The Folded World

by Amity Gaige

Book Overview

'The Folded World' is the story of an idealistic, young social worker drawn into the lives of his mentally-ill clients. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1590512480
• ISBN13: 9781590512487
• Release Date: May 2007
• Publisher: Other Press (NY)
• Length: 294 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.4" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

lush prose, engaging story

Some novels are richly written on the word and sentence level, and they are best read slowly with care paid to the precise language. Many more novels are well-constructed with compelling characters and are easy to read. To me, the best novels are both, and The Folded World fits into this category. If you're not a particularly careful reader (you just want a "good read"), you can fly through this book--getting to know the complex characters, seeing their conflicts through, and disappearing into the "folds" of their world. You may or may not realize that it's beautiful, precise writing that makes it such a satisfying read, but you'll be satisfied. If you like to read with more attention to the diction, imagery, and techniques of the author, you're sure to see the poetry in Gaige's writing. The first five or ten pages are among the most well-crafted I've ever read. And the rest of the book is lovely, too.

Worker gets too social

Alice and Charlie are a naïve and handsome young couple who have an idyllic marriage with twin daughters. Alice has given up on college and career to look after her mother, Marlene, and Charlie is a dedicated idealistic social worker, dealing with psychotic patients. A serpent enters paradise as Charlie become a workaholic, overly involved with one of his clients, Opal, and Alice gets slightly entangled with another one, Hal. I was a little put off by the ethereal sentimentality at the beginning, describing Alice and Charlie's childhoods, but that may be just me. I tend to like dry wit and harsh satire. I thought Alice and Charlie were a little to good to be true. It's different strokes for different folks. I thought the parts describing the illnesses of Opal and Hal were very good, but it's precisely those that the New York Times critic disliked. Gaige seem to know what working with chronic psychotic patients is like. I'd recommend this to anyone contemplating a career in social work.

A Common Plot

The book has a common plot of boy meets girl and then life happens. The book is wonderfullly written and like life has love, anger, anxiety, disappointment etc. Life is a journey fraught with the unexpected. Gaige's prose has a poetic quality and her characters are real. The book is excellent.

A love story with wit and grace.

Alice and Charlie come from very different worlds. How they meet, how they delight in one another, and how they live together in the midst of their very profound differences is part of the magic of this love story. It is a love story that opens to embrace the light and shadow of two human beings with wit and grace.

Excellent Sophomore Effort!

This book was engaging from the start, drawing the reader deeper into the lives of the two main characters with the turning of each page. I found myself thinking about the novel while at work, eager to get home and keep reading. The writing is lucid, gracefully capricious, and its unfixedness is both surprising and refreshing. I highly recommend this book to anyone.