The Balloonist

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As in the best of Jules Verne or Albert Sanchez Pinol, The Balloonist is a gripping and surreal yarn, chilling and comic by turn, that brilliantly reinvents the Arctic adventure.It is July 1897, at the northernmost reach of the inhabited world A Swedish scientist, an American journalist, and a young, French speaking adventurer climb into a wicker gondola suspended beneath a huge, red and white balloon The ropes are cut, the balloon rises, and the three begin their voyage an attempt to become the first people to set foot on the North Pole, and return, borne on the wind Philip Pullman says in his foreword Once I open any of MacDonald Harris s novels I find it almost impossible not to turn and read on, so delightful is the sensation of a sharp intelligence at work In The Balloonist , we see all of his qualities at their best. Best Read Books The Balloonist By MacDonald Harris – kino-fada.fr There is always a rough edge in tech, where afficionados tinker with half known science Nowadays it might seem that physics frontiers are out of reach of amateur enthusiasts, and that you need a doughtnut shaped tunnel many kilometres long buried under the middle of Europe and gigajoules of energy to find out anything new, but there are still unfashionable and expensive things to do, like scan the sky for approaching asteroids, that are, I believe stillor less in the hands of communities There is always a rough edge in tech, where afficionados tinker with half known science Nowadays it might seem that physics frontiers are out of reach of amateur enthusiasts, and that you need a doughtnut shaped tunnel many kilomet...The book jacket description and the quote from Philip Pullman about not being able to stop turning pages once one starts reading this book led me to expect a very different type of story a literary Arctic adventure that would primarily focus on getting a balloon to the North Pole Sounded exciting Instead the book s primary focus is the tedious love affair between two ridiculously pretentious people, narrated in fittingly pretentious prose Needlessly lengthy sentences, no missed opportunity The book jacket description and the quote from Philip Pullman about not being able to stop turning pages once one starts reading this book led me to expect a very different type of story a literary Arctic adventure that would primarily focus on getting a balloon to the North Pole Sounded exciting Instead the book s primary focus is the tedious love affair between two ridiculously pretentious people, narrated in fittingly pretentious prose Needlessly lengthy sentences, no missed opportunity to use a big word, foreign phrases that aren t translated, etc., etc Luisa, our protagonist s love interest, is a stereotypically enigmatic woman who distracts our scientist hero from his noble...WTF The only reason I gave this two stars was because the ending, where view spoiler everyone dies hide spoiler , was extremely satisfying.Yes, hello, do you need a book where half of it is an expedition to the North Pole in a hot air balloon and the other half is a mixed up remembrance of a gender bending romance Would you like all of the people involved to be absolute weirdos How do you feel about page long walls of introspective text Sounds good Yes All right HAVE I GOT A BOOK FOR YOU..It s, uh, it s this one..What Do you needFine.It took a while to get into, which can be a problem in my current child related Yes, hello, do you need a book where half of it is an expedition to the North Pole in a hot air balloon and the other half is a mixed up remembrance of a gender bending romance Would you like all of the people involved to be absolute weirdos How do you feel about page long walls of introspective text Sounds good Yes All right HAVE I GOT A BOOK FOR YOU..It s, uh, it s this one..What Do you needFine.It took a while to get into, which can be a problem in my current child related attention deficit problem, but luckily ...Like many people, when I saw that Philip Pullman had written an introduction for this book I was immediately intrigued Alas, MacDonald Harris is no Philip Pullman The first 150 pages are tough but rewarding the way Harris twines his plots creates a unique reading experience, continually lurching us between the present tense narrative of an arctic balloon expedition and the tumultuous past tense romance between our narrator and a vivacious young woman named Luisa But about two thirds of the Like many people, when I saw that Philip Pullman had written an introduction for this book I was immediately intrigued Alas, MacDonald Harris is no Philip Pullman The first 150 pages are tough but rewarding the way Harris twines his plots creates a unique reading experience, continually lurching us between the present tense narrative of an arctic balloon expedition and the tumultuous past tense romance between our narrator and a vivacious young woman named Luisa But about two thirds of the way through the book the pace lags, which is forgivable, and Harris pulls the rug out from under us, revealing that two characters are actually the same person, which is less forgivable This twist is handled so sheepishly, it s almost as though Harris is embarrassed to have resorted to such narrative trickery and doesn t want to completely acknowledge what he s done until the novel is nearly over The prose and imagery are frequently beautiful, but tho...An obsessive explorer battles the Arctic elements, his patriarchal limitations, in this gorgeous and peculiar novel Lyrical descriptions of nature interspersed with a compelling an idiosyncratic romance Excellent stuff, I ll be looking forfrom the author.I wound up enjoying this book a lotthan I initially expected Its prose is easy to read and peppered with creative metaphors yet sometimes challenging to follow It s an internal monologue and so much of it takes place in memory, dream, or fantasy The protagonist is pretty unlikeable throughout, being a prime specimen of Victorian misogyny and male privilege as he relives recounts his relationship with a rather unconventional woman He is obsessed with his self concept as a scientist I wound up enjoying this book a lotthan I initially expected Its prose is easy to read and peppered with creative metaphors yet sometimes challenging to follow It s an internal monologue and so much of it takes place in memory, dream, or fantasy The protagonist is pretty unlikeable throughout, being a prime specimen of Victorian misogyny and male privilege as he relives recounts his relationship with a rather unconventional woman He is obsessed with his self concept as a scientist and his fate to make the voyage during which the book takes place into the unknown, to face his own mortality But all of that pretension is degraded slowly by the chaos that Luisa brings to his life, bringing into question his concept of who he is, what gender means, and what decides our destiny in life I was completely unconvinced for most of the book that the relationship with Luisa and his retreats into memory daydream were real vs representations of his own existential stru...I picked this up on my boyfriend s bookshelf, with the tantalizing premise of an artic explorer to the North Pole by hot air balloon I wasn t expecting the beautiful language, the unusual and catch me off my guard metaphors, that I couldn t have predicted, but couldn t have beenprecise He once described a man yodelling as separating egg yolks in one s mouth The story itsel...This novel defies classification It feels like it could be steampunk, with the science and very Vernian approach to the plot driving story of a balloon expedition to the Noth Pole But the author also explores sexual roles and communication within the strange love affair between the 2 main characters.The book jacket says this novel was nominated or the National book award, but in checking the National Book award web site, I see that it did not make it to the finalist round I m not surprised This...Not a bad writer, but he uses a lot of unnecessarily big words Never use a fifty cent word when a ten cent word will do, that s what I say I finished the first hundred pages or so without much interest except in the love scene If you re into historical fiction and antiquated navigation technol...

The Balloonist
  • English
  • 22 February 2018
  • Hardcover
  • 273 pages
  • 0374108749
  • MacDonald Harris
  • The Balloonist