The Village: A Novel

By David Mamet

Book Overview

One of America's most explosively talented playwrights offers a forceful novel, full of incisive dialogue and striking interior monologues, about life in a secluded, mysterious, and complex New... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0316545724
• ISBN13: 9780316545723
• Release Date: January 1994
• Publisher: Little Brown & Co
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 0.8" x 5.8"

Customer Reviews

Great style, good story

This is the first novel by Mamet, one of America's best playwrights, and a good screenwriter. It has a lot in common with Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, which is one of my favorite books. The Village delivers a slice of life in a quiet, anonymous village somewhere in the eastern U.S. The chapters jump around from person to person, playing out how their lives intertwine. Mamet's writing is fascinating. His dialogue is masterful, giving the reader just enough to get the gist of what someone says. Likewise, his narration is distant, noticeably so in many parts. He often goes through most of a chapter referring to a person as "The Man" or "The Soldier," giving the novel an everyman quality, but also driving home the theme of the book: that even a small town, where everyone knows everyone else by name, can be a very lonely place. Overall, I didn't like The Village as much as Winesburg, but it left me with the same calm, melancholy feeling. A good and, from a writing craft standpoint, educational read.