The Perfect Man: A Novel | 
 enlarge | Manufacturer: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Category: EBooks
List Price: $9.95
Buy New: $7.96
You Save: $1.99 (20%)
Avg. Customer Rating:  11 reviews
Sales Rank: 19188
Format: Kindle Book
Media: Kindle Edition
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 464
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
ASIN: B000PDZFA2
Publication Date: April 17, 2007
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Product Description
Winner of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Europe and South Asia.
Winner of the 2008 PEN Beyond Margins Award.
Identity, friendship, and a long-hidden crime lie at the heart of Naeem Murr’s captivating novel about five friends growing up in a small 1950s Missouri river town. A contender for the Man Booker Prize, this exhilarating story beautifully evokes the extreme joys, as well as the dark and shameful desires, of childhood.
Young Rajiv Travers hasn’t had much luck fitting in anywhere. Born to an Indian mother who was sold to his English father for 20, Raj is abandoned by his relatives into the reluctant care of Ruth, an American romance writer living in Pisgah, Missouri. While his skin color unsettles most of the townsfolk, who are used to seeing things in black and white, the quick-witted Raj soon finds his place among a group of children his own age.
While the friends remain loyal to one another through the years, it becomes clear that their paths will veer in markedly different directions. But breaking free of the demands of their families and their community, as well as one another, comes at a devastating price: As the chilling secrets of Pisgah’s residents surface, the madness that erupts will cost Raj his closest friend even as it offers him the life he always dreamed of.
Taking us into the intimate life of small-town America, The Perfect Man explores both the power of the secrets that shape us and the capacity of love in all its guises to heal even the most damaged of souls.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 6 more reviews...
 ...he had remained silent just long enough. May 31, 2008
This book was a mixed bag for me. On the one hand the coming-of-age narrative of a close group of young beautiful people was one I followed with interest, compassion, humour. The very imperfect grown-up world they inhabit was presented harshly. At times this world was funny and entertaining, but mostly I found it a confusing and threatening world, with exception of Ruth. For me it was just that bit too gritty, too ugly and threatening. Particularly the chilling descriptions of the crimes committed by Magnus and the other men were uncomfortable to say the least. Do we as flawed adults really become so self-obsessed and make such a mess of our worlds and those of our young people? Or is this no allegory, just a story aboout one place, one time and one group of people and their lives? Was this a story of hope? A criticism on human nature, or a reaffirmation? Or all of the above? The story left me with many more questions at the end than I had before reading.
The story flicked backward and forward a bit, which really worked well. It gave events in the novel a gradual revelation, building up suspense in the novel just nicely.
Some of the characters were worked out really convincingly, but I found myself unsatisfied about some of the characters. Probably because Murr hints at certain thngs about certain characters, but then does not allow the reader to get to know them better. That's mean! Similarly with the storyline, there were certain tangents the story hinted at, that were just not worked out any further.
I loved Raj, Annie and Ruth. I loved their integrity, although I wanted to know so much more about Ruth and Raj's relationhip and how they touched each other's lives. I found them amazing, their strength and stability, their sense of right and wrong, even though neither of them had any reason to be like that. Their goodness and character an integral quality, rather than a consequence of nurture, it seems to me. It's the natural way we all want to be good.
Murr is incontestably Wise, uses images and ideas which in turn refresh, shock, entertain and endear.
Throughout this story he portrays indeed the perfect man' "Brutally powerful, morbidly sensitve",which suggests that such a man would have power but be cautious about its use, would value how loved he was. Would know that "it is never sufficient to love; you must have faith in those who love you too."
Like Dickens, Murr recognises the shaping influences a particular place and its people can have. This place, Pisgah, connects the people in the novel, through a collection of experiences, memories and its very landscape, so that the characters are inseparable on some level for the rest of their lives. Even many miles away and years later, Raj's life is still moulded and affected by that small town he came to by some kind of bizarre act of providence years before. This was recognisable to me too. We all have experiences of places in our lives which shape us forever, and try as we may, we can never walk away from experiences, people and the living we have done there.
The recognition by Raj of knowing what he wants out of life, having made his choices, but still sometimes struggling with these choices, "...he had remained silent just long enough", was very real too. I found it encouraging that in an era where adultery and dishonesty are glorified, Murr keeps him faithful and him and Annie together as a family.
A stunning, compelling read May 5, 2008
This is a beautiful novel about a small town and the lives of its inhabitants. Murr lets us into the deep inner workings of his characters' minds, contrasting their outward, seemingly happy and normal existence with the conflict and, at times, profound misery of their true thoughts and feelings. The novel revolves around the arrival of Raj, by way of London and India, to the rural town of Pisgah, Missouri, and the impact his presence has on Pisgah's various residents. Though Raj remains a central, if not the central, figure in Murr's novel, Murr chooses to tell the story from the points of view of Pisgah's residents, leaving us to interpret Raj's true feelings from the responses, expressions, and actions the other characters see. As Murr brings us deeper into the minds of each character, we are exposed to a terribly dysfunctional society in which people are repressed to the point of suffocation, in which characters struggle in desperation to find an escape from their miserable existence, yet without any real solution in sight. While Raj provides hope and change to the lives of many characters, his presence also leads to a great many complications and conflict in the lives of others. Murr brings his characters to life so expertly that the reader becomes a member of Pisgah's society and lives and breathes with its inhabitants. Alternating between the present day and glimpses from the past, Murr's narrative enfolds the reader completely in the life, history, and tragedies of his town and characters. This is a touching, heart-breaking, and masterfully written novel; one of the best I have read and an experience not to be missed.
