Forgiveness

by Jim Grimsley

What a great pleasure it always is to watch Jim Grimsley's estimable sensibility at work observing and deconstructing the foibles and follies of modern culture. In Forgiveness he exposes, with... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0292716699
• ISBN13: 9780292716698
• Release Date: February 2007
• Publisher: University of Texas Press
• Length: 145 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.3" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Reeling with shock

Grimsley's Charley Stranger rants, bitches and moans against his universe and his family with a fresh, real verisimilitude that really clicks over the pages of this slender and very funny novel. I've read my share of chick lit, and at first glance this viciously amusing book would appear to be a male version of the genre. Charley's wife is a woman so evil Dell Comics could use her as a supervillain. Charley himself is a very big kid, dreaming about being in love with the Asian actress in a TV car commercial, eating too much, drowning in vodka, and exchanging nasty insults with his wife at the kitchen table because neither has a job or any intention of getting one. Charley is undersexed, small of penis, his sexuality somewhat indeterminate. But just when you think you can settle comfortably in Charley's fantasy world and come out with some insights into male humor, Grimsley does what chick lit authors so rarely do. He delivers. He follows the flaws of his human character all the way out to their logical end. What do I know about literature? But Forgiveness felt like a very great book indeed, fresh and new and bitingly funny in its conception and barreling towards a conclusion that left me reeling.