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The Amalgamation Polka
by Stephen Wright


8.7

based on 16 reviews
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based on 4 votes
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Set in mid-19th century America, this darkly comedic novel from Wright ("Meditations in Green") follows the adventures of Liberty Fish and his colorful family, including a tour through the Civil War.

Knopf, 304 pages
02/14/2006
$24.95

ISBN: 067945117X

Fiction
General Literature & Fiction
Historical Fiction

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...

Booklist Brendan Driscoll

Although it's tempting to label the story Faulknerian for its setting and precise, if playful, prose, Liberty's resemblance to Huck Finn is too strong to ignore. [15 Dec 2005, p.25]

Library Journal Edward B. St. John

Unlike recent historical novels, such as Charles Frazier's "Cold Mountain" or E.L. Doctorow's "The March," his book offers a decidedly postmodern take on the Civil War entirely appropriate to the theme of a disjointed world. [1 Dec 2005, p.118]

Publishers Weekly

This book, rich in an appropriately fatuous, overblown period style, is the morbidly comic counterpoint to Doctorow's "The March." [21 Nov 2005, p.26]

Boston Globe Carol Iaciofano

The Amalgamation Polka works brilliantly because Wright appears to have created this story not as a 21st-century author commenting on 19th-century values, but as someone living through, and struggling against, this moment in history. The view from deep inside is not always easy to follow but, page by page, bestows profound rewards.

New York Observer Adam Begley

Stubbornly, steadily peculiar - and consistently brilliant. If you’re eager to read an entire novel in a state of baffled amazement, this should do it for you.

Salon Andrew O'Hehir

It's about America, which Wright understands -- more so than even Thomas Pynchon and Don DeLillo, to whom he is often compared -- as a collective state of delusion, a vicious, exciting and insane society poisoned at the root by the outrageous lies it has told itself.

The New York Times Book Review Laura Miller

It offers something rare in historical novels and also available in Wright's other books, the vertiginous sensation of a tilt forward into the unknown. This, after all, is what history feels like to the people who live through it, the ones with no idea what will happen next and an uncertain grasp on who the good guys will turn out to be. It feels like the world as you know it, dissolving and re-forming into an unimaginable and unnavigable new configuration. It feels like now.

Village Voice Jason McBride

Wright's acute attention to the shapes and sounds of words—and the resultant renewal of the familiar stuff of history—will bring a smile to your own lips as it sets your brain on fire.

Washington Post John Wray

The term for art that trades in extremes of taste and plausibility is "camp." When Wright is sitting firmly in the saddle, The Amalgamation Polka reads like a cross between John Barth and John Waters, and is often entertaining; when he's not, it resembles a Victorian morality play by the over-excitable cult porn director Russ Meyer[].

San Francisco Chronicle Ethan Nosowsky

The Amalgamation Polka isn't quite Wright's best novel, but it poses formidable and provocative questions that most writers today rarely confront with any seriousness or complexity.

Christian Science Monitor Yvonne Zipp

The mismatched pair and illogic of events ends up upending the final chapters of what had been a thoroughly impressive novel.

Los Angeles Times Mark Rozzo

Wright is a poet of combat, particularly of the limbs-torn-off, brains-splattered-in-the-face variety. You trust him when he writes of these Union men losing themselves -- their very selfhood -- in battle, as they become amalgamated into a deadly force.

Chicago Tribune Art Winslow

Funny, frightening.

The Guardian Jay Parini

The quality of the writing is such that readers will find themselves mesmerised, even dazzled, when they are not confused.

The New York Times Michiko Kakutani

Although the novel's opening pages suggest that Mr. Wright will use the copious gifts showcased by his earlier books — his slashing, electric prose, his fascination with essential American myths, his radar for the troubling and the surreal — to conjure up the war between the states in all its bloody, fraternal fury, the book soon devolves into a rambling, coming-of-age tale that lurches about uncertainly from cartoonlike comedy to horror-movie spectacle, from familial drama to historical farce.

Kirkus Reviews

A disappointing misstep by a versatile writer. [15 Nov 2005, p.1211]

The average user rating for this book is 8.7 (out of 10) based on 4 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Brad gave it a9:
I had a totally different view from Robbo. I thought the first half focussing on Roxana was good but meandered somewhat but the second half with Asa and Liberty was great. Thoughtful, funny and beautifully written. Enjoyed much more than Doctorow's "The March"...

Robbo the Yobbo gave it an8:
Accomplished writing - I'm interested to read some of Wright's other work now. I felt the plot kind of lost its way with the Dr. Moreau business as practiced by Asa. I much preferred Roxana's story in the first half of the book to Liberty's and Asa's meeting and escape in the second half. But overall, I enjoyed the novel immensely and recommend it to readers who enjoy out-of-the-box writing. Good stuff!!!

Tom M gave it a9:
This book is great! I don't understand why it didn't become a best seller. It's better than 'Cold Mountain'.

Tom L gave it a9:
Fantastic book. Much of the dialogue and descriptions are laugh-out-loud funny.

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The Amalgamation Polka by Stephen Wright

The Amalgamation Polka
by Stephen Wright