“When a girl leaves home at eighteen, she does one of two things. Either she falls into saving hands and becomes better, or she rapidly assum...
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Dec 17, 2009
I can't believe I am actually trying to read this again. This is an oft-flung book, which has fair aerodynamics and, the hardcover copy of which makes a satisfying "thunk" as it hits the wall.
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Jun 08, 2008
kristin
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This is a classic that I could read over and over again. What a story! If you haven't read it, you should! The story not only captures the reader into the story, it gives you a deep sense of mans crazy nature.
I just finished reading this one again. I first read it 7 years ago, and felt is was time to try it again. Dreiser really speaks to my soul!!
"Oh Carrie, Carrie! Oh blind strivings of the human heart! Onward onward, it saith, and where beauty leads, ther More...
I just finished reading this one again. I first read it 7 years ago, and felt is was time to try it again. Dreiser really speaks to my soul!!
"Oh Carrie, Carrie! Oh blind strivings of the human heart! Onward onward, it saith, and where beauty leads, ther More...
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Sep 22, 2008
Jonathan
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In the words of Edmund Wilson, "Dreiser commands our respect; but the truth is he writes so badly that it is almost impossible to read him."
Sister Carrie is a bad book. Not morally bad, unfortunately. That at least would make it interesting. In that respect, nothing in this book would be out of place in a Progressive lecture on social purity. This line from the first page sets the tone: "When a girl leaves her home at eighteen, she does one of two things. Either s More...
Sister Carrie is a bad book. Not morally bad, unfortunately. That at least would make it interesting. In that respect, nothing in this book would be out of place in a Progressive lecture on social purity. This line from the first page sets the tone: "When a girl leaves her home at eighteen, she does one of two things. Either s More...
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Sep 29, 2008
Miranda
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Theodore Dreiser and Emile Zola are both in the naturalist camps of literature, and indeed, I found many similarities between Sister Carrie and Nana. The major difference however, is that Dreiser choses to lead Hurstwood, his formerly affluent male protagonist to a bitter, self-induced end in a flophouse (reminiscent of Edith Wharton's House of Mirth), while Carrie, a lowerclass woman who, it could be argued, does bad things for money and material gain, moves up the socio-econimic ladder to a po
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Dec 16, 2009
aggie
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Carrie's first vision of Chicago is something many of us experience on Friday nights while driving into the city, excited about whatever the night might hold. The rollercoaster of hope and desolation coursing throughout the book was as much a part of life at the turn of the 20th century as it is at the turn of the 21st.
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Jun 05, 2008
Sarah
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Sister Carrie is a deceptively good book. It starts out looking like a simple morality play about the evils of the big city but Carrie is no innocent girl from the country. Apparently Carrie's willingness to use people to better herself without any thought of the consequences caused quite a scandal in its day (1900) and the original manuscript had to be toned down before it could even be published. The 1927 edition I read most certainly was the edited version but it was still modern, crass and e
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Mar 06, 2008
Willa
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I read this book for my book club, and it's definitely one I would not have read otherwise. But, I'm very glad I read it. It's not one of the greatest books I've read and I didn't like any of the characters, but it was well-written, for the most part, and - I've learned - had a huge influence on American literature.
The themes are timeless and it's sad to see how little our society has changed in the last century-plus. Our priorities (as a whole) are just as out-of-whack now as they More...
The themes are timeless and it's sad to see how little our society has changed in the last century-plus. Our priorities (as a whole) are just as out-of-whack now as they More...
Dec 17, 2009
Cat
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I would recommend this book to people interested in the concept of the city. Although its notoriety stems from its "naturalistic" depiction of the characters, I thought it was the depcition of the urban environment of Chicago and New York which stood out.
While the intertwined fates of Carrie, Drouet and Hurstwood occupy the foreground of this book, I found myself consistently drawn to the back ground.
Since Dreiser came up as a newspaperman, this makes a ce More...
