Ratings29
Average rating4.2
The award-winning poet reinvents a genre in a stunning work that is both a novel and a poem, both an unconventional re-creation of an ancient Greek myth and a wholly original coming-of-age story set in the present. Geryon, a young boy who is also a winged red monster, reveals the volcanic terrain of his fragile, tormented soul in an autobiography he begins at the age of five. As he grows older, Geryon escapes his abusive brother and affectionate but ineffectual mother, finding solace behind the lens of his camera and in the arms of a young man named Herakles, a cavalier drifter who leaves him at the peak of infatuation. When Herakles reappears years later, Geryon confronts again the pain of his desire and embarks on a journey that will unleash his creative imagination to its fullest extent. By turns whimsical and haunting, erudite and accessible, richly layered and deceptively simple, Autobiography of Red is a profoundly moving portrait of an artist coming to terms with the fantastic accident of who he is. A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist "Anne Carson is, for me, the most exciting poet writing in English today." --Michael Ondaatje "This book is amazing--I haven't discovered any writing in years so marvelously disturbing." --Alice Munro "A profound love story . . . sensuous and funny, poignant, musical and tender." --The New York Times Book Review "A deeply odd and immensely engaging book. . . . [Carson] exposes with passionate force the mythic underlying the explosive everyday." --The Village Voice
Series
2 primary booksRed is a 2-book series with 2 primary works first released in 1998 with contributions by Anne Carson.
Featured Prompt
2,097 booksWhen you think back on every book you've ever read, what are some of your favorites? These can be from any time of your life – books that resonated with you as a kid, ones that shaped your personal...
Reviews with the most likes.
If you spot someone wearing “a red singlet with white letters that read[s] TENDERLOIN,” it's probably me.
Holy shit. I can't, in all honesty, give this book 5 stars yet, because I feel like I've got at least two other re-readings ahead before the full force of Carson's work starts to really sink in. For now, though, all I can say is that I was slightly stunned...by the eloquence of her prose-poem form, the unpacking & reimagining & evolving of Greek myth that puts Eugenides to shame, and by her remarkable ability to surprise. Much gratitude to the friend who insisted I read it :)
I most likely missed most of the nuances, but I enjoyed listening to it.