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Sep 07, 2011

K.D. rated it:

We all want to have better lives. When I was young, I wanted to be a teacher my father said no money in teaching. So, I wanted to be an agriculturist he said you will be digging dirt till the day you die. So, I wanted to be a priest priests die with their ass dirty as no one takes care of them. So, what? Why not be a doctor? Okay. After becoming a medtech, what? But he did not have money to send me to a medical school. Ha ha ha ha

In my iPod, I have this song by The Pussycat Dolls. More...

14 comments like (14 people liked it)

May 09, 2007

Kelly rated it:

Wow wow wow wow wow. Requiem for a Dream manages to be so painful and beautiful at the same time. Although I'd seen the film before I read this book and knew the fate of the characters, I was still following their paths with such anxiety and hope. It's an account of people who dream big but lose much bigger.

It follows four characters in the Bronx. There's Sarah, a widow who spends her days living vicariously through her television while eating boxed chocolates. On the warm days, she More...

2 comments like (7 people liked it)

Jan 07, 2009

Lavinia rated it:

I'm quite surprised that many readers regard it as a book about drug addiction and junkies of different types. I (as the title clearly states) mainly see it as an attempt of pursuing the American Dream, the one that grants all American citizens total and pure freedom. And so, since nobody really knows if the Dream is dead or not, anybody is free to try it out.

What makes it better than the film (if this was ever debatable), is the story-line and the stories behind the characters. Due More...

6 comments like (5 people liked it)

Jan 06, 2008

Sara rated it:

This book isn't for everyone, the imagery is graphic and at times, terrifying and the characters are heartbreakingly misguided and flawed. Selby's writing style allows the reader to experience the tragic lives of Sara Goldfarb and her son Harry and their pathetic attempts at achieving the American Dream at any price. What's most startling and painful to read is how unflinchingly these characters cling to their naive aspirations even as their world crumbles around them. I read this for my Natural More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Dec 09, 2008

Stefani rated it:

After reading Last Exit to Brooklyn, I thought that I had seen the worst of Selby's characters. As I tensely awaited the conclusion of each chapter, hoping that maybe just one of the characters would manage to get ahead or break the cycle of dependency on drugs, I would be rendered speechless by the desperation and insanity brought on by addiction. As the darkness of winter descends upon Brooklyn, Harry, Tyrone & Marion all find themselves stumbling through the night to get their next fix, ,add More...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

May 11, 2008

Laura rated it:

I read a review about the movie that said that the movie, Requiem, burrows under your skin and stays there for a while. This is true of the book, too. Each character speaks differently and you have to get used to their way of speaking as the author doesn't use punctuation marks and end sentences with 'Harry replied' or 'Marian said.' It is a fresh style of reading. This book IS very disturbing; so disturbing that a friend of mine threw it across the room when he finished it and asked me why More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

May 11, 2011

Andreea rated it:

First of all this book amazed me by its format. It's plain writing, no dialogue marks, it just keeps going and going. And I loved it.
It's funny when it wants to be funny and it's dark when it wants to be dark. You sympathize with the characters, you feel for them ( God knows I felt sorry for the old widow all the way through the book and I still am when I'm thinking about it ) and it just gets you. It's that kind of a book. That you read and you can't possibly stay immune to all that happe More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 21, 2007

Peter rated it:

Brooklyn true, Requiem for a Dream is a disection of Brighton Beach in particular. One part historical. One part cultural. Two parts bi-polar. Both manic.

The Requiem is for the dream three twenty-something's have to sell heroin and live a trouble free life. We will also put to rest the dream of an elderly widow who before her television appearence wants to fit into the red dress her husband once admired her in.

This is a true-to-life portrayal. Relentless in it's search of More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 12, 2009

Charles rated it:

Am I the only person in the world who thought this book was terrible? From the Amazon reviews, apparently so. The book is all narrative and dialouge. In other words, all telling with virtually no "showing."

And what's up with cramming everyone's dialogue into the same paragraph so you can't always tell who is speaking? Why not just break it normally so it's clear? Or for goodness sake, use quotation marks. And can you get any more pretentious than being too good to u More...