"Raj understood only too well how little all the suffering in the world can come to mean when you love someone you cannot have." April 28, 2008
I knew nothing of the book nor had I ever heard of the author. I picked up and read this book based solely on the title. Being fairly frequently reminded that I am not a perfect man, and that I have a long way to go to get there, I was curious to find what this unknown author might have to say about "the perfect man." Alas, I didn't find the answer to perfection, but I did find a wonderful story.
As I jumped into this one, the story came alive with great characters, beginning in post-war London and moving quickly to, of all places, 1950s very small-town America, Pisgah, Missouri, which lies essentially near the center of the state, deep in America's heartland, and along the banks of the Missouri River; certainly neither a place nor a time that would willingly accept a dark-skinned foreigner with a name like "Rajiv". It made for a great story, for sure worthy of a strong four-star rating. However, at the very end of the book, I found the final chapter to be so strong, so engaging and so optimistic that this strong four-star story was pushed over the brink to a five-star gem of a story.
I think the story of Raj, the Indian-born boy who ends up in Missouri by way of London, is a story of many, many levels - levels that deserve to be given an in-depth analysis by people much more capable of such analysis than I. However, I do opine that Murr is outstanding at creating the atmosphere of this small town, displaying to the reader the town's eccentricities and prejudices, the dark secrets of its families and social cliques, the love that bound its young characters, and the love-turned-to-hate, spite and despair that embroiled many of the adults and decayed marital, familial and community relationships. Murr intertwines and juxtaposes not only love and hate through the characters and the small community, but also vanity and humility, selfishness and charity, fidelity and infidelity, trust and distrust, hope and despair, bravery and cowardice. As I read deeper into the story, and the secrets of the community continually unfolded - sometimes shockingly - I was totally engaged.
A final aspect I found particularly of interest in this book were the sections after the final chapter: a conversation with the author, who had himself spent some portion of his life living in Columbia, Missouri, and the "Questions and Topics for Discussion" section. Reading the author's perspectives and occasionally reviewing the questions/topics section helped me keep in mind some of the objectives of the story and recognize different levels and focal points of the story's characters, plot and subplots.
The only warning I can give is that the story does not unfold chronologically. Each chapter begins with a year, and the reader should pay attention to which year is about to be exposed, else you might find yourself temporarily confused as to where in the chronology of the story the events are unfolding.
In summary, I really enjoyed this book; found it very engrossing and would recommend it to anyone who desires good depth to a story and great characters.
"Two ways to tie yourself to a place: fall in love or commit a crime, assimilate or violate." April 9, 2008
14 out of 14 found this review helpful
(4.5 stars) Rajiv Travers, the son of Gerard Travers and an Indian woman whom Gerard claims to have bought for twenty pounds, finds himself "orphaned" and uprooted at the age of five, when he is sent from India to London to live with his father, a man he does not know. By the age of twelve he has been abandoned several more times, both physically and emotionally, and has been sent to Pisgah, Missouri, to live with Ruth Winters, the romance-writing mistress of one of his uncles. A "black" child living in a white world, Rajiv becomes close friends with Annie and Lew, who often include Alvin and Nora in their activities. Each child, suffering from some personal trauma, is trying to make sense of the past and the often tumultuous and threatening present.
Pisgah, Missouri, provides a Southern Gothic setting in which author Naeem Murr explores the essence of selfhood. The sense of isolation, the difficulties (or, sometimes, impossibilities) of communication, the role of sex, and issues of power and control, perennial problems for teenagers, are also problems for the adults in Pisgah as well. Everyone has secrets, some of them secrets which are guaranteed to be kept because they include evil activities in which an entire group has participated.
Murr, who has previously focused on dark psychological aberrations in his novel The Boy, creates a cauldron of activity here in which the adolescents try to survive the perils they face on a daily basis. The characters, while darker and, in many cases, more damaged than what we usually call "normal," come to life as their individual backgrounds and the backgrounds of their families are revealed. Rajiv, the main character, has no past in Pisgah, and his reactions to what he is seeing, hearing, feeling, and guessing guide the reader to an understanding of Murr's themes.
As the narrative switches back and forth in time, horrors unfold and mysteries get solved. Pisgah reveals itself to be a microcosm of life's trials, almost on a par with Dante's nine circles of hell. Filled with mystery and the traumas of adolescence, the book has a broader focus than a mere coming-of-age. In a sense, all of humanity is on trial in Pisgah. Remarkably, some of the teenagers manage to put their lives in order and triumph, despite having faced seemingly insuperable odds, and the book is ultimately a celebration of the human spirit. n Mary Whipple
The Genius of the Sea : A Novel
Boy, The
The Best book I've ever Read January 13, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
As a high school Librarian I read a lot of books. One of our English teacher's recommended this and I was blown away. It is a very rich story of an ensemble of different types of people.
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