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Jul 22, 2007

Wilson rated it:

Some crappy books are forgettable. A Man in Full still haunts me like a chain-jangling ghost of crappiness. The plot is hamfisted, the "twists" are ludicrous (for a book with the pretensions of this one), and what is supposed to be a look-behind-the-curtain of Atlanta winds up instead being at times an infomercial on Stoicism, a horse-humping voyeur's dream, and a look at the intricacies of west coast meat packing. A part that really bugs me is that there is a line in which one of the More...

2 comments like (13 people liked it)

Jul 02, 2007

Daniel rated it:

Ah, what to say about this book that the other reviewers haven't already said?

One thing - this book seems to be present wherever used books are sold. Every old shop has a surplus of them. It's always on the dollar shelves at book sales. Even at the local thrift stores, it's there, sitting right next to Lonesome Dove and Tim Allen's autobiography.

This book must find its way to second-hand shelves because it's both big AND mainstream. In the age of quick-selling novellas, t More...

0 comments like (6 people liked it)

Mar 08, 2008

Sharon rated it:

I can't believe I bought this 740 page pop seller. It is so unlike what I usually read. I'm glad I broke out of the box and read it. It is well written, fascinating, thought provoking, delightful, fairly light reading, even at 700 pages. I read it in less than a week, as I just couldn't put it down. This is the first Tom Wolfe book I've read.

The story evolves around 4 main characters, and one of them ends up in jail. I decided to skip many of the jail sections, as I cringed at the More...

2 comments like (5 people liked it)

Dec 13, 2007

Chris rated it:

This is a long book at 740 pages. The story builds rather well but the ending does a poor job of wrapping up the story lines. I was very disappointed. Its almost as if Wolfe lost interest in the book and just briefly summed everything up and not very inventively.

I mainly read this book to get a feel for Wolfe writing style. Tom Wolfe is nothing if not good at character development. The level of detail he provides really allows you to see the scene in your mind and know the chara More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jun 09, 2008

Bronson rated it:

I read this about 8 years ago and started listening to it again a few weeks ago while I was doing some home improvment projects. I love tom Wolfe - I think he is one of the best story tellers ever and he can really spin a totally believable tale. He creates so much suspense and anxiety in very real-life kinds of situations. This is the story of 4 main characters as they come to find out what potential lies within each of them. Its great, but it does have a lot of harsh language and some sexu More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Jan 22, 2008

Sean rated it:

This book is Tom Wolfe's Masterpiece. I have read The Electric Kool-aid Acid Test and The Bonfire of the Vanities and this is by far his greatest accomplishment. I was surprised to read the reviews saying the book is contrived and predictable. I thought is was an engaging commentary on American culture. Tom Wolfe is first and foremost a social commentator and this book is no exception. I generally avoid modern authors as the contemporary authors are weak writers, this book is awesome. Igno More...

3 comments like (3 people liked it)

Feb 02, 2009

Toni rated it:

Charles (Charlie) Croker a middle-aged prominent Atlanta businessman finds his life turned up-side down when his ego brings him to a staggering debt load and to the brink of bankruptcy. Charlie is faced with laying off some workers at his food business to free up cash and buy some time. One victim is young Conrad Hensley who later becomes Charlie's therapist. His bankers smell blood, Raymond Peepgass has even secretly put together a syndicate to take over Crocker's office building at a cut rate. More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 21, 2011

David rated it:

The first 772 pages of this novel may rank among some of the best American mainstream fiction ever written. Wolfe certainly took his time in creating his opus maximus and his work ethic is worthy of great respect. I had the sense that Wolfe immersed himself in Atlanta society as the settings and characters seemed incredibly true to life. Wolfe's ear for American dialect showed great range and seemed unfailing in its ability to ring true. The leitmotifs to Epictetus added substance to the work. H More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 15, 2011

Manugw rated it:

WONDERFULL, LIFE IN FULL

This book is about life, and it is not the story (which is very gripping indeed) but the deep development of characters what it counts. Throughout a very detailed physical, satirical and, psychological observation of the ambitions and careers of members of the different social rungs of the Atlanta and America social ladder, Wolfe weaves a story which never falters from beginning to end and maintains the same level of writing style and quality in every chapter. A More...

