Bleeding Edge

De: Thomas Pynchon

Narrado por: Jeannie Berlin

A New York Times Notable Book

"Brilliantly written...a joy to read...Bleeding Edge is totally gonzo, totally wonderful. It really is good to have Thomas Pynchon around, doing what he does best." - Michael Dirda, The Washington Post

"Exemplary...dazzling and ludicrous." - Jonathan Lethem, The New York Times Book Review

It is 2001 in New York City, in the lull between the collapse of the dot-com boom and the terrible events of September 11th.

Maxine Tarnow runs a fine little fraud investigation business on the Upper West Side. All is ticking over nice and normal, until she starts looking into the finances of a computer-security firm and its billionaire geek CEO. She soon finds herself mixed up with a drug runner in an art deco motorboat, a professional nose obsessed with Hitler’s aftershave, a neoliberal enforcer with footwear issues, and an array of bloggers, hackers, code monkeys, and entrepreneurs, some of whom begin to show up mysteriously dead. Foul play, of course.

Will perpetrators be revealed, forget about brought to justice? Will Maxine have to take the handgun out of her purse? Will Jerry Seinfeld make an unscheduled guest appearance? Will accounts secular and karmic be brought into balance?

Hey. Who wants to know?

Narrator adds to pleasure

What made the experience of listening to Bleeding Edge the most enjoyable?

Pynchon's dizzying ideas and language are what drives the book, obviously. I found myself bookmarking and quoting sections.

Any additional comments?

I'm mainly adding a review to comment on the narration by Jeannie Berlin, given that so many readers objected to it. I found it wholly appropriate to the material, in keeping with the main character, and adding another complete layer of humor to the book. Indeed, I found Bleeding Edge to be more accessible than other Pynchon books precisely because of what Ms. Berlin brings to the story.

really poor narration

What did you like best about Bleeding Edge? What did you like least?

I love audiobooks. I love Thomas Pynchon. This performance is so poor that I have dumped the audio and bought the Kindle edition. I suspect Ms. Berlin wasn't given enough time to prepare.

Raspy and Hoarse, but Good

"Bleeding Edge" is my first introduction of this author and I thought that it was excellent. I really enjoyed Thomas Pynchon's style of storytelling, with the dot com bust, ponzi schemes with the shady part of the business and the loose triangle romance with the main characters. It all leads up to the day of 9/11 when the towers fell. I really liked this book.

As far as Jeannie Berlin performance of reading the "Bleeding Edge," I found her voice to be tolerable. Sure, the narration could had been a lot better by someone else, but despite the numerous warnings from other reviewers on how bad Berlin's voice is, I don't regret giving this book a chance. The content was good enough to kept me going and I had a few laugh out loud moments on how her voice was so raw that it was just funny.

She doesn't even tries to rap the hip hop tunes, how funny is that?

Her voice is not so bad, but it could had been better. It's all about the content. For example, many of us agree that Scott Brick is a good narrator. I liked"Salt Sugar Fat," and found the information to be interesting, but his performance in "The Twelve (the passage trilogy)," was horrendous because I didn't like those books.

I'm not defending the performance of Jeannie Berlin in "Bleeding Edge," but it's all about the content. If the content is good, at least I can overlook the performance of the narrator.

For those who couldn't finish the book because of Ms. Berlin's performance, Audible should give them a free download if the publisher decides to record another version with another voice. I almost passed up this title many times because of the 1 star rating for the narrator. I'm glad that I went for the content.

Plus her voice is so raspy and hoarse that I couldn't fall asleep during the story because I needed to pay attention to follow the plot

Fantastisc

One of Pynchon funnier books and I love the narration, it is sharp and sarcastic and wonderful, just as the book.

The Narration the biggest problem with this book.

Would you try another book from Thomas Pynchon and/or Jeannie Berlin?

Yes

Would you recommend Bleeding Edge to your friends? Why or why not?

Yes

Would you be willing to try another one of Jeannie Berlin’s performances?

No

Could you see Bleeding Edge being made into a movie or a TV series? Who should the stars be?

No comment

Any additional comments?

There have been a lot of negative reviews of Jeannie Berlin as the narrator. I'm not sure she is as dire as people are making out. Her voice is actually very interesting if it was applied to ONE character. The problem is that her voice so completely dominates the narration and she absolutely does not change the voice when she moves from one character to another, so it becomes almost impossible to tell from her voice and intonation who is speaking in the book and thats fatal because you quickly lose the whole flow of the story. I would suspect that your average listener would have no idea what this story was about because of that.