- Good
- Hardcover
Description
About Bonita California, United States
Details
- Title Central Square: A Novel
- Author Packer, George
- Binding Hardcover
- Edition First Printing
- Condition Used - Good
- Pages 360
- Volumes 1
- Language ENG
- Publisher Graywolf Press, Saint Paul, MN, U.S.A.
- Date 1998-09
- Features Dust Cover
- Bookseller's Inventory # 1555972772.G
- ISBN 9781555972776 / 1555972772
- Weight 1.4 lbs (0.64 kg)
- Dimensions 9.3 x 6.37 x 1.33 in (23.62 x 16.18 x 3.38 cm)
- Library of Congress subjects Psychological fiction, African American men
- Library of Congress Catalog Number 98084450
- Dewey Decimal Code FIC
From the jacket flap
When Joe arrives in Boston and is mistaken for African-- rather than African American-- he quickly discovers that letting the illusion stand generates magic. A job, a place to live, even a kind of deference he's never known before are suddenly casually endowed upon him, a man who surely must have a closer connection to life's hidden possibilities.
Central Square bustles with the complexities and contradictions of today's urban existence as it tells what happens when the enigmatic Joe meets up with several other disparate characters. There is Paula, the social worker whose loneliness is intensified with each sad story she hears; Eric, the writer who struggles in a world that ignores his work and whose wife has abandoned him for pregnancy; the mysterious community group that has posted titillating "feel-good" signs around the city.
As characters collide with circumstances, and each other, George Packer's bold novel explores the conflict between personal desires and social constraints, and the unattainable balance between private life and the life of a community. Unafraid to expose the difficult truths about contemporary society, Central Square asks how we can find something decent to which to commit our lives.
George Packer has been a Peace Corps volunteer in Togo, West Africa, a carpenter in Boston, and a writing instructor at Harvard, Bennington, and Emerson. He is the author of The Village of Waiting, a memoir about his Peace Corps years, and the novel The Half Man. He now lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Media reviews
Citations
- Kirkus Reviews, 09/01/1998, Page 1224
- Library Journal, 10/01/1998, Page 135
- New York Times, 11/22/1998, Page 44
- Publishers Weekly, 08/17/1998, Page 47