Product Description

Death is a place where the sun shines a different colour every day and where people travel to the length of their dreams. Rejecting the violence and hate of the old gang at the Forgotten Works, they lead gentle lives in watermelon sugar. Brautigan expresses the mood of a new generation.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #13803 in Books
• Published on: 2002-07-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 142 pages

Review
'Delicate, fantastic and very funny...A highly individual style, a fertile, active inventiveness...It's cool, joyous, lucid and pleasant to read' Malcolm Bradbury

Customer Reviews

One of the most beautiful books written
Richard brautigan has an amazing way with words. He has an ability to say exactly what you are feeling, yet are incapable of expressing, in the simplest way. He made me remember the beauty in a string of letters. "Hands are very nice things, especially after they have travelled back from making love". I have read most of his books and this is my favourite by far. It was one of the first I read and it got me hooked.
This book is very surreal but at the same time it is possible to relate to it. To understand what he was trying to tell us about his fictional community, iDEATH. That it represents the death of the individual in society.
It is a very simple, beautiful book that I can read over and over and see in a different way every time.

Special, very special, book
Richard Brautigan's way with words is so simple and yet so touching- he knows exactly where to hit every time. 'In watermelon Sugar' converges planes of surrealism and childlike beauty, with the simple and the true, and does it extremely successfully. I first found his books in a Kafka bookshop in Prague and remember being so pleased with them after reading them that I felt smug and content for days! A trite thing to say no doubt but Brautigan has that effect on you.

In Watermelon Sugar my life is done.
This is one of those books that you'll either love or hate. It's the marmite of the book world, I fall in to the former (on both counts), and think it really is an outstanding book.

The basic story revolves around a place called Watermelon Sugar, and its inhabitants. At first glance Watermelon Sugar seems an idyllic place, where nothing bad ever happens (except for an incident with some tigers, but that's another story!). Now, near Watermelon Sugar is a place called the Forgotten Works where the 'old gang' live, but no one likes to venture there, but this is where the bulk of the action revolves around.

The reason I loved this book so much is because it is open to interpretation. On the surface it seems a very short, simple story, yet within this we have a wealth of ideas being presented, and as such it's one of a few select books which warrant further reading, its size helps too! The book will have you questioning the idea of life and death, altruistic attitudes and a stack of other big themes, so whether or not you like this book, it's certainly thought-provoking. I'd really recommend it, and if you liked this, I'd recommend Richard Brautigan's An Unfortunate Woman next.