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Sep 01, 2010

David rated it:

Tom Wolfe's A Man in Full is a thorough, thoughtful portrayal of several individuals in and around a slightly fictionalized Atlanta at the end of the last millennium. I loved it. Wolfe's prose is always clear, and even his lush, indulgent diversions from normal sentence structure serve more as secants than as tangents - they convey in fewer words what lesser writers struggle to convey in paragraphs.

Wolfe's writing is really the epitome of "show, don't tell" - while his ch More...

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Jun 28, 2010

Kate rated it:

I was introduced to Tom Wolfe through Dixon during my time at Furman. I read I am Charlotte Simmons and loved the way Wolfe was able to capture so many aspects of the college experience. I knew the characters he described, they just had different names and lived in my world instead.

I learned very quickly that Wolfe has the keen ability to write about life in ways that make you think he experienced every subject he writes about--when he wrote The Right Stuff, he was John Glenn and des More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 26, 2010

David rated it:

Charlie Croker is one pig-headed cracker from the old-South. Charlie raises horses, fearlessly handles snakes, shoots quail, runs his own fleet of jets, is married to a younger, beautiful woman, and is in general a good ole boy -- even owns an honest ta gawd plantation where all the helpin' folk are black.

Mr. Croker is also a man in prime need of a humbling experience. Charlie is a real estate developer and his most serious problems result from a wide-body ego coupled with backward More...

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Nov 24, 2009

F.R. rated it:

Firstly, one has to doff the cap to Tom Wolfe’s prose style. The writing throughout this long book remains at a consistently high level, and even chapters which I later considered superfluous were brilliantly written. Absolutely there were points where you could see his research poking through, segments where Wolfe proved he’d learnt something in such fine detail and wanted the reader to know that – but the fact that it was rendered so beautifully in English allowed me to accept these little lec More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jul 26, 2011

Dan rated it:

Decent ending if not entirely believable, but I felt that the book had a number of shortcomings. Having read Bonfire of the Vanities, this seemed like a simple rehashing in a different time and place. Many of the same elements: race relations, lifestyles of the rich and famous, dinner parties, election issues, jail, etc. So since it's not new territory, I feel like the book could've been shorter. Also, I noticed Wolfe had a much harder time this time integrating slang into the mix. Jail and yout More...

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Dec 26, 2010

Rahul rated it:

Voices. Voices. Voices. This is what Tom Wolfe does best... voices. His characters jump off the pages with effortless realism that it almost sounds like you are reading actual quotes written by Journalist Wolfe, and not fictional dialogue imagines by Novelist Wolfe.

Why am I giving this 4 stars instead of 5... well A Man in Full was not as good as Bonfire of the Vanities, and there was no option for 4.5 stars. With that said: (1) comparing any novel to Bonfire is inherently unfair, a More...

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Oct 13, 2010

Kerry rated it:

In some ways, A Man In Full is like Wolfe's Bonfire Of The Vanities transplanted from NYC to Atlanta. For example, the protagonist is a wealthy white man whose avarice and pride lead to his tragic downfall, and Wolfe lampoons Charlie Croker in much the same way as he does Sherman McCoy in Bonfire. Several similar themes from Bonfire reappear here, such as racism, ambition, politics, class warfare, and materialism. Also, this novel follows the stories of several characters (at least one of who More...

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Feb 17, 2008

Don rated it:

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

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 01, 2009

Michael rated it:

In 2007 I discovered a weathered copy of this novel on a bookshelf in a Mexican hotel and read it straight through on the long trip home. This hotly anticipated follow-up to "Bonfire of the Vanities" hit bookstores with a thud when it was released. Here's why: 1) Atlanta ain't New York as Grand Canvass for an epic; 2) the book is 50% too long.

But I loved the story of Charlie Croker, the "Man in Full" maverick real estate developer nonetheless. I often work with d More...

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Dec 09, 2011

Jerry rated it:

Tom Wolfe can write. The Right Stuff and Bonfire of the Vanities are two great examples. There are many bright spots in "A Man In Full", for instance, Conrad (the protagonist) ends up in Santa Rita jail, and must struggle surviving in that hostile environment. I thought that was quite well done until fate intervened and conveniently got him out of a bad situation. But all in all, the plot is so convoluted, and the prose is so filled with extraneous minutia, that I struggled to get t More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jun 22, 2010

Lori rated it:

I've had this book on my shelf for what seems like forever. I think I got it when I joined a book club and it was one of those random shot-in-the-dark books that filled out an order. I honestly didn't think I'd be the least bit interested in it, but it surprised me.

