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Giovanni's Room | 
| Author: James Baldwin
Publisher: Delta
Category: Book
List Price: $14.00
Buy Used: $3.19
You Save: $10.81 (77%)
Rating:  81 reviews
Media: Paperback
Pages: 176
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.6
ISBN: 0385334583
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780385334587
ASIN: 0385334583
Publication Date: June 13, 2000
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: some underlineing and notes. a300
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Set in the 1950s Paris of American expatriates, liaisons, and violence, a young man finds himself caught between desire and conventional morality. With a sharp, probing imagination, James Baldwin's now-classic narrative delves into the mystery of loving and creates a moving, highly controversial story of death and passion that reveals the unspoken complexities of the human heart.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 76 more reviews...
 James! October 26, 2008
Sherry Mandel (Pittsburgh)
Giovanni's Room
By James Baldwin
James Baldwin! For me, writing his name sends joy and awe straight to my heart. I have loved him since I was a teenager and found him on a library bookshelf. I devoured as many of his novels as I could find and each was more than satisfying but when I found Giovanni's Room, I found what I had been searching for in my constant reading. A few pages into it and I felt that stab in the gut, that overwhelming rush that one gets when hearing an absolutely perfect piece of music or falling heart-first into a work of art. I know that it was the elegance of Baldwin's writing in this particularly elegant short novel that sent me head over heels in love with words.
Giovanni's Room is a painful story of a young man in Paris who is uncertain and uncomfortable with his sexuality. Baldwin presents a complex series of events with an understated, brilliant use of character and dialogue that lead to the destruction of several characters. Baldwin wrote so very well (or I am so very dense) that it took several readings for me to understand that it was not merely a tale of repressed desires but also a cautionary tale of the cost to others of random, casual acts of selfishness and unkindness. I re-read it every few years. Baldwin died of cancer in December of 1987. I miss him, I really do. Each Christmas I choose a few friends and gift them with Giovanni's Room. It is a deep pleasure to hear their reactions to this author's soulful genius and it is my small way of sending my loving gratitude to James Baldwin.
Sherry Harvey Podobnik
 Excellent September 23, 2008
Mr. Bloom (New York)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
A deeply felt and personal short novel about an American ex-patriot who falls in love with another man in Paris. Baldwin establishes an undeniable tension between David's desire for Giovanni and his desire to live a normal life with his fiancee. There are many quiet and subtle moments in 'Giovanni's Room' that are as good as the best sections in early Hemingway. In a way this novel is more personal and reflective than Baldwin's much esteemed 'Go Tell it On the Mountain,' though it clearly does not have the same political involvement with race relations as the latter does. As always, Baldwin's dialogue is largely impeccable, weaving seamlessly from colloquial interactions, to French, to formal and reserved English. Truly a fine literary achievement.
More people should know about this book August 31, 2008
a. (Upstate, NY)
The story of a man's attempt to avoid coming to terms with his passion and the inconvenience it represents. Love and guilt, sex and death. The writing could not be more beautiful and accurate in places, tho it does have a slightly slow beginning. Once you get past that, only a few pages, it's amazing in its descriptions of passion and desperation, and how love copes under the microscope of peer observation.
I agree with everthing good about this book April 9, 2008
D. D. Betterton (United States)
I read this book about 10+ years ago. I was just going through my books looking for something to read during my commute. When I ran accross this book it was not about what I read 10 years ago it was just a feeling I got. I have started to read this book again and from the first page there was that same feeling again. The yearning and aching feeling of love forbidden and this need to turn page after page knowing that this is a loved that doomed from the onset, but hoping somehow there will happy ending.
Then you realize you are still in real world. I giving this book to my grandaughter.
Good Stuff Doesn't Age, It Matures January 9, 2008
Ford Ka (Planet Earth)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Although advancing in its fifties, Giovanni's Room is a novel which does not get older, it only gets better. It still strikes the reader with the courage and opennes with which James Baldwin tackles his largely unspeakable (at the time of its writing) subject matter. The pains and tortures of search for sexual identity are rendered with real mastery and even if the ending may seem a bow to the demands of an age long gone, it only adds to the psychological truth of the novel. An absolute classic!
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