I'll give the author two stars purely for risk-taking. The concept at least is original and it has to have taken a certain audacity to write this book.

What I don't understand is why he wrote it, or why we are supposed to enjoy reading it. The girl Ursula is a stupid, self-centered, insensitive, thoroughly repulsive excuse for a human being. Not that she isn't convincingly depicted--Tuten did all too good a job on her--but I can't think why we are supposed to care about her and want to read about her. And certainly not why we are supposed to admire and approve of her, as Tuten obviously does.

That Van Gogh might have fallen in love with someone like her is all too plausible--he did, after all, have a record of wasting himself on women who were far beneath him. But Vincent's love for Ursula is not shown as yet another self-destructive folly, but rather as something fine and beautiful.

Vincent himself is handled a good deal better. The flashback to his days as a preacher among the coal miners is perhaps the best thing in the book. The attempt to get inside his deteriorating mind is very fanciful and speculative, but then so is any attempt to see what goes on in the head of a schizo-affective.

As for the modern-day narrator, he is simply pathetic. Who can care about him? Who even wants to know about someone like that?

Furthermore, Tuten might have made a little more effort to get his facts straight. For one very big thing, the "Night Cafe" that Van Gogh painted and wrote about was located in Arles, not in Auverre-sur-Oise.

I have to admire the artistic courage that went into the writing of this book, but the results are just too badly flawed. But I admit I would like to try reading something else by Tuten. He is undeniably a gifted writer.

Long being an admirer of VanGogh's work, I was immediately interested in reading this brief novel when I discovered it recently. It's a heavy subject for an author to attempt -- I would think it would be much 'safer' to write about characters of one's own creation, eliminating any preconceptions that might be held by the reader -- but I can recommend this book very highly. Frederic Tuten has succeeded, I believe, in creating a believable view of VanGogh -- not a biography, but more like a snapshot or an observation.

The center of the book is a wonderfully enigmatic woman named Ursula -- Van Gogh's lover, friend and fellow artiste (she's a photographer). She's also a morphine addict. Sharing addiction with Vincent (his addictions being to pain, art, and absinthe) gives them a bond that unites them in not only love but life. When Ursula steps through a crack in time to emerge into late 20th century Greenwich Village, the 'progress' she sees breaks her heart. She attempts to embrace it -- as she does everything else in her life -- but ultimately feels herself drawn back to her own time, to Vincent.

The novel is subtitled 'a love story' -- and it is certainly that, but not in the traditional sense. The love here is not just the romantic variety, but love of life, of creation, of joy and pain -- all of the things that besiege and bless us all. The trick is to understand how to accept them.

After reading about some of Tuten's other works, I'm not really sure if I want to read them or not -- I'll have to investigate them further -- but I'm certainly glad I stumbled across this little gem. It's a beautiful story, gently and lovingly told.

Beautiful, haunting, surreal, poetic. Not a book for realists or those seeking the everyday, this book allows you to enter tuten's dream for a few hours, then leave it with a thousand beautiful(and ugly)visions dancing before your eyes. A masterpiece.

There was nothing particularly disagreeable about this book, and the story was absorbing and entertaining enough. At the same time, it did not live up to my expectations as far as style and character development. Tuten's writing did not appeal to my aesthetics, although that is only a matter of taste. My biggest problem was that even though he explained in painstaking detail exactly what Dominique, the main character, was feeling at any given time, her changes of heart and mind made little sense to me. I found it on the unbelievable side that she stayed obsessed with Rex for so long, especially when his character never became anything other than childish and naïve. Still less believable was her strong attraction to his son, Kenji. The author clearly tried to show emotional growth in Dominique, but it comes off only as emotional wishy-washiness. Rex's lack of growth just becomes irritating and frustrating. In the end, the novel is entertaining but left me feeling as though I were swimming through Dominique's world, brushing up against her thoughts and feelings, out of chronological order, and with little connecting threads.

I read Tuten's The Adventures of Mao a few years ago and didn't get it. It was just to surreal for me. This novel is far more convential. It's a love story about art and culture and redheads. Kind of reminds me of a novel of a similar theme: Still Life with Woodpecker by Tom Robbins. And as Robbins has a way with metaphor Tuten has a way with coining new words. I prefer Robbins more but this one was definitely worth the read.

Tuten is a one of those jewels that people who are in the know hold dearly to themselves. The Green Hour is his finest novel to date, and that said, the rest of his work is wonderful and thought-provoking. Tuten's work, like the work of many of his more well known peers, (Philip Roth, John Updike, Doris Lessing) grows on itself, deepens, his form and style becoming more and more fluid, seemless, sure and just beautiful. He is a man who thinks words matter, that beauty matters, as well as art, love and political beliefs.
The heroine of The Green Hour, Dominique, thinks that all those things matter, too. An art historian and academic, she embodies much of the idealism and ambivalence of those reaching adulthood during Vietnam. She loves a man named Rex, who, among other things, organizes labor strikes in Mexico. She loves the child left in his life by a Japanese anarchist heiress, Kenji. And she grows to love another man who eventually takes care of her, something she is loathe to admit she needs. Interspersed throughout the years of Dominique's life are profoud inquiries into the importance of all things--what matters in life? Who are we? These are the question Tuten poses, and he tells a beautiful story while probing the aches of our souls.

This is not about CHina, any more than Edward Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" is about Virginia Woolf. For info on Mao and the Long March, see Edgar Snow's "Red Star Over China" or Harrison Salisbury's "The Long March."

I read this book in the seventies. Its depiction of Mao was accurate and fascinating as to Mao's almost hallucinatory erudition. Of course it left out his brutal, autocratic side; it Caesarized him. I do not regard this as a flaw. Tuten was not trying to sell Mao or Maoism, but to open a magic door into his complex, vivid world. The interview portion was excellent; it fooled the Partisan review, which was quite miffed when it could not publish it as a true interview. It is a history of a facet of Mao's imagination: he had an amazing capacity to realize what he could imagine. Tuten makes this clear in Western terms, doing us all a service. His writing is imaginative and vital, and when you read the book you cannot imagine being elsewhere.

I bought this book 7 years ago and it's only now that I've had the opportunity to finally read it for the first time. What a disappointment:( What was Mr Tuten's editor thinking when he or she reviewed the manuscript? The book is boring, the psychobabble may interest Psych101 students but for fans of Tintin like myself, it was a major letdown.

Frederic Tuten was the only person in the world who got Hergé's permission to publish a new adventure of Tintin as a novel, which he has done with this book. Of course, you can't compare the Tintin in this novel with the Tintin of the comics of Hergé, because every writer has his own view and interpretation of the character(s). It's like Hergé once told: "Tintin ce'st moi". Because of that, Tuten never could have created a Tintin similar to the Tintin of Hergé. That's why we should review Tuten's book at itself, without comparing it to the Tintin comics. Without telling you the story, I can say that it is well written, contains a few unexpected hapenings, but I don't like the fact that he took a few characters from a book of Thomas Mann. Tuten could have invented them himself, which would have been much more original than he did now. Further, the book is a bit philosophical and psychological, which - in my opinion - invites the reader to think and wonder about the facts written down in this book. I don't regard this book as beeing essential for all the Tintinfanatics, but it sure is enjoyable to read.

This is one of the best books I've ever read. Frederic Tuten is an artistic genius. The book is sensual, intellectual, philosophical, and very very funny. The prose is beautiful. The story is full of surprises that never let up. This is a masterpiece waiting to be discovered. Thank you, Frederick Tuten for such a wonderful gift drawn from your heart, mind, and soul.