2 comments like (8 people liked it)

Feb 05, 2012

Kimberly rated it:

Hubert Selby Jr. books usually aren't my cup of tea. Requiem is the story of three people for whom drug addiction gradually replaces the best part of themselves, their dreams, as is referred in the title. Selby's style of writing is stream-of-consciousness beatnik, liberally peppered with slang. The book, like others by Selby, is not actually punctuated. Selby skips the rules of grammar and usage, avoiding even the semblance of quotation marks when a character is talking. In doing so, he je More...

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Oct 07, 2011

Joselito rated it:

This didn't "get" me. Not the author's fault. His characters are real: the widow, hooked on tv, obsessed with getting thin, becomes addicted to diet pills which were her vehicle towards a descent to madness (with a little help from an incompetent and corrupt physician); her only son, a junkie, his girlfriend, his buddy and his own girlfriend--all with their heroin-addled brains; their delusions that they are in control of their lives; the demonic power the drug has on them. These made More...

10 comments like (6 people liked it)

Aug 04, 2011

Amy rated it:

Having seen Requiem For a Dream the movie directed by Darren Aronofsky years ago, when I had the opportunity to read the book for a class assignment I jumped on it. I have my reservations with movies that are adapted from novels but I liked the movie enough that it peaked an interest to go back and read the book. I would much rather read a novel and then see the movie that is based on it. Having said this, I really wish I would have approached Requiem with this tactic. Unfortunately since I saw More...

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Mar 19, 2011

H. Anne rated it:

It's been a rather long time since I've read something so intense. A novel where I felt a bit sick inside. Not because of gore or such other things, but just to read the spiral of addiction that consumes everyone. There is no winner. No one comes out on top. No one rises above their choices to make better ones. Depressing? Sure, but I'm not sure how it couldn't be.

Selby Jr.'s style took a bit for me to get into. Probably for the same reason Walsh's Trainspotting as been sitting More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 05, 2011

Jeff rated it:

Although this is an extremely graphic novel, Requiem for a Dream has many meanings to it other than the drug addicts it displays. The story follows four different drug addicts and their dark futures they each have. Three of the four are drug addicts trying to live what they feel is the American Dream, and the other is a widowed mother that has her dreams crushed and turns to diet pills until her mind degenerates.
Although the book isn't bright and happy, it really can bring you to grasp how More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 23, 2008

Mike rated it:

I know that this novel is much older than its movie version. And of course it predates David Carr's much-acclaimed Night of the Gun (which is a more autobiographical, journalistic account of its author's drug-addled years as an addict). Selby also sounds like an inspiration for current urban writers like Richard Price (mostly about NYC?) or Dennis Lehane (who writes mostly about Boston).

I still haven't made it thru' viewing the whole movie (although I think I've tried and started it More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Mar 21, 2010

Rita rated it:

Remember that slow horrible realization you had when you were a kid, when you became conscious of the fact that your parents wouldn't always be there to take care of you and that there are bad things in the world and that we all eventually die alone? This book unearths that feeling from its hiding place in your soul, magnifies it, and plunks it right into the pit of your stomach for 280 pages. There's not a dishonest word in this book - just raw emotion, fear, and hopelessness seeping from every More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 28, 2012

marg rated it:

Yowza.
What is this book about? Well, it's primarily about addiction, and failed dreams, and failed people, and betrayal and deception and corruption and dissatisfaction and (learned) helplessness and loneliness. It's a book about struggling and hitting rock bottom and how cold and lonely the world is when you can't count on anyone.
How's that for a sales pitch? But despite/because of the book's grim premise, I enjoyed it and admired it and was completely with it throughout the twists More...

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May 21, 2009

Christopher rated it:

Hubert Selbey Jr.'s Requiem for a Dream is a hard book to read ... not due so much to its sensitive subject matter, which is frankly riveting, as to Selby's unconventional, stream-of-consciousness prose. The guy barely believes in basic punctuation marks, let alone quotes, paragraph breaks, or dialog attribution. It takes a while to get into it.

Once you do, however, you're rewarded with one of the more honest (and bleak) looks at addiction and the downward spiral it causes in people' More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Aug 03, 2011

Lauren rated it:

This book still haunts me to this day. If you have seen the film be aware that, in my opinion, the novel is much more graphic and entrancing than the screen adaptation. While reading, it is easy to be not just pulled, but yanked full strength, head first into the plot of these unfortunate characters. With equally important, alternating stories Selby mystifies and terrifies the reader. This is more than a typical, trite drug addiction story. Something deeper lies at the heart of this novel a More...

