Tony e Susan (Portuguese Edition)

After watching and loving Nocturnal Animals I saw there was a book the movie was based on. This book, so I put it on hold at the library to see what it was like. I was hoping I would love it just as much as I did the movie.

Tony & Susan was an interesting read. Because I had just seen the movie I knew where it was headed (if it was the same), and yet it was still really intense! I still was holding my breath at times waiting to see what would happen. It was particularly interesting because it was the same, but different. Everything that happened was basically the same as the movie, but small things were different. Susan was a bit different, the specifics were a bit different, but it still was very much the same.

Susan gets a book one day from her ex-husband Edward. He was always trying to write while they were together, but she was really harsh with him and didn't really think he had it in him. Not everyone does. So when he writes her asking if she will read his book she agrees. She is just hoping it won't be too bad so she doesn't have to be harsh when she tells him what she thought.

Susan was an odd one. She...the way she thinks about things is just strange to me. But it was Susan. I didn't really get her, but that was okay as I didn't need to. I just knew what she was like and that was good enough.

Now this book switched between Susan's life and Edward's story. At first I would get so into Edward's story that when it switched back to Susan and what she was thinking/feeling it was so jarring. Like someone splashed me with cold water. And I couldn't wait to get back to Edward's story. As it moved along I was enjoying both parts and it was interesting to see her take on what he had written.

The book Edwards writes is quite intense, and I loved it. This whole story, the idea, the concept, I really enjoyed. It is not a happy go lucky story. It is dark and raw and intense in the best way. If you have seen to movie and enjoyed it give this book a read. If not read it then see the movie. Both are amazing and really interesting.

This review was originally posted to Jen in Bookland

An intense, absorbing and confronting read. This novel within a novel works on a number of levels. When Susan receives the book written by her former husband, Edward, she is committed to read his work. As her children play and her husband is supposedly away on a medical conference, this is Susan’s perfect opportunity to read Nocturnal Animals amid the homely chaos of family life. From the opening pages of Edward’s book, Susan is riveted by the story, but also disturbed by it. The writer creates a mystery of why Susan would become anxious about the story and particularly, the protagonist, Tony’s plight. The tale almost becomes lifelike as Tony’s life seems to become intertwined by her own and her former life with Edward. Furthermore, it has the effect of distorting her memory, re-evaluating her former relationship with Edward and raising serious questions about her marriage to Arnold. As Susan is compelled to read Nocturnal Animals it seems that she is forced to face the truth about herself and the delusions about her marriage and past. Tony and Susan also raises the question of why mild mannered Edward would write such a confronting and violent novel and revenge tale, and why Susan would become so engrossed in such a disturbing story. In addition to this being a grim psychological thriller, Wright deftly masters subtlety. For example, from the time that Tony embarks on the overnight drive through the dark wilderness to Maine, Wright delivers descriptive and evocative scenes that are also menacing and foreboding. Such scenes amplify tension and conflict between Tony and his family and the fiendish psychopaths who torment and terrorise them before destroying them. As Tony’s survival compels him to make a pact with the darker forces of life, the story impacts on and manipulates Susan’s emotional world. This noirish tale presents a number of levels of revenge, and ultimately suggests that the story was written as a metaphor of Edward’s former relationship with Susan and their inextricable bond.

Tony is the embodiment of today's liberal non-man who cannot protect his family and cannot stand up to evil. Unfortunately, "liberal man" has become an oxymoron and the author paints the perfect picture of such a non-man in the character Tony.

Susan is reading a novel (Nocturnal Animals) about a man named Tony, written by her ex, Edward. The vast majority of the book comprises Nocturnal Animals .... and for me, here's the problem - it's not in fact a very good book. It has an explosive opening, where a 'good' family make a chance night-time encounter on a deserted highway with a bunch of bad guys who try to run them off the road. Immediately we are thrown into a violent thriller where the readers attention is maintained by the danger in which the characters are placed. What Tony and Susan adds to this is that in parallel with the traditional thriller featuring Tony, we have a more subtle thriller involving Susan as she reads the book. Edward is coming to visit and Susan works herself into a lather wondering if the violence in the book is a message to her, whose marriage to Edward ended after she was unfaithful to him.

