What Ever: A Living Novel

By Heather Woodbury

Book Overview

"May be the nearest thing to an American Ulysses . . . wildly funny and infinitely sad."
--Fintan O'Toole, The Irish times

Focusing on the lives of more than a dozen characters--among them the Oregon rave boy Skeeter; the progressive-thinking octogenarian Violet, remembering her life from her bohemian youth in prewar Paris to her jazz-clubbing in postwar Greenwich Village; and the street-smart prostitute Bushie, holding forth on the profanity of the world--Heather Woodbury has forged a unique kind of fiction that combines the immediacy of performance art with the narrative structure and subtle characterization of a traditional novel. Taking off from her acclaimed one-woman show of the same title, Woodbury continually surprises in this novel with her ability to create new forms while always locating the unique, resonant humanity that links all the characters to one another--and to the reader.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0571211720
• ISBN13: 9780571211722
• Release Date: September 2003
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Length: 331 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.5" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

What - evuuurrrrrrrr!

I read this book and thought it is good. The violet character was outragously funny and wasn't "cheapened" at all like the "compassionate konservatif" said. This book is for every body with a sense of humor. What - evuuuuurrrrrrrrrr!

The Living Novel really lives!

Heather Woodbury's book is lively, imaginative, and shockingly good-hearted. As a gathering of performance scripts, it draws the reader into the characters portrayed, to mouth their words and feel the weight of their rhythm and their passion. You have to take Woodbury's place as the actor, and you can smell her presence. I have never seen her perform, but I'll go out of my way to do so now. She likes to mine moments of intimate revelation. She is an exhibitionist whose sympathetic nature values the juicy bits in the human heart that people usually hide as objects of desire or shame.The central characters are two teenaged girl friends and the boy they love, who loves them both. This overly tight triangle causes them to drift away from one another, though their love remains unabated, following paths of their own heart's making. The guidance of school and family fall away. They have become "ravers," buoyed on the waves of Ecstasy and weed, to which they owe allegiance but not addiction. Clove floats northward on a quest to free the "Friendly Ghost Cobain" from its bondage. Skeeter hitchhikes across to the US to NYC for advice on love from his favorite aunt, a high class prostitute, who practices witch craft. Sable remains behind trying to keep in touch with both. The language that they use is remarkable, imaged filled, highly mannered, flowery, but muscular in a way that enables the them to articulate their intentions in delicate, even dangerous situations. It glides easily into poetry with a melody and richness of image flow that highlights the scenes in way reminiscent of Shakespeares in Midsummer Night's Dream. It is addictive.In the preface to the book Woodbury says, after quoting Steinbeck on this matter, that she has "attempted to do [her] part in recording all the particularities of American speech that still hang on." There are many other kinds of characters in this book. Each scene is succeeded by another with a different place, cast, and set of dialects. The characters are recurrent, and after a while, a set of plots begins to emerge. One of these is in strong counterpoint to that of the ravers. Its central character, Bushie, is a down and out whore, doing crack on the streets of Hell's Kitchen. Her scenes are harsh and dark, but they too reflect Woodbury's love of the human heart.The book is like an extra-large gift-box of See's assorted candy.As you read, you take one bon-bon after another. You like some better than others, but in the end you eat them all with pleasure. This book is that kind of a gift.

RAD!!!!!!!!

WHOOOOOOOOO! Whatever rocks my world! Old Ladies! Corporate dudes! California teenagers on hitchhiking odesseys! Anyone who doesn't like this book is totally lacking a sense of humor!What...ever.Rave on people!

Brilliant and Hilarious

Phrases from "Whatever" followed me around for weeks after I read it - particularly the mellifluous ravings of Clove... This book brilliantly draws together the far-flung threads of a dozen or so character's lives and knits them into a complex web of interactions. Great social comentary and really funny!

This book is one of the best I've read all year!

I LOVED this book. It is outrageous, funny,and deeply moving. Woodbury tells the story of a dozen seemingly unrelated characters on both sides of the continent with such realism and feeling that you can't help sharing in their laughter, their tears, and the general splendid weirdness of Whatever.