Entertainment Weekly
‘On the one hand the focus is intimate, concerned with the surprisingly interconnected lives of a small number of characters in New York some years past. On the other it encompasses and – in a series of vivid primal scenes, exposes – some of the worst horrors of the 20th century . . . Some will recall . . . Les Miserables. Perlman certainly has, in this novel that shares Victor Hugo’s unrepentant digressiveness and compassionate span.’
The Age
‘This is a big fat novel filled with empathy and indignation. Every page of it dramatizes American race relations, 20th-century Jewish persecution, or class conflict – or all three . . . Perlman’s preeminent skill as a novelist seems to be for stitching together scenes and histories, in gradually interlacing the disparate strands.’
Boston Globe
‘The Street Sweeper is an epic tale that spans decades and bridges generations while chronicling the predominant chapters of racial persecution perpetrated in the darkest hours of the 20th century . . . [Perlman] shines a fresh light on the struggle of the American civil rights movement . . . The narrative pull is breathtaking [as he] pulls off the supreme feat of articulating the unspeakable . . . This stunning novel works and matters, because of the expert way Perlman has recorded both the agonized howl of the past and the plaintive echoes of the present.’
San Francisco Chronicle
SEVEN TYPES OF AMBIGUITY
‘Compulsively readable.’
New Yorker
‘Bustling, kaleidoscopic . . . There are traces of Dickens’s range in Perlman and of George Eliot’s generous humanist spirit . . . This is an exciting gamble of a novel, one willing to lose its shirt in its bid to hold you . . . Stay with it for the long haul. It’s worth it.’
New York Times (A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and Notable Book of the Year)
‘This is a love story in the 19th century tradition, the kind that makes the real world seem a bit dim . . . George Eliot down under.’
Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
‘Nuanced, dynamic storytelling, layered with essential digressions on everything from psychiatry to the stockmarket.’
Washington Post
‘Dazzling . . . a page turner, a psychological thriller that is, in short, dangerous, beguiling fun.’
Newsweek
‘Elliot Perlman’s Seven Types of Ambiguity is an exemplary novel in the tradition of Thomas Hardy and the earlier D.H. Lawrence. Perlman’s power is in conveying the strife between personality and character in each of his protagonists. His prose, like his story itself, is vivid, humane, and finally optimistic in a manner that strengthens the reader’s perceptiveness.’
Harold Bloom
‘Motives are tangled, perceptions unreliable, and outcomes unexpected . . . [Perlman] has created a novel with just the right amount of meaning, intelligence, and beauty.’
Boston Globe
‘Perlman writes with such convincing simplicity – his sentences read like whiskey-fueled confessions . . . We can’t trust ourselves because Perlman makes us care too much.’
Esquire
‘[A] sophisticated psychodrama.’
Wall Street Journal
‘The scope of [Perlman’s] ambition and the strength of his achievement in portraying the psychological state of [the developed world] is unrivalled . . . We feel ourselves spiralling closer to a truth that we could not have reached through other means . . . [from] a voice in the wilderness burdened with seeing the truth.’
Times Literary Supplement
‘A colossal achievement, a complicated, driven marathon of a book . . . The opening section is a tour de force . . . At the end, in a comprehensive, an almost Shakespearian way, Perlman picks up every loose thread and knots it.’
The Observer
‘One of the best novels of recent years, a complete success.’
Le Monde
‘Has the virtues of the great modern European novel.’
Süddeutsche Zeitung
THREE DOLLARS
‘Remarkably well-written . . . funny, moving, and constantly surprising . . . It is impossible not to care what happens to Eddie, Tanya his wife, and Abby, their adorable daughter . . . Perlman is echoing Auden’s cry, “We must love one another or die.”’
Time Out (UK)
‘Constructed like a catchy pop song . . . a quirky cautionary tale that feels like a wake-up call.’
New York Times Book Review
‘Perlman moves deftly from the personal to the political, from intellectual debate to near farce to edgy tenderness. His novel gradually builds into a study of a whole generation, a sad, angry, disconcertingly funny reflection of the way we live now.’
Times Literary Supplement
‘Funny and dramatic, literary yet accessible . . . what a find this is!’
Marie Claire (Australia)
‘[The novel’s] blend of self-deprecating wit, caustic social comment, spirited sensitivity and big heart carries the narrative in beautifully controlled passages that brim with insight, humor and feeling . . . Rich with the pleasures and pains of love, family, friendship and marriage . . . Perlman’s sheer storytelling virtuosity gives this essentially domestic tale the narrative drive of a thriller and the unforgettable radiance of a novel that accurately reflects essential human values.’
Publishers Weekly (starred review)
‘Perlman is a marvellous storyteller.’
The Observer
‘Few novels ever dare to fuse emotional and economic life with the passionate intelligence of this one.’
The Independent
‘Elliot Perlman’s new novel is priceless . . . With admirable subtlety, Perlman satirizes a world in which suburban paradise and homelessness are just a single missed payment apart.’
Christian Science Monitor
‘It’s such an enormous relief to discover Elliot Perlman’s Three Dollars, a novel that is unequivocally about our times.’
The Age (Book of the Year)
VINTAGE
UK | USA | Canada | Ireland | Australia
India | New Zealand | South Africa | China
Vintage is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies, whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.
First published by Vintage, 2019
Text copyright © Elliot Perlman, 2019
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, published, performed in public or communicated to the public in any form or by any means without prior written permission from Penguin Random House Australia Pty Ltd or its authorised licensees.
Cover design by Alex Ross © Penguin Random House Australia Pty Ltd
Cover images courtesy best pixels/Shutterstock (skyline), Darq/Shutterstock (figures), CSA-Printstock/Getty Images (horse head)
ISBN 9780143781479
penguin.com.au
Sign up to Read More and discover new favourites
Visit penguin.com.au/readmore
Maybe the Horse Will Talk Page 35