It's really hard to tell you what the story is about because the plot is twisted all around itself, but it's basically about Atlanta, race relations, real estate development, prison life, The Stoics, politics, oh, and qua More...

1 comment like

Dec 16, 2009

Billfrog rated it:

I read A Man In Full first, and loved it. When I went to trade it in at a book exchange shop in Ecuador, the owner disparaged it tremendously, saying it was just a rehash of Bonfire of the Vanities. When I finally read that, I found the two books to be exactly the same, and not in a good way. Perhaps you like whichever you read first and are disappointed when you read the second.

1 comment like

Jul 23, 2011

Patrick rated it:

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

1 comment like

Jun 04, 2011

JaclynJune rated it:

I started reading this book on the recommendation of a friend, who said if I wanted to understand what a "real man" was, this book was all I would need.

At first glance, and for a hefty portion of the narrative, the protagonist of this book is an oaf on an epic scale - hardly what I would look to as being the epitome of a "real" man, and not what I thought Wolfe was trying to convey. Real estate tycoon Charlie Croker is racist, sexist, elitist, ignorant, twenty diff More...

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Apr 01, 2008

Gaby rated it:

I wanted to like this book because it's set in Atlanta & I like Tom Wolfe. Um, yep, so I wanted to like it. But weighing in at a gajillion pages, if I ever have to read 20 pages about each ancillary character's italian leather loafers or bowtie type or silk cravat knot's again, I may shoot myself in the face.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 08, 2010

Brent rated it:

I'm really glad I read this book. I found it in a thrift store and happened to remember randomly reading a review of it when it came out over 10 years ago. For no other reason, I bought the book.

I am really impressed by the writing of Tom Wolfe. Reasons why Wolfe is so highly regarded as a writer have become quite evident. This particular book told a complicated and tangled story. It was fun to experience the route Wolfe took through his narrative as all the separate threads of More...

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Jan 27, 2011

Ben rated it:

Why is this book not very good? I wanted to like it. It had impressive moments. The details are meticulous.

I guess I didn't really relate to any of the characters. Their issues are from money and pride. Since I have neither, I wasn't really interested.

But that isn't it. I relate to characters I have nothing in common with all the time (frequently characters die. I've never done this. I relate to them though. I empathize).

I suspect it's because Wolfe is just More...

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Mar 21, 2008

Amanda rated it:

As much as i like the cooky white suit/samuel clemens thing you've got going on Tom, what were you thinking with this one? I for one am puzzled... This book's highlight would have to be the breeding scene at the horse farm, yikes, money shot included. To this book, just say neigh!

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Feb 03, 2011

Steve rated it:

Dear Tom Wolfe,

I am writing to you now about your insistence on describing what every character is wearing in every scene of your 741-page epic, A Man in Full. I am convinced that, had you chosen to avoid doing such a thing as describe each cut of cloth, each brand name, each sartorial style, and its significance based on the character or the setting, etc., this book could have been a much crisper, much leaner, much more manly 400 pages.

Sincerely, Steve

But I g More...

8 comments like (9 people liked it)

Mar 17, 2009

Santica rated it:

The first Tom Wolfe book I have attempted since, "The Right Stuff." I tried to read, "Bonfire of the Vanities" at one time but couldn't get through it. This book is more or less a social commentary on life in the South and primarily takes place in Atlanta. It's a window into many people's lives. A wealthy real estate developer on the verge of losing his fortune, his ex-wife trying to recreate herself at 53, a Harvard educated, dissatisfied banker caught up in a paternity More...

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Oct 07, 2009

B. rated it:

The discussions of the Stoics are interesting and Wolfe has occasional flashes of insight on the racial politics of Atlanta. However, this book signals his growing distance from the ebb and flow of modern culture and basically makes him look like an old fuddy-duddy. In his efforts to distance himself from certain subcultures that appear in the book (notably black American street culture), Wolfe's attempts at haughty clinical descriptions instead read like an old man who doesn't really understa More...

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