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Oct 30, 2011

Jeremy rated it:

It's fortunate that literary heroin, or 'book smack' as we call it in the mean aisles of the campus library, is both less physically damaging than the powder form, and much less easy to use. And, I suppose, easier to score. Book smack can't be injected into your body and you just sit back and it does its work.

It's more subtle than that.

But, fuck man, i/ll tell ya what, this stuff is some good shit, I mean, yeah, theres rough around the edges moments that if you/re not i More...

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Jan 10, 2010

Lady Ethereal Butterfly rated it:

Requiem for a dream follows the lives of four characters. Each one of their lives is controlled by addiction. It’s a constant struggle to get their next fix. Harry, Marion, and Tyrone’s drug of choice is heroine. They constantly fantasize about getting rich through drug dealing, but in reality it’s ruining them. Sara, who happens to be Harry’s mother, becomes addicted to speed after being prescribed it as a diet pill.

I originally picked up Requiem for a Dream because addiction fasci More...

0 comments like

Oct 04, 2009

Brooke rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

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Jan 18, 2012

Andrew rated it:

I saw the movie first, not out of any strong preference, just because my friends and I love good movies. Heavy movies, strange movies, whatever we can use to one-up each other. We enjoy books, too, but you can't share them the same way, not with the same immediate results. We all watched Requiem, all felt the same brutal messages and thought them beautiful and most of us swore not to ever watch it again. Some of us did later on down the line. At least one of us loves it, still watches it often. More...

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Jan 04, 2012

Katie rated it:

Reading this book was such an incredible journey. This was my second attempt, the first time I tried to read it, I only got 10 pages in before I quit because I hated the writing style (an odd stream of consciousness with little to no punctuation and 70s drug slang). This time I was determined. And really at about 20 pages in, I was completely use to it, and by the middle, I was reading it as easily as any other style. Something about the way it's written, I don't know, makes you feel so engaged, More...

2 comments like

Jul 28, 2011

Amy rated it:

I'm torn between giving this book 3 or 4 stars.
I like the story, but wasn't too impressed by its delivery at times.
The book's dialogue was an interesting change of scenery for me, but I soon got tired of it and found myself rejoicing when Harry and Tyrone weren't speaking.
Also, being a lover of commas, I thought the lack of punctuation was annoying but can understand how it adds to the experience.
I really enjoyed Sara and Marion's characters.
I found Sara's story frighten More...

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Feb 13, 2011

Jeannette rated it:

Maybe I have become too critical lately, but I didn't like this book at all. I didn't enjoy it in any way. The movie was brilliance in its highest form, Aronofsky made miracles. But the book was dull, it lacked the beauty the movie has. I rarely enjoy a movie more than a book, as it often happens(with exceptions like "Girl, Interrupted", "The Lovely Bones" and a few more), but this book was just the stream of consciousness of a few people, random thoughts bearing almost no in More...

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May 22, 2010

Stephie rated it:

For the first quarter of this book I was having a difficult time getting used to the writing style. Selby's almost complete lack of punctuation and things like speech marks made it arduous to read, but believe it or not, you do actually get used to it. Even though there was nothing about the four main characters I could really properly relate to, I still strongly connected with them. In the end, all you really feel is pity. Their drug addictions slowly begin to control them until there is no way More...

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Dec 17, 2011

Sarah rated it:

I had heard that this was meant to be a pretty difficult read, it really isnt. I also heard that the ending was so horrible it will make you want to burn the book or throw it from a high window, it isn't.
Yes the bad grammer and lack of punctuation takes some getting used to, but it does add to the crazy of the characters, without that they would sound normalish. I have seen this film several times and really couldnt say which is better. The book makes you Like Marion more than in the film, More...

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Apr 05, 2011

Tiara rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 21, 2010

Cameron rated it:

"Requiem for a Dream" is a captivating and sad tail about addiction. It is a very dark novel, at one point the main characters shoot up heroin in the back of a morgue. The story is based on Sara Goldfarb, her son Harry, Harry's girlfriend Marion, and Harry's best friend Tyrone. Every single character is eventually overcome by addiction, none of them which lead to a happy ending. Ironically enough, the book itself is quite addicting. Hubery Selby definitely doesn't hold back, this is a More...

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