Passionate Spectator

by Eric Kraft

Book Overview

In Passionate Spectator, memoirist Peter Leroy and his wife Albertine are living by the skin of their teeth in Manhattan. Casting about for a source of income, Peter purchases a book from a homeless peddler, Creative Self-Promotion for Taxidermists, hoping he can adapt its techniques to promote his fledgling business: Memoirs While You Wait. That book opens into a beguiling journey from fiction to truth and back again, involving Peter,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312424841
• ISBN13: 9780312424848
• Release Date: July 2005
• Publisher: St. Martins Press-3PL
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.4" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

A little disappointed.

I'm a fan of Eric Kraft and have read all his books. I've enjoyed them all. But Peter, what's the matter? Is it a mid-life crisis? I have always enjoyed your adventures, but these are too sad. When you sit down to write again, please write some more childhood reminiscences. I understand that you may have wanted to get things off your chest, but the philosophizing is too random. And next time, let's hear more from Albertine and all those quirky characters from your past. Cheer up! Life is too short to be taken quite so seriously.

Read This Book

I don't feel that I need to write a real review, seeing as how there are already tons of rave reviews for Eric Kraft's work. I guess all I can say is read this book. If you don't buy it, check it out from the library. Or buy it for a friend as a present, and then borrow it from them (hehe). It is simply amazing.

"we order our affairs according to our illusions"

It's difficult to describe the pleasures I gain from the work of Eric Kraft. Through his character Peter Leroy, a charming romantic whose daydreams allow him to rewrite not only his past but his present and future as well, Kraft explores the slippery (if not entirely illusory) boundaries between yesterday and today, between reality and imagination, between ourselves and the strangers around us. All of this is accomplished with a delightfully graceful style and an admirable generosity toward his characters and his readers. I can imagine nothing more fulfilling than to live in the world of an Eric Kraft novel, and I am grateful that each new book (and Passionate Spectator is one of his best) allows me this opportunity.