Product Description Seven Types of Ambiguity is a psychological thriller and a literary adventure of breathtaking scope. Celebrated as a novelist in the tradition of Jonathan Franzen and Philip Roth, Elliot Perlman writes of impulse and paralysis, empty marriages, lovers, gambling, and the stock market; of adult children and their parents; of poetry and prostitution, psychiatry and the law. Comic, poetic, and full of satiric insight, Seven Types of Ambiguity is, above all, a deeply romantic novel that speaks with unforgettable force about the redemptive power of love.
The story is told in seven parts, by six different narrators, whose lives are entangled in unexpected ways. Following years of unrequited love, an out-of-work schoolteacher decides to take matters into his own hands, triggering a chain of events that neither he nor his psychiatrist could have anticipated. Brimming with emotional, intellectual, and moral dilemmas, this novel-reminiscent of the richest fiction of the nineteenth century in its labyrinthine complexity-unfolds at a rapid-fire pace to reveal the full extent to which these people have been affected by one another and by the insecure and uncertain times in which they live. Our times, now.
Reviews:
Loudan (USA: NY) (2014/11/06): crease in front cover. previously mooched book karichards (USA: IN) (2016/01/02): No modern novel needs to be this long. Perlman’s writing style seems an attempt at eloquence but in the end comes off as a pompous display of the variety of his vocabulary. "seven types of ambiguity" is full of personal philosophical ramblings and egotistical proof of his knowledge base and ability to research. This story would have made a much better film than it did a novel. I would read this author again, but only if the story were at least a third of the length of "seven types." Even the Rashomonian feel could have remained at this length.
