From the Bookshelf of Reading with Style…

The Counterfeiters

André Gide

Start date: March 1, 2014

Finish date: May 31, 2014

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May 01, 2014 Rosemary rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 1001-books

A beautiful and in parts painfully sad story of all kinds of love, misunderstandings and falseness, with strange twists and turns that mirror life. Gay relationships are central but not exclusively so, and it's not all sexual relationships either - there are friendships, parents and children, and a grandfather and grandson - and there's also some authorial intervention, as the main character plans to write a novel of the same name. ...more

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Aug 23, 2022 Bucket rated it really liked it

Shelves: world-lit, 1001-read-all-editions, culture, psychology, literary, classic, reviewed, tragedy, life-and-death, identity

I went in a bit blind, but I really enjoyed this. Gide takes on a lot here:

-what it takes to write and a contribution to transforming the novel as a form
-a huge cast of characters with complex, changing identities and relationships
-many perspectives, and both narrative and journal formats
-subtle gay subtext (in 1925)
-psychological musings that pack a punch
-and also a plot with turns and surprises

It's not all perfect and some threads get dropped, but it's pretty close. And I love the abrupt cresc ...more

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