The Graduate
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3.7 • 26 Ratings
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
The novel about an aimless young man in 1960s America that inspired the classic film: “Moves with the speed and drive of a runaway locomotive.” —Chicago Sunday Review
When Benjamin Braddock graduates from a small eastern college and comes home to his parents’ house, everyone wants to know what he’s going to do with his life. Benjamin has no idea. Feeling empty, embittered, and adrift, he stumbles into an affair with Mrs. Robinson, the wife of his father’s business partner. But then he falls in love with a woman closer to his own age: Mrs. Robinson’s daughter.
A scathingly entertaining tale of idealism and materialism, corruption and conformity, The Graduate is both a darkly comic love-triangle tale and a sharp look at postwar suburbia.
“He contrives some ludicrously funny situations and he keeps his story racing.” —The New York Times Book Review
“His novel makes you want to laugh and it makes you want to cry.” —The Plain Dealer
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Graduating college provided no answers for Benjamin Braddock; it only furthered his frustration and angst with the world. Upon returning home, his disdain leads him into an affair with Mrs. Robinson, the wife of his father's business partner. However, no sooner does Braddock score with her than he is off courting her daughter, Elaine, in some perverse rendition of the Oedipal complex. Brick provides a strong narration of the text and executes believable voices for his male and female characters, as usual. His delivery of Benjamin is distinct enough to not seem derivative of Dustin Hoffman's performance in the 1967 film adaptation. However, Brick often portrays Benjamin as a whiney and petulant dolt much more than Webb's spare and sly 1963 novel suggests, which undermines the character's narrative. A Washington Square Press paperback.
