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Amy Gentry

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Amy Gentry

Goodreads Author


Born
in Houston, The United States
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Member Since
September 2007

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Amy Gentry is the author of the novels Good as Gone, Last Woman Standing, and Bad Habits, as well as the 33 1/3 book about Tori Amos's Boys for Pele. Also a critic, she has reviewed for the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Review of Books, Paris Review, LitHub, and Electric Literature, as well as writing introductions for two books in the NYRB Classics line. She holds a PhD in English from the University of Chicago and lives in Austin, Texas. ...more

Average rating: 3.48 · 44,425 ratings · 4,494 reviews · 12 distinct worksSimilar authors
Good as Gone

3.45 avg rating — 39,131 ratings — published 2016 — 55 editions
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My Death

by
3.89 avg rating — 4,539 ratings — published 2004 — 20 editions
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Good Behaviour

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3.89 avg rating — 3,899 ratings — published 1981 — 45 editions
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Bad Habits

3.51 avg rating — 1,509 ratings — published 2021 — 8 editions
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Last Woman Standing

3.24 avg rating — 1,518 ratings — published 2019 — 27 editions
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Boys for Pele

4.21 avg rating — 214 ratings — published 2018 — 3 editions
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I Am Stronger than Frustrat...

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4.56 avg rating — 9 ratings3 editions
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Be-Hezkat Ne'ederet

it was ok 2.00 avg rating — 1 rating
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The Habit of Rising Early

0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings
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The Sparrow Sisters

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The Go-Between
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Clarissa, or, The...
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Amy’s Recent Updates

Amy Gentry rated a book it was amazing
Old Masters by Thomas Bernhard
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SITTING 👏 ON 👏 THE 👏 BORDONE 👏 ROOM 👏 SETTEE 👏

Where will my next Bernhard take place? Barstool? Tuffet? Pew?
Amy Gentry finished reading
Harvest by Jim Crace
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Amy Gentry and 15 other people liked Elaine's review of Harvest:
Harvest by Jim Crace
"What I loved about this book was the atmosphere, the overwhelming sense of foreboding and isolation, of being surrounded by slightly menacing nature (flesh eating pigs, downpours) and a sense of primordial earthy power. And being utterly alone, at th" Read more of this review »
Amy Gentry and 14 other people liked Kinga's review of Harvest:
Harvest by Jim Crace
"“What starts with fire will end with fire, I’ve heard it said.”
And so starts and ends ‘Harvest’, Jim Crace’s latest novel (and supposedly his last, as he will be retiring from writing). The fire in ‘Harvest’ is not the kind that has sky reaching blaz" Read more of this review »
Amy Gentry made a comment on Wolf’s review of Harvest
Harvest by Jim Crace
" I like when the narrator abandons a 4-year-old to death, sets an innocent prisoner free only to help him, ploughs a field to prove a point, and then t ...more "
Amy Gentry and 73 other people liked Wolf's review of Harvest:
Harvest by Jim Crace
"This book seemed right up my street. I enjoy historical fiction and here the story of a village facing sudden new threats - enclosure of the land, which threatens their whole way of life, the arrival of strangers, both poor and powerless and wealthy " Read more of this review »
Amy Gentry rated a book liked it
Harvest by Jim Crace
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O, waste not your plot, kind sir! Bethink you of the literary novel in the lane, barefoot and shivering for want of a plot; spare a thought for the thrillers, whose premises, worn threadbare by generations of use, will scarcely get them through the w ...more
Amy Gentry wants to read
Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things by Gilbert Sorrentino
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Amy Gentry made a comment on Meike’s review of Holzfällen
Holzfällen by Thomas Bernhard
" I found this book extremely funny, and unexpectedly moving. I'm not surprised people were offended, but I also think that between the lines, Bernhard ...more "
Amy Gentry rated a book it was amazing
Woodcutters by Thomas Bernhard
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AS 👏 I 👏 SAT 👏 IN 👏 THE 👏 WING 👏 CHAIR 👏

Masterpiece, no notes. Superb audio narration by Matthew Lloyd Davies. This is my first Bernhard, and I'm reading Old Masters: A Comedy (the print version) next.
...more
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Quotes by Amy Gentry  (?)
Quotes are added by the Goodreads community and are not verified by Goodreads. (Learn more)

“This is why people need God—because people are awful, even the good ones.”
Amy Gentry, Good as Gone

“Maybe once you've been left by the most important person in your life, you can never be unleft again. Maybe you're destined to be abandoned even by your own guts, maybe your foot walks off with your thighbone, why not, stranger things have happened.”
Amy Gentry, Good as Gone

“Maybe once you’ve been left by the most important person in your life, you can never be unleft again.”
Amy Gentry, Good as Gone

Topics Mentioning This Author

“All gods who receive homage are cruel. All gods dispense suffering without reason. Otherwise they would not be worshipped. Through indiscriminate suffering men know fear and fear is the most divine emotion. It is the stones for altars and the beginning of wisdom. Half gods are worshipped in wine and flowers. Real gods require blood.”
Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

“Beautiful writing becomes beautiful when it loses its harmony and has the desperate power of the ugly.”
Elena Ferrante, In the Margins: On the Pleasures of Reading and Writing

“Where have you been?" she cried. "Damn you, where have you been?" She took a few steps toward Schmendrick, but she was looking beyond him, at the unicorn.

When she tried to get by, the magician stood in her way. "You don't talk like that," he told her, still uncertain that Molly had recognized the unicorn. "Don't you know how to behave, woman? You don't curtsy, either."

But Molly pushed him aside and went up to the unicorn, scolding her as though she were a strayed milk cow. "Where have you been?" Before the whiteness and the shining horn, Molly shrank to a shrilling beetle, but this time it was the unicorn's old dark eyes that looked down.

"I am here now," she said at last.

Molly laughed with her lips flat. "And what good is it to me that you're here now? Where where you twenty years ago, ten years ago? How dare you, how dare you come to me now, when I am this?" With a flap of her hand she summed herself up: barren face, desert eyes, and yellowing heart. "I wish you had never come. Why did you come now?" The tears began to slide down the sides of her nose.

The unicorn made no reply, and Schmendrick said, "She is the last. She is the last unicorn in the world."

"She would be." Molly sniffed. "It would be the last unicorn in the world to come to Molly Grue." She reached up then to lay her hand on the unicorn's cheek; but both of them flinched a little, and the touch came to rest on on the swift, shivering place under the jaw. Molly said, "It's all right. I forgive you.”
Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

“Canadians, do not vomit on me!”
Elizabeth Hardwick, Sleepless Nights

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message 2: by Amy

Amy Gentry Fionnuala wrote: "It wasn't me who gave the five stars to The Sacred Fount, Amy—it's the only HJ that didn't work for me. And I don't use star ratings at all. Maybe you meant the friend request for someone else? Tho..."

Ha! I may have mixed you up, but I definitely meant the friend request--I've followed you for a while and love your reviews and shelves. And I certainly don't blame anyone for disliking The Sacred Fount--it is perverse, nearly unreadable and utterly ridiculous! I am totally fascinated by it but I would never argue that it's a successful book.


Fionnuala It wasn't me who gave the five stars to The Sacred Fount, Amy—it's the only HJ that didn't work for me. And I don't use star ratings at all. Maybe you meant the friend request for someone else? Though it's true I've read all the other writers you mentioned as inspirations: Spark, Woolf, Highsmith, Brookner. I've even read Gone Girl:-(


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