Noble Norfleet: A Novel - Hardcover

Price, Reynolds

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0743204174 ISBN 13: 9780743204170

Publisher: Scribner, 2002

Synopsis

Losing his entire family in a tragic event, Noble Norfleet has an affair with his teacher before enlisting in the Vietnam War as an army medic and experiences a strange vision related to his recent past, and in the years after the war, he continues nursing but finds himself compelled to rethink the mystery that claimed his family. 50,000 first printing.

About this title

Review:

"And whether my story is a comedy, farce, or tragedy is a decision I'll leave to you if you care enough to make it," writes Reynolds Price near the close of his strange and epic novel Noble Norfleet, the prolific author's 34th published book in 40 years. Price toys with his readers when he writes the above quote, because the story of a Carolina boy whose insane mother murders her two youngest children in their sleep with an ice axe is, at its core, a Southern-fried epic. In this part coming-of-age drama (with many sexual misadventures described from inside the head of a hot-blooded male) and part tragic family saga, Noble emerges as an observer to his own life with few clues as to his survival. Hurtled from the sudden trauma of losing his younger siblings at age 17 to serving time in the tunnels as a medic in Vietnam, Noble seemingly chooses each new installment of his story as it flashes into his head spontaneously. He's no Forrest Gump, but between his bouts of resignation and his yearning for a mother who hardly remembers his name, Noble is a character in constant opposition, as scarred and as malleable as the South itself. --Emily Russin

About the Author:

Reynolds Price was born in Macon, North Carolina in 1933. Educated in the public schools of his native state, he earned an A.B. summa cum laude from Duke University; and in 1955 he traveled as a Rhodes Scholar to Merton College, Oxford University to study English literature. After three years and the B.Litt. degree, he returned to Duke where he continues in his fifth decade of teaching. He is James B. Duke Professor of English.

In 1962 his novel A Long and Happy Life received the William Faulkner Award for a notable first novel and has never been out of print. Since, he has published more than thirty books. Among them, his novel Kate Vaiden received the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1986. In 1989 he published the memoir Clear Pictures. His Collected Stories appeared in 1993, his Collected Poems in 1997; in 1995 he completed his trilogy A Great Circle, which consists of the novels The Surface of Earth, The Source of Light and The Promise of Rest. He has recently published his first novel for young readers, A Perfect Friend. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and his books have appeared in sixteen languages.

About this edition

• Publisher: Scribner
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0743204174
• ISBN 13: 9780743204170
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320