My hopes were raised by the cover quotation from no lesser writer than Saul Bellow who describes Tony and Susan as being "marvellously written". In parts it is but equally, in parts we get "When that young Susan on Edward's bed saw Arnold Morrow's alarming penis suddenly come into view with swollen purpose, she heard a gong in her head. She heard another soon after, when she decided to let it in" which to my mind puts it in the running for that bad sex writing award that gets dished out every year.

Ultimately, it's not a bad book. Certainly interesting in parts, particularly in its deeper considerations of how we read books and, in part what books mean to their writers. But does it warrant the praise heaped on it by the publishers who have republished it after the initial failure of the book to make any headway describing it as "the most astounding lost masterpiece of American fiction since Revolutionary Road"? That's a big claim, and one that it doesn't, for me, deliver on.

The author's style is extremely annoying. There were parts so incoherent and poorly written I barely understood them, and only my having watched the movie elucidated what happened. Lots of rambling, incomplete sentences, sentence fragments, etc. The movie is excellent; watch it and don't bother with the novel.

A novel within a novel, Susan Marrow (average woman with a husband and three kids) reads her ex-husband Edward's novel about Tony Hastings (maths professor whose life is torn apart one night). So we have two stories that emerge and run concurrent throughout the novel. Susan reads Edward's novel `Nocturnal Animals' but between each chapter (and sometimes in the middle of one) the focus slips back to her and her life.

Two very different stories, two (on the surface) very different characters, and yet Susan cannot escape becoming emotionally involved in Tony's problems and how it will all come to an end. Tony's story is one of fear, violence and revenge, on the whole focussing on his regret, his inability to overcome his own anxieties and moral dilemmas. Susan's life does not have the same thrilling twists and turns, yet behind her normal existence we can see a similar regret emerging, an inability to stand up for herself.

The novel is well written, and the story is compelling. If you decide to pick it up, the pages will certainly keep turning until there are no more pages to turn.

Susan Morrow's present life is comfortable but not perfect. Her surgeon husband, Arnold, was once quite frank with her about his take on monogamy, but when she asked him to change his philosophy to be more in line with her pro-monogamy stance, he glibly agreed. However, it's been apparent during their 25-year marriage that he's never changed his ways. This doesn't make Susan happy, but she's managed to live with it, concentrating on their three children, their home, and her part-time job teaching English at the local community college. She believes she's content enough.

"...[A] marvelous Russian-nesting-doll blend of fine literature and suspenseful thriller."
Then Susan's ex-husband writes to her. When she was married to Edward, he believed he was a writer, quitting his job to try (unsuccessfully) to pen something publishable while allowing Susan to support him. During their marriage, Edward asked Susan to critique his writings; that turned out to be an uncomfortable mistake. Now, unaccountably, he's asking her to read a novel manuscript he's written. Although she hasn't heard from Edward in 20 years, other than rote Christmas cards mailed by his present wife, Susan finally decides she will read his manuscript. She feels imposed upon by the request, yet she's afraid he'll believe a refusal means she's still dwelling in their past.

Edward's package arrives. Susan sees that he has titled his manuscript Nocturnal Animals. Three months pass, and she hasn't read it. During that time, she cleans, teaches, cooks, parents and pays bills while an intangible worry nags at her. While she anticipates reading Edward's novel, she also procrastinates beginning it. She can't help but feel a niggling concern that he might want to rekindle their long-gone romance. Finally she receives a Christmas card from Edward's wife telling her that Edward will be in Chicago on December 30th and would like to see her. Susan is sure he will want to discuss his manuscript. With Arnold leaving for a three-day conference right after Christmas, she can use that time to read Edward's book. As she waits, she remembers skinny, birdlike Edward. She wonders what he'll look like when they meet and hopes his novel is not clumsily written. She feels that she is embarking on a risky voyage. What if he includes symbols known intimately to her because of their long-ago marriage? Or would it be worse to be bored or depressed by his writing?