Jun 29, 2007
Barrett
rated it:
Seminal American literature, and yet the simplest occurrence in Sister Carrie -- such as Carrie requesting meat -- reads like this:
He caught himself looking at her smiling and she was the very picture of youth and uprightness and the tendency toward productivity and mirth and joviality, all of which were produced from her in a very feminine manner. Yet thoughts dashed inside his mind in a very tumultuous fashion, tumultuous like the threshings of torrents. Carrie has not asked for me More...
He caught himself looking at her smiling and she was the very picture of youth and uprightness and the tendency toward productivity and mirth and joviality, all of which were produced from her in a very feminine manner. Yet thoughts dashed inside his mind in a very tumultuous fashion, tumultuous like the threshings of torrents. Carrie has not asked for me More...
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Jun 10, 2010
Dianah
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At the turn of the century, a country girl leaves home for the big city. At a time when the only choice for women was to marry well, Carrie shows us a different road. While her rabid ambition and vanity indicate her true nature, the society in which she navigates is harsh and unforgiving. Dreiser's portrait of the ugliness of human nature is stunning.
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Feb 09, 2012
Helen
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Sister Carrie is the story of 18-year-old Carrie Meeber, a girl from a small town who comes to live with her sister and her husband in Chicago, in order to find work. Overwhelmed by the lack of interesting, well-paid work for someone with no experience, she winds up working in a shoe factory and is almost immediately thrown into despair by the long hours of mindless, back-breaking work and appalling working conditions.[return][return]On the train to Chicago, she met George Drouet, a fairly succe
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Jan 11, 2009
Jan
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[close:] Theodore Dreiser had a hardscrabble youth and the years of newspaper work behind him when he began his first novel, Sister Carrie, the story of a beautiful Midwestern girl who makes it big in New York City. Published by Doubleday in 1900, it gained a reputation as a shocker, for Dreiser had dared to give the public a heroine whose "cosmopolitan standard of virtue" brings her from Wisconsin, with four dollars in her purse, to a suite at the Waldorf and glittering fame as an act
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Sep 09, 2011
Moses
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We all are in the pursuit of happiness, or as Dreiser puts it, Beauty. But how do we get there? The world spreads out an infinite possibility of choices, some hard, some much harder, and some others easy.
So chose Carrie, Dreisser’s imaginably unforgettable, yet so common an individual in this wonderful novel; that which is easy, the stepping on others as she crosses the bitter parts of her life, using her beauty and charm as bait, abandoning when she is no longer satisfied, reaching More...
So chose Carrie, Dreisser’s imaginably unforgettable, yet so common an individual in this wonderful novel; that which is easy, the stepping on others as she crosses the bitter parts of her life, using her beauty and charm as bait, abandoning when she is no longer satisfied, reaching More...
Jun 20, 2011
Charlotte
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Theodore Dreiser portrayal of the characters (primarily Carrie Meeker, Charles Drouet, and George Hurstwood) during the turn of the century. Most of the story takes place either in Chicago or New York. It begins with Carrie going to Chicago seeking a different life from what she has known in her small town. The accidental meeting with Charles Drouet on the train trip there gives her a glimpse of a wealthier life--something she yearns deeply for, though she at first keeps him at bay because sh
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Nov 30, 2010
Azothgallery
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I somehow had previously missed this 1900 novel, now recommended by a friend: the saga of attractive, young Caroline Meeber, who leaves her provincial Wisconsin home in 1989, at the age of 18, to live with her elder married sister in Chicago. Taking a job in a shoe factory, she is appalled by the coarse manners of her co-workers. After losing this job due to a brief illness, “Carrie” meets Drouet, a well-to-do travelling salesman who “wines-and-dines” her and persuades her to come live with him
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May 24, 2010
Haley
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Although I did enjoy the shortness of "Daisy Miller," I think "Sister Carrie" was my favorite book that I read this year for independent reading. I both sympathize and dislike the main character Carrie Meeber. When she first arrives in Chicago, she seems like a naive, nice girl who admires wealth from afar. But once she experiences a little bit of work in her job she becomes unhappy. It seems like she thinks she's better than her original job in the factory because she critic
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Mar 29, 2010
carl
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Continuing my run of women in early 1900s society; whereas Wharton portrayed the high end, Dreisser sends Sister Carrie from the farm to the boom times of the big city of Chicago.
