Walker Percy
Paperback | Pages: 360 pages Rating: 3.96 | 2065 Users | 161 Reviews
Mention Books In Pursuance Of The Second Coming
| Original Title: | The Second Coming |
| ISBN: | 0312243243 (ISBN13: 9780312243241) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Literary Awards: | PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction Nominee (1981), Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction (1980), National Book Critics Circle Award Nominee for Fiction (1980), Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award for Literature (1981), National Book Award Finalist for Fiction (Hardcover) (1981) & (Paperback) (1982) Alabama Author Award for Fiction (1981) |
Chronicle Concering Books The Second Coming
Will Barrett (also the hero of Percy's The Last Gentleman) is a lonely widower suffering from a depression so severe that he decides he doesn't want to continue living. But then he meets Allison, a mental hospital escapee making a new life for herself in a greenhouse. The Second Coming is by turns touching and zany, tragic and comic, as Will sets out in search of God's existence and winds up finding much more.
Define Based On Books The Second Coming
| Title | : | The Second Coming |
| Author | : | Walker Percy |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Special Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 360 pages |
| Published | : | September 13th 1999 by Picador USA (first published 1980) |
| Categories | : | Fiction. Literature. Literary Fiction. American. Southern. Novels |
Rating Based On Books The Second Coming
Ratings: 3.96 From 2065 Users | 161 ReviewsAppraise Based On Books The Second Coming
Why do people seek to imprison those near them? There is a subtext of confinement and the issues that are generated from it in this book. Will's - the male protagonist - recently deceased wife was confined to a wheelchair, did she confine him to an early retirement and others to an old folks home to put them in the same position? Allie - the female protagonist - escapes from a mental home and avoids her parents trying to re-institutionalize her. Allie's confinement is less subtle than Will's. InI just loved this book, even more than the original Will Barrett book. Percy is certainly underrated in my book. As the book begins we are following two characters , the aforementioned Will who is a wealthy, not wealthy, filthy rich widower with apparent fits of memory lapse, failing motor skills, and obsessions with past memory.We are also following Allison, a young woman ( her age is never given but early twenties seems right ) who has escaped from a local mental institution. Alison ends up
Not sure what to make of the book. I wondered if the need to believe was at the center of the work. One must be mentally ill to believe therefore one chooses mental illness over sanity. Will Barret was a successful lawyer, lived a full life, retired early. But he is not all there. His seizures attached to his father's suicide and his attempt to overcome what is his birthmark. He accepts the possible illusion of a second coming at the end of the novel. I kept feeling that this was a sort New Age
- wow, what a read. can't wait to revisit.
It had been a long pause in my reading of Walker Percy, and this was a wonderful work to re-enter into his crazy, convoluted world. The two main characters (one a depressed, suicidal multi-millionaire lawyer and the other an escapee from a mental institute) couldn't have been more wondrously or wackily crafted. Percy touches on the themes that are so dear to him in other books such as The Moviegoer, more specifically, what is the meaning of existence, what is the nature of meaning (especially in
A morose, cynical, brilliantly-written work of extreme introspection.From the moment Will Barrett collapses on a Linwood, North Carolina golf course in the first chapter, it's apparent that he is a man in dire need of something that he's not getting, despite the fact that he is an athletic and wealthy widower who moves gracefully through society's higher levels. From the moment we meet Allie Vaught, who has checked herself out of (not to put too fine a point upon it: escaped) a nearby
There is something almost ineffable that hits me when I read Walker Percy. I think it is the grace of Percy's confrontation and struggle with spiritual belief. His characters are amazing, his prose is lovely. He writes these quirky scenes, in a sometimes peculiar prose without them seeming fussy or overwrought (an amazing balancing act right there). Perhaps, I am just drawn to my big Trinity of Catholic Novelists(Greene, O'Connor, Percy). They don't play in an easy playground of consecration.
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