Word: atlanta
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...plot revolves around Charlie Croker, an Atlanta real estate developer leading a luxurious life, complete with antebellum plantation and trophy wife. Croker is struggling, though, to escape the half-billion dollar debt he has accumulated through failed developments. Meanwhile, when a wealthy white family accuses a black football star of rape, Atlanta's latent racial tensions threaten to erupt chaotically to the surface. As opposing forces vie for Charlie's assets and his dignity, an unemployed California factory worker rides an almost supernatural tide of events into the heart of Atlanta, interjecting an unknown variable into the literary equation...
Wolfe treats readers to a vivid, thoroughly realistic portrait of Atlanta life. In the chapter "Lay of the Land," for example, he takes readers from the wealthy Buckhead mansions north of Atlanta, down through the bustling business district and into the slums with one seamless narrative. Current trends and ideas are summarized with pithy aphorisms: Exercise-crazed women become "Boys with Breasts" and get-rich-quick schemes induce "The Aha! Phenomenon." Wolfe entertains readers with his keen ear for dialect and penchant for Dickensian names like Armholster, Peepgass and Armentrout. And of course, when it comes to clothes...
...means of equally ridiculous justifications, everyone in A Man in Full manages to land in hot water somewhere along the way. Wolfe spares no individual or institution his withering critique--he details white Atlanta's visceral fear of Freaknic and urban youths' self-centered apathy in the same breath. Often Wolfe comes across as a bit too cynical; his book virtually ignores (or denies the existence of) the better aspects of humanity. No one in A Man in Full evinces any selfless emotion, for instance, but only a desire for power...
...though, readers do get the hint that at least one character has transcended the egocentric world, even as the seeds of the next chapter in Atlanta's power games are being sown. After getting through all 742 pages, one other fact remains clear: Tom Wolfe has done it again. A Man in Full is a thrilling read and an insightful (if not entirely original) vignette from one of the master chroniclers of the human condition...
Last week the awards sided with Updike's sensibilities. A Man in Full lost to Alice McDermott's Charming Billy. Wolfe was at a party in Atlanta, where his new novel is set, avoiding the scythes...