Synopsis
Book by O'Hagan, Andrew
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Review
Andrew O'Hagan's Personality opens on Scotland's Isle of Bute with three generations of the Tambini family struggling for success in their adopted home. The blanket of charm that envelops the Tambini's gradually discloses many secrets: forgotten children, torrid affairs, closeted homosexuality, and suppressed ethnic tension. Thirteen-year-old singer Maria Tambini seems to be everybody's antidote to past failures. After she leaves Bute for and audition with the television show Opportunity Knocks in London, she rapidly achieves both fame and fortune buoyed by a voice "like Barbara Streisand['s]" and charisma beyond her years. Friends and family mourn her loss to stardom while taking solace that someone has escaped Bute and achieved success as they imagine it must be on television.
But Maria's abrupt transformation into a personality leads to obsession with body image, clothes, hairstyles, and make-up; she sees herself as only an object for other people's entertainment: "Her body was apart from her. The person with thoughts was different from the person with arms and legs, a stomach and a face." For Maria, a life of surfaces, a life of pleasing, means self-annihilation. As her self fades into the image that others project on her, her body literally withers away.
O'Hagan experiments with virtually every narrative form in Personality (even including an epistolary chapter). Not all of these attempts work, and the story--driven by its strong characters and not plot--occasionally bogs down in details unnecessary to the development of either. But even in these rare lapses O'Hagan, whose previous work has been short-listed for the Booker Prize, carries his reader through his finesse with Scottish dialect and the wit of his rich supporting characters. --Patrick O'Kelley
Book Description
Published in hardcover by Harcourt, 2003, 0-15-101000-5
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Personality
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Personality
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Paperback. Condition: Good. No Jacket. Pages can have notes/highlighting. Spine may show signs of wear. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less. Seller Inventory # G0571217753I3N00
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Personality
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Paperback. Condition: Used; Good. Dispatched, from the UK, within 48 hours of ordering. This book is in good condition but will show signs of previous ownership. Please expect some creasing to the spine and/or minor damage to the cover. Aged book. Tanned pages and age spots, however, this will not interfere with reading. Seller Inventory # CHL4179066
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Personality
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Faber & Faber 01/04/2004, 2004
ISBN 10: 0571217753
ISBN 13: 9780571217755
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Condition: Very Good. This book is in very good condition and will be shipped within 24 hours of ordering. The cover may have some limited signs of wear but the pages are clean, intact and the spine remains undamaged. This book has clearly been well maintained and looked after thus far. Money back guarantee if you are not satisfied. See all our books here, order more than 1 book and get discounted shipping. . Seller Inventory # 7719-9780571217755
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Personality
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ISBN 10: 0571217753
ISBN 13: 9780571217755
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Seller: WorldofBooks, Goring-By-Sea, WS, United Kingdom
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Paperback. Condition: Very Good. Andrew O'Hagan's second novel, winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, is a powerful tale about society, celebrity and self-destruction. Maria Tambini is a thirteen-year-old girl with a great singing voice. Growing up on a small Scottish island, she is ready for the big time and keen to escape her ordinary life. When she wins a national TV talent show, she becomes an instant star, yet all the time 'the girl with the giant voice' is losing herself in fame and in a private battle with her own body. Can Maria be saved by love or is she destined to be consumed by celebrity, by family secrets, and by her number-one fan? 'Enormously impressive, frequently curious and consistently ambitious.' Sunday Times 'What he manages brilliantly is allowing us only restricted access to Maria's mind, so that the reader is put in something like the same relation to her as the sharkish agents and managers who suck her dry.' Guardian 'Such command, such grace, and such compassion.' New York Review of Books. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged. Seller Inventory # GOR001406113
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Seller: GreatBookPrices, Columbia, MD, U.S.A.
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Condition: As New. Unread book in perfect condition. Seller Inventory # 2090079
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Personality
Published by
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ISBN 10: 0571217753
ISBN 13: 9780571217755
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Seller: Bahamut Media, Reading, United Kingdom
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Condition: Very Good. Shipped within 24 hours from our UK warehouse. Clean, undamaged book with no damage to pages and minimal wear to the cover. Spine still tight, in very good condition. Remember if you are not happy, you are covered by our 100% money back guarantee. Seller Inventory # 6545-9780571217755
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Condition: Very Good. Most items will be dispatched the same or the next working day. A copy that has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged. Seller Inventory # wbs6565432913
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Condition: Good. Most items will be dispatched the same or the next working day. A copy that has been read but remains in clean condition. All of the pages are intact and the cover is intact and the spine may show signs of wear. The book may have minor markings which are not specifically mentioned. Ex library copy with usual stamps & stickers. Seller Inventory # wbs3431376258
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Personality (Paperback)
Published by
Faber & Faber, London, 2004
ISBN 10: 0571217753
ISBN 13: 9780571217755
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Paperback
First Edition
Seller: Grand Eagle Retail, Bensenville, IL, U.S.A.
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Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. Maria Tambini is a thirteen-year-old girl with an amazing singing voice. Growing up in the 1970s above her mother's chip shop on the Scottish island of Bute, she is making ready to escape the ordinary life to become a living exhibit in the modern drama of celebrity. Can Maria, 'the girl with the giant voice', be saved by love or is she destined to be consumed by celebrity, by family secrets, and by her number one fan? Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability. Seller Inventory # 9780571217755