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Windows On The World
A Novel
by Frederic Beigbeder


9.5

based on 12 reviews
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based on 8 votes
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The French author's latest novel is set in the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11, 2001.

Miramax, 320 pages
03/30/2005
$24.95

ISBN: 1401352235

Fiction
General Literature & Fiction

NOTES:
Translated from the French by Frank Wynne.

All reviews are classified as one of five grades: Outstanding (4 points), Favorable (3), Mixed (2), Unfavorable (1) and Terrible (0). To calculate the Metascore, we divide total points achieved by the total points possible (i.e., 4 x the number of reviews), with the resulting percentage (multiplied by 100) being the Metascore. Learn more...

Publishers Weekly

It is, on all levels, a stunning read.

Kirkus Reviews

Sometimes slight, but always impressive: an important addition to the chorus of heavier, more lifeless tomes on the subject.

Library Journal Patrick Sullivan

It is a powerful, earnest, and in some ways playful novel that successfully blends tragedy and pathos with an irresistible exuberance for life. [1 Jan 2005, p.93]

Salon Laura Miller

The book staggers from full-fledged storytelling to barely veiled memoir to essay to random, canny observation. It's a discombobulated, contradictory work, but it rings true in a way that other stabs at the same topic haven't.

The Spectator Patrick Skene Catling

Perhaps the essential purpose of this terribly clever, powerful, fatalistic book is to make you feel lucky. So far.

The New York Times Book Review Stephen Metcalf

Strangely moving.

The Economist

Now that the international sympathy that the attacks first generated seems to have run dry, many Americans will find this foreigner's fresh grief and incredulity a welcome relief.

The Independent Gordon Burn

Beigbeder's direct address to the reader - sardonic, brattish, drillingly autobiographical, with a constant undertow of breezy self-loathing ("Will I be able to look myself in the eye after publishing this book?") - has the distancing and cooling effect that makes his material nearly bearable.

San Francisco Chronicle Sylvia Brownrigg

While we expect some postmodern teasing about whether Beigbeder's self- portrayal is accurate, the persona who emerges is vain, ambitious, shallow, faithless and self-promoting -- by his own account.

Entertainment Weekly Jennifer Reese

While serving up a few clever insights and pretentious inanities ("People who don't understand lap dancing will never understand America"), this ambitious mess revives the horror of 9/11 but sheds no new light on that day.

Daily Telegraph James Francken

But this book doesn't grapple with the grim truth of 9/11 - it recounts its terrible events in a shamefully reassuring and pious tone.

The Guardian Josh Lacey

Beigbeder is a smart, sarcastic writer who likes to shock; confronted by 9/11, he is not only cowed, but cowardly. When he comes to the climax of his novel -the deaths of his characters, the collapse of the north tower - he refuses to write about it.

The average user rating for this book is 9.5 (out of 10) based on 8 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

M. K. gave it a10:
I love to read. I have never been able to cite a book as my favorite until this one. Every 'minute' of the book is filled with a humor that makes the unbearable, bearable. I cried like I have never before, yet he makes incredible commentary on human nature, modern relationships, Franco-American relatioships. His writing style successfully ranges from Academic to casual. (Having read it in French, I am not sure if the art of language and wit translated). I highly recommend this book.

A-2-A Bboy gave it a10:
very good. a must for all the readers out there

Bojan S gave it a10:
excellent book!

christy gave it a10:
Highly recommend! I dreamed about the characters and cried. Awesome writing!

Melanie C gave it a9:
To be honest, this book is great... even though some of the stories are not really crucial to the writing, most of the remarks are relevant and send us back to our own experience.

demonio p gave it a9:
This is a fiction / non-fiction book in which Beigbeder write about the 9/11 and more... More means ironic commentaries about french and american culture with stereotype characters that makes the reading very funny. This is a sardonic book that definitively not the "serious" americans will like...

Windows On The World A Novel by Frederic Beigbeder

Windows On The World
A Novel
by Frederic Beigbeder