Big As Life
1966
First Published
3.36
Average Rating
218
Number of Pages
This novel presents a "what if" scenario. One day the people of New York City awake two find a couple of 2000-foot-tall figures standing in the harbor. The story describes the various ways that people cope with this event over the course of the next twelve months. I think that what Doctorow was going for is the idea that death looms over all of us, and is its own type of monstrosity, even though most of us going about our daily lives are unaware of the impending doom. Or something like that, anyway. Overall, I was a bit disappointed. "I don't know if it's courage," Red said. He was squinting to keep Wallace in focus. "There's no choice. You just believe that if you work hard and go for what you want, if you have any talent the order of the world will reward you. I don't think there's any other choice. You make believe, that's what. You make believe that there is some order and that what will happen is up to you"
Avg Rating
3.36
Number of Ratings
22
5 STARS
14%
4 STARS
27%
3 STARS
50%
2 STARS
0%
1 STARS
9%
goodreads
Author
E.L. Doctorow
Author · 22 books
History based known novels of American writer Edgar Laurence Doctorow. His works of fiction include Homer & Langley, The March, Billy Bathgate, Ragtime, The Book of Daniel, City of God, Welcome to Hard Times, Loon Lake, World’s Fair, The Waterworks, and All the Time in the World. Among his honors are the National Book Award, three National Book Critics Circle Awards, two PEN Faulkner Awards, The Edith Wharton Citation for Fiction, and the presidentially conferred National Humanities Medal. In 2009 he was short listed for the Man Booker International Prize honoring a writer’s lifetime achievement in fiction, and in 2012 he won the PEN Saul Bellow Award given to an author whose “scale of achievement over a sustained career places him in the highest rank of American Literature.” In 2013 the American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded him the Gold Medal for Fiction.