On the Monday after Christmas, with Arnold gone, she finally sits down to read. In the back of her mind is that elusive feeling of concern. For one thing, she knows Arnold will be interviewing for a new position. If the interview is successful, it will mean a move. She also has other vague worries about Arnold's trip, but she puts them out of her mind as she begins to read Nocturnal Animals, which begins with a car trip by a man named Tony Hastings. Tony, his wife Laura, and daughter Helen are driving to their summer cottage in Maine. Helen challenges her father by suggesting they drive all night instead of stopping in a motel, and he surprises her (and himself) by agreeing. At first, Tony enjoys driving through the night, but eventually he runs into the worst nightmare imaginable --- a situation so terrible as to cause a gut-twisting visceral reaction in anyone who learns of it within Nocturnal Animals, within TONY AND SUSAN, and within readers of both stories.

Ominous foreboding builds in Susan as she reads Edward's manuscript and in the reader (yet none of us can avoid obsessively turning the pages). Nocturnal Animals hooks deep into Susan, releasing layers of her past while leading her toward some inescapable future. She can't help pondering the awful vulnerability and uncertainty of humans. The same can be said about those of us reading this marvelous Russian-nesting-doll blend of fine literature and suspenseful thriller.

--- Reviewed by Terry Miller Shannon

I think I missed something. Honestly. I have this feeling that there was massive intensity, metaphor and grandiosity in this book and that I just wasn't smart enough to catch it all in one read.

Wright is incredible at tying down obscure feelings into words, and that was my favorite thing about this book. Describing descent into sleep as finding "the door in the floor." The interludes with Susan were indulgent, but he earned it with so many triumphs in naming un-nameable things.

But it wasn't just wasn't a tidy enough fit for me. I didn't grasp all the parallels and I am not sure I understand the author's big picture, his grand statement. His point for writing this book, because it wasn't just a murder mystery.

I wish I had a professor handing me a study guide so I could understand it like I am supposed to.

English teacher Susan Morrow has been married to Arthur a surgeon. He and her second husband have been together for years raising kids in suburbia. It has been over two decades since Susan has communicated with her first spouse Edward Sheffield, but he has sent her a manuscript Nocturnal Animals asking her to read it and tell him what she thinks.

Not interested until she learns her ex is coming to visit her to see what she thinks; Susan begins reading the story of math professor Tony Hastings, his wife Laura and their child Helen. At first she hates the family in terror plot as she expects an unhappy ending, but soon cannot put the novel down as she flashes from the book to her life with Edward and Arthur.

Using the story inside a story mechanism, Austin Wright provides an insightful profound look at two "families" and the writer who connects them. The story line focuses on accountability as people reject any responsibility for their actions even blatant abuse. Both "novels" are entertainingly discerning as the veneer of civilization conceals the reality of irresponsible, unethical and often violent behavior.

