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Hope: A Tragedy
Hope A Tragedy
Author: Shalom Auslander
The rural town of Stockton, New York, is famous for nothing: no one was born there, no one died there, nothing of any historical import at all has ever happened there, which is why Solomon Kugel, like other urbanites fleeing their pasts and histories, decided to move his wife and young son there. — To begin again. To start anew. But it isn’...  more »
ISBN-13: 9781594488382
ISBN-10: 159448838X
Publication Date: 3/29/2012
Pages: 304
Rating:
  • Currently 2.2/5 Stars.
 10

2.2 stars, based on 10 ratings
Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover
Book Type: Hardcover
Other Versions: Paperback
Members Wishing: 8
Reviews: Member | Amazon | Write a Review

Top Member Book Reviews

reviewed Hope: A Tragedy on + 407 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 1
From the first page to the last, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I especially liked Solomon's quest for the perfect dying words and his conversations with the doctor and the person in his attic.
DieHard avatar reviewed Hope: A Tragedy on
Helpful Score: 1
Solomon Kugel is a neurotic salesman who has just moved his family to a quiet farmhouse to escape the stress of city life. Kugel is consumed by thoughts of death and obsessed with finding the perfect "last words" to utter before death and the perfect epithet to put on his tombstone. But Kugel doesn't find rural life less stressful. One sleepless night, he investigates a strange sound and makes a discovery in his attic that will change his life forever. Often irreverent, sometimes laugh-out-loud funny and even sad in parts, "Hope: A Tragedy" is more about how we live our life than about how we prepare to die. Kugel just needs to figure that out.
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jmlsauter avatar reviewed Hope: A Tragedy on + 9 more book reviews
I can't believe I read the whole thing! I usually quit reading a book I do not like but finished this one. Characters were not strong and I did not relate to where the story was going, which ended up being nowhere.
PamelaH avatar reviewed Hope: A Tragedy on + 90 more book reviews
I wasn't sure how to take this book at first, then began to go with the flow and started to enjoy it. Incredibly sad, terribly funny. It boils down to being a story of the want to be free of our history that haunts us. How it gets there is another story. One that includes Anne Frank living as an old woman in the attic of Solomon Kugel, a Jew that wants to kick her out one day, and care for her the next. Kugel's private thoughts on the last words of the dying (of any creature, not just man) had me in stitches. I was hearing myself in those words.


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