Cheap The Sleeping Father (Today Show Book Club #20) (Book) (Matthew Sharpe) Price

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Customer Reviews of The Sleeping Father (Today Show Book Club #20)

A laugh out-loud, modern day Shakespearian comedy
This book is a modern day Shakespearian comedy, and the bard would be proud of Mr. Sharpe. This is not a tragic novel in the least - it is a beautifully written, laugh-out-loud romp that reminds us that a love is more powerful (and funny) when it is shared with the community. <
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>Sharpe creates a liminal world filled with the beauties and mysteries of life, love, happiness, and teenage angst. More importantly, he follows Shakespeare's lead. This book has it all: the beauty (and mysteries) of father/daughter relationships, the beautiful guide, the mentor, and the Iago villian. Furthermore, this book is sprinkled with monologues, dream worlds, reliance on faith and God, and the promises of heartaches and new beginnings. I have not been this amazed with a modern day book in a long time. <
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A good youth reader
A better youth reader than Catcher in the Rye. The young people in this book are finding their way through adolescence. The adults seem like relatively real people. Plot is stretched a little beyond the reasonable for dramatic effect. Often what the boy, Chris, says and reflects about things is too verbal and penetrating for his age, like he says stuff that only years later would one realize might have been just the right reaction in the moment. But that prescience, that spot on, delicious riposte made the book delightful to me.

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Few highlights
The novel was recommended in a Swiss newspaper and it sounded like an interesting book. However, I found it rather disappointing. The plot is weak and the ending contrived and implausible. To my mind Sharpe didn't succeed in mixing satire, social realism, psychological insight and fantasy into a literary satisfying text. There are some real highlights, individual scenes and descriptions and dialogues, in which the author shows talent. But there are not enough to create a great novel.