Harriet Klausner

Austin Wright,
Tony& Susan
First published in 1993 and then forgotten for nearly two decades, Austin Wright’s posthumously acclaimed novel-within-a novel is a fascinating read. For once, the ecstatic praise given to the book, by pundits such as Ian McEwan and Ruth Rendell, is almost justified. The first section dealing with the kidnapping, rape and murder of a middle-class mother and daughter – and the attempted murder of Tony, husband of Laura and father of teenage Helen, is a triumph of spare, tense prose. The assassins are absolutely chilling in their calm obedience to their cynical leader, Ray, an unforgettably repulsive hoodlum. The reader is so caught up in the story that he or she forgets the soft beginning of the novel, in which Susan Morrow has received this story from her ex-husband Edward Sheffield. The horror story is thus not real, but an invention of a man whom she had years ago dismissed as a failure and a wimp, one who thought he could write but would never, in Susan’s eyes, amount to very much. Now he proves her wrong.
Like all good stories, Tony & Susan is about motivation. Why should Edward send his ex-wife such a horror story? Was he trying to show her how wrong she’d been about his talent? Did he just want to shock her with a grisly yarn, perhaps to threaten her, to tease her – or did he want to finally win her approval, even to bring about reconciliation? The reader needs to know, and that is what sustains our interest up until the final stage of the novel. Will Edward ultimately appear and explain himself?
The title is, of course, ambivalent. Tony is a fictional character in Edward’s narrative, but a sensitive soul (rather like his author); one who is involved in helping the police to catch three ruthless killers. The reader first sympathises with Tony’s grief in losing his wife and daughter in such appalling circumstances and then roots for him in his somewhat reluctant pursuit of the killers. Susan is a reader surrogate who cannot but admire her ex-husband’s talent as a novelist and would perhaps reconsider her dismissal of him as a loser – especially as her present husband, the professionally successful Arnold, is, she suspects, having an affair when he goes on his repeated conferences. That basically is the crux of the matter: will Edward return to hear Susan’s verdict – on him as a writer and as a man whom Susan could appreciate and perhaps even love? Or has she fallen in love with Tony rather than his creator?
The novel began brilliantly, but then began to sag as Susan drowns in floods of self-questioning. She imagines scenes of what the returning Edward might say and how he will respond to her critique. The writing here degenerates not only into a plethora of rhetorical questions but into literary posturing; heavy metaphors and similes, and banalities such as ‘Forgetfulness follows the trail of her reading like birds eating the Hansel and Gretel crumbs.’ The prose at times becomes either irksomely vague or over-explicit: ‘She sees Tony looking at it [their Maine cottage] in his dim archetypal blindness, and she feels meanings around her which she cannot see. She wonders if they are real or only her imagination and how long it will take her, if ever, to know.’ Yes, it’s confusing, but why tell us what we already know: that the fictional Tony seems more real to her and more lovable than either of her two husbands ever had been? And isn’t it Susan rather than Tony who suffers from that ‘dim archetypal blindness’? What’s a dim blindness, by the way, and how is this blindness archetypal?
Despite these reservations and the fact that the book would improve greatly if cut by at least a third, this is a gripping and many-layered story, which says much about the way that fiction interpenetrates our ‘real’ lives; and it has an unpredictable but highly satisfying conclusion.

This book manages to pull of an astonishing stylistic feat of legerdemain, on the one hand being a suspense thriller, on the other a psychological thriller, and on the third hand a multi-level character study. The structure is brilliant, the writing crisp, and the outcome totally original. I couldn't put it down.

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD. DO NOT READ ON IF YOU HAVEN'T ALREADY READ THIS BOOK.
A good idea gone to pot. The novel-within-a-novel hook is welcome, but very badly done. Tony is so unlikeable as to be revolting, whereas Susan is flat as a pancake in spite of Wright's efforts to give her depth with her infidelities, her less-than-perfect marriages, her domesticity buying off her idealism. Tony is a Coward with Capital C, and I liked that originality about a main character at the beginning: he really can't protect his wife and daughters from the thugs who abduct them; he's physically weak; he can't fight; he's more afraid of what will happen to him than of the suffering of his loved ones. But Tony continues on this vein after the brutality of the double crimes. From then on, it's always Tony's pain, the crime done to Tony, his loss. The men who raped and murdered his wife and daughter have hurt "him" more than they have hurt the two women. In fact, Laura and Helen are props referred to as 'mannequins' on several occasions. Wright provides a Tony POV at all times while inside Tony's novel, and since Tony's story is the novel Nocturnal Animals, we could blame its 'author' Edward Sheffield for creating flatness all around. (This would be Wright 'intentionally' writing poorly so as to reflect Edward's flaws as a writer.) But since Edward is part of Susan's story, and Susan's story is as bland as a Denny's meal, who can we blame but Wright?

