Disponible:*
Bibliothèque | Type de document | Numéro de cote topographique | Nombre d'enregistrements enfants | Emplacement | Statut | Réservations du document |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Recherche en cours... Branch | Book | FIC WOLFE, S. | 1 | Fiction Collection | Recherche en cours... Inconnu | Recherche en cours... Indisponible |
Recherche en cours... Central | Book | WOL | 1 | Fiction Collection | Recherche en cours... Inconnu | Recherche en cours... Indisponible |
Recherche en cours... Central | Book | WOLFE S. | 1 | Fiction Collection | Recherche en cours... Inconnu | Recherche en cours... Indisponible |
Recherche en cours... South | Book | FICA WOLF | 1 | Fiction Collection | Recherche en cours... Inconnu | Recherche en cours... Indisponible |
Relié avec ces titres
Commandé
Résumé
Résumé
An archaeologist from the East, a former art dealer and pot thief, the spirit of the Parrot Trainer trapped in an ancient bowl, a renegade Indian and a French social theorist and the team filming him all clash with each other and provoke the locals during an unexpectedly dangerous trip in New Mexico. Tweaking knee-jerk political correctness and academia, Wolfe sets his novel against a rich archaeological and anthropological background, and deals with some of the fields' most controversial issues. Witty, sexy and rife with local colour, this novel of ideas has magic realism and a tender love story at its core.
Critiques (3)
Critique du Publishers Weekly
Wolfe draws knowledgeably on the culture of a vanished New Mexican tribe in his latest novel of the contemporary West (after The Lake Dreams the Sky), but fails to breathe much life into his present-day protagonists. Jack Miller is a swaggering, play-by-his-own-rules art collector who has made a fortune peddling forged Southwestern antiquities. Now in retirement, he discovers the body of a German tourist who had happened upon a major find: a hidden cache of pottery belonging to the Mimbres, a Southwestern tribe that died out long before Columbus even considered the New World. Jack locates the cache and grabs the prize piece, a bowl depicting a beautiful parrot trainer, but-perhaps due to the effects of an insect sting-the female spirit of the trainer begins to haunt Jack's imagination. There's also a real-life woman to contend with, archeologist Lucy Perelli, whose moral approach to pottery hunting clashes with Jack's more fluid ethic. As Wolfe steers Jack and Lucy toward the expected romance, they are joined by a clownish French theorist named Henri Bash and his film crew, and trailed by two lowlife characters called Rat and Raw Bone. Despite their constant banter, Jack and Lucy don't have much chemistry, and the brief discussion of white exploitation of American Indian culture is too lightweight to salvage a predictable plot. Readers with an interest in the Southwest will enjoy Wolfe's playful take on the culture, but those further afield won't find much to hold their attention. Regional author tour. (Feb. 1) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Critique de Kirkus
A witty send-up of antiquarians and academics by Wolfe (The Lake Dreams the Sky, 1998, etc.) combines a dead German anthropologist, a trendy French postmodernist, a Native American pottery forger, and a shady art dealer for a southwestern comedy of errors. Jack Miller, dealer in Native American artifacts, is in Lacuna Canyon one day when a Ford Taurus drives off the canyon ledge above him and lands a few feet away. Inside are the mortal remains of a German anthropologist, along with a map and journal describing the location of a Mimbre burial site. This is Jack's lucky day: The Mimbre are an extinct tribe famed for their extraordinary pottery, and, before laws were passed restricting its sale, Jack made good money buying and selling Mimbre pieces. He hurries to the site and discovers an antiquarian's dream: a tomb filled with rare Mimbre artifacts in perfect condition. When he secretly sends a bone fragment to a local lab for dating estimates, however, all hell breaks loose: The skeleton belongs to a tribe never seen in the region before, providing evidence of prehistoric migrations that archaeologists have been arguing over for decades. The discovery is leaked to Lucy Perelli, director of the Archaeological Preservation Fund, who descends on Lacuna Canyon in a whirlwind, desperate to find the site before anyone else. But she's not exactly alone, since the French social theorist Henri Bashe, who met her at an Albuquerque conference, insists on coming along--together with the film crew that's shooting a Reel TV documentary of him. At the palatial home of wealthy art collector Sylvia Siskin, Lucy discovers the Indian art forger Kills the Deer, who worked with Jack in the past and now reluctantly agrees to help Lucy find him. Jack, meanwhile, is trying to figure out how much loot he can get away with before the Treasury Department and State Police track him down. Subtle, sophisticated fun that will appeal to anyone who has ever suffered through an academic conference--or an episode of Antiques Roadshow. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Critique du Library Journal
This is a novel about archaeology, academia, postmodernist theory, enduring love, motorcycle gangs, documentary filmmaking, rain, impermanence, and life in the Southwest, past and present. Jack Miller is a reformed looter of American Indian antiquities who illegally tracks down one last Mimbres bowl, enchanted by its image of a female parrot trainer. Bitten by a scorpion while retrieving the bowl from a cave, Jack hallucinates (or does he?) that the beautiful woman comes to life in his living room and talks about her people, the Mimbres, who lived in New Mexico 1000 years ago. Montana filmmaker Wolfe, author of The Lake Dreams the Sky and The Woman Who Lives in the Earth, has created a surprisingly sweet narrative both real and surreal that places the reader vividly in the Southwest. There is a bibliography for readers who wish to learn more about Southwestern cultures and archaeology. Recommended for all public libraries.-Lisa Bier, Southern Connecticut State Univ., New Haven, CT (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.