I found Carrie a good read. Her relationships with men and how she climbs in social ladder with them are the subject, but I found the setting interesting also, the Chicago of 1900. For example, the department store was in its earliest form of successful operation:
" The nature of thes More...
I found Carrie a good read. Her relationships with men and how she climbs in social ladder with them are the subject, but I found the setting interesting also, the Chicago of 1900. For example, the department store was in its earliest form of successful operation:
" The nature of thes More...
May 20, 2009
Colleen
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Carrie is a small-town girl who comes to the big city, Chicago, to live with her sister. She quickly decides that her sister's life is not for her (she'll have none of the life of a working girl) and succumbs to the charms and promises of a man she has met on a train. Of course this man's promises to her are empty and she essentially becomes a kept woman. She quickly becomes bored with Charles Drouet especially when she meets his cosmopolitan friend, George Hurstwood and discovers her talent
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May 13, 2009
Alex
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This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers.
To view it, click here
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Nov 27, 2008
Wendy
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Having almost ruined reading as a pleasure pastime by getting a PhD, even when trying not to I usually skim-read for plot content. Not possible with Sister Carrie: there are these complicated run-on sentences interspersed with staccato dialogue that caused another reviewer (Steve Avery?) to despair and describe the book as "aerodynamic" and "making a satisfying thud in the hardback version."
Put another way, Drescher has such an incredibly lovely way of rolling eve More...
Put another way, Drescher has such an incredibly lovely way of rolling eve More...
Aug 13, 2011
pearl
rated it:
"THE UNEXPURGATED EDITION"
Mom said she found this (where??) worn and yellowed paperback, and thought I'd like like to read it. So I'm going to read it. Even though I've heard that it's a book many either tend to start then want to throw out of windows, or one that readers fall madly and inextricably in love with.
I feel like a very grown-up girl reading this hahaha.
8/13/11: You know it's keeper when it depresses the hell out of you, and you don't mind beca
Mom said she found this (where??) worn and yellowed paperback, and thought I'd like like to read it. So I'm going to read it. Even though I've heard that it's a book many either tend to start then want to throw out of windows, or one that readers fall madly and inextricably in love with.
I feel like a very grown-up girl reading this hahaha.
8/13/11: You know it's keeper when it depresses the hell out of you, and you don't mind beca
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Mar 29, 2011
Stine
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Spoiler alert!!!
This is probably the weirdest titled book, I have ever come across; nothing merits the "sister" in front of Carrie's name. She does have a sister, but she only plays a part in the first few chapters and is never mentioned thereafter.
However, that doesn't detract from a truly great novel. In the beginning of the novel I found Carrie to be exceedingly annoying, but she quite grew on me. The deroute of Hurstwood is quite painful to read (and to wat More...
This is probably the weirdest titled book, I have ever come across; nothing merits the "sister" in front of Carrie's name. She does have a sister, but she only plays a part in the first few chapters and is never mentioned thereafter.
However, that doesn't detract from a truly great novel. In the beginning of the novel I found Carrie to be exceedingly annoying, but she quite grew on me. The deroute of Hurstwood is quite painful to read (and to wat More...
Sep 10, 2009
Cindy
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Sister Carrie is a book worth reading not because it is in any way a masterpiece of literature; but because of the non-judgemental way the author portrays the decisions and plight of a young lady whose choices for quality of life survival are slim due to her socio-economic circumstances. This was a huge risk for an author during that time in the history of U.S. literature; and evidently Dreiser received the wrath of his readers for this story perspective.
It is one of the first widely More...
It is one of the first widely More...