The novel starts OK and picks up speed when three thugs accost a family of three (Laura, Helen, and Tony) in a rural road on the East Coast. The interruptions in the action are to wedge in Susan's story, since Susan is reading the novel where awful things happen to Laura and Helen. This interruptions would be welcome, or at least justified, if something were to happen in Susan's world. No. Nothing happens. Susan's battle is that of suburban, upper middle class domesticity: few orgasms, growing kids, husband sleeping around. Next to real crimes and tragedies, it's nothing. And there is nothing else, either. There is no dark secret in Susan's or Edward's past. There is no shattering of lives because of reading a mediocre novel of crime and sort-of revenge, as the blurbs and the ecstatic reviews promised. Nothing. Nada. This novel stands exclusively on the strength of the abduction, rape, and murder of a 40 year-old woman and her 16 or 17 year-old daughter. Their suffering doesn't matter to Wright, since it doesn't matter to Tony. They are there like the dead bodies in cop shows, at the beginning, and then the interesting part is to catch the murderer. In this 'novel-within-a-novel' the interesting part dies soon and never revives, mostly because the character Tony is such a despicable little nothing surrounded within and without his own story by sorry characters with no redeeming qualities. Even such a situation would be tolerable in literature: a novel about little nothings. But Wright writes so badly, it hurts. He manages to make a story of crime and punishment into one of crime and meaninglessness, peppered throughout with flourishes of disorientation to show the readers Tony's disoriented perspective. Nice touch, but in this book, a waste.

This novel promised much but began to disintegrate with each page. If the author has hidden clues to which I am blind, I would appreciate pointers.

I checked this book out from the library after seeing the trailer on youtube. The story line sounded good and I was sadly disappointed. This book was boring and drug out. I skipped over many parts and I never do that. DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME OR MONEY!!!

This grim portrayal of mankind is a disjointed effort by the author. I expected better because of the rave by Bellow, looking for and ending that would finally redeem the work. Why so many found it profound is beyond me. Not only was it disappointing; it was a total waste of my time.

English teacher Susan Morrow has been married to Arthur a surgeon. He and her second husband have been together for years raising kids in suburbia. It has been over two decades since Susan has communicated with her first spouse Edward Sheffield, but he has sent her a manuscript Nocturnal Animals asking her to read it and tell him what she thinks.

Not interested until she learns her ex is coming to visit her to see what she thinks; Susan begins reading the story of math professor Tony Hastings, his wife Laura and their child Helen. At first she hates the family in terror plot as she expects an unhappy ending, but soon cannot put the novel down as she flashes from the book to her life with Edward and Arthur.

Using the story inside a story mechanism, Austin Wright provides an insightful profound look at two "families" and the writer who connects them. The story line focuses on accountability as people reject any responsibility for their actions even blatant abuse. Both "novels" are entertainingly discerning as the veneer of civilization conceals the reality of irresponsible, unethical and often violent behavior.

Harriet Klausner

This book is awful. Their are hints throughgout the book that make you think that something big happened or will happen in Susan's life towards the end of the book. That's the only thing that kept me reading. But then the end comes and it just ends, nothing happens. Susan is a big nothing. What did she learn about herself? What is this darkness she is afraid of? She needs a job or something to take her mind off her nothingness. I wasted a few hours of my life on this book and I will never get them back.

I should have heeded the reviews but kept reading, thinking there would be a satisfactory ending to this book. Actually it had no ending at all. The book by her former husband that Susan read had a fairly good beginning but it disintegrated quickly, then droned on and on. By the end of the book, I felt that the author must have thought he had written enough and just stopped writing. There is absolutely no point in reading this book.