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Dec 06, 2011
Christopher
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Not a very good book, but not very bad either. Sister Carrie moves along at a lackadaisical pace worthy of a snail race, with about the same excitement to boot. The prim and proper prose of Dreiser's work only adds to the general lethargic feeling one gets while reading it. For example, Hurstwood's suicide is described so matter-of-factly that I had to read that passage twice. The only saving grace of the book is the character of Sister Carrie. Her vanity and naiveté, not to mention her stereot
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Oct 16, 2011
Corinne E.
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Sister Carrie
Although I enjoyed this novel immensely, and marvel at the determined if ambivalent ambition of Carrie to use everything and everyone around her in order to rise to success as an actress, reading Theodore Dreiser can be likened to eating a meal in a greasy spoon diner. There is a rushed, vulgar, and gruff quality about the prose--as if an enormous waitress were plunking down in front of you a huge platter of meatloaf, potatoes, and gravy and ordering you to "Eat!" More...
Although I enjoyed this novel immensely, and marvel at the determined if ambivalent ambition of Carrie to use everything and everyone around her in order to rise to success as an actress, reading Theodore Dreiser can be likened to eating a meal in a greasy spoon diner. There is a rushed, vulgar, and gruff quality about the prose--as if an enormous waitress were plunking down in front of you a huge platter of meatloaf, potatoes, and gravy and ordering you to "Eat!" More...
Jun 07, 2010
Wanda
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As my copy is an ebook, I chose this cover because it was the prettiest.
Sister Carrie is a wonderful book to read - honest; it is! Many thanks, Melinda, for leading me to this book.
American consumerism is young and new in this book and everyone wants their share - especially Carrie. Sister Carrie is written with such realism and truism that you will feel as though you are part of the story. The characters are fully developed and they become people with whom you can More...
Sister Carrie is a wonderful book to read - honest; it is! Many thanks, Melinda, for leading me to this book.
American consumerism is young and new in this book and everyone wants their share - especially Carrie. Sister Carrie is written with such realism and truism that you will feel as though you are part of the story. The characters are fully developed and they become people with whom you can More...
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Aug 21, 2011
Kane
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To make up for the lack of alacrity and pith in this particular novel, I will be brief in stating that this novel was a sad disappointment. Having been drawn to Dreiser as cited in the works of those I admire, perhaps I was hoping to find more the greater flower of naturalism rather than this turgid seed.
That being said, to equate my disappointment with the book's failure is to grant myself too much credit, since I can only stand in judgement over my own preferences. It is a book wort More...
That being said, to equate my disappointment with the book's failure is to grant myself too much credit, since I can only stand in judgement over my own preferences. It is a book wort More...
Aug 30, 2011
Penny
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I liked this book but wasn't really thrilled by it, so I read some commentaries to find out what I was missing. I came away thinking that most of the things that made the book seem a little bit plodding and hard to engage with were done deliberately for a purpose. For example:
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-Dreiser was a reporter before he began writing novels, and in his writing sought to report on the world as he saw it. Therefore the novel is short on dialogue and long on narrative about what's going on
Feb 07, 2011
Veronica
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After trudging through The Golden Bowl, I was distressed with the 575 pages before me with Sister Carrie. I need not have been fearful as this was a sheer delight and much like my read of An American Tragedy, I was not at all tempted to miss so much as a single word.
As he did with An American Tragedy, Dresier pulled from his own experiences. His own sister had run away with a married man who had stolen $3,500 similar to Hurstwood’s theft of $10,000 with Sister Carrie. In that vain, More...
As he did with An American Tragedy, Dresier pulled from his own experiences. His own sister had run away with a married man who had stolen $3,500 similar to Hurstwood’s theft of $10,000 with Sister Carrie. In that vain, More...
Mar 04, 2011
Cheryl
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I agree with some reviewers that the Chicago descriptions were the most powerful part of this work. I lived in Chicago 85 years or so after Dreiser, and I could see the ghosts of Carrie's buildings and streets rise up to overlay my memories of the same places. As the introduction notes, the story was a hot potato when it was first published, and there is lot of realism, I think, in Dreiser's way of presenting people who are not self-reflective about their lives or the society they live in. But d
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