This blog was created to increase fan awareness of “The Brave” a quiet, thought-provoking movie and a book of the same title. At present this blog is being revised to update content. Your patience and understanding is appreciated.
"But I also love his 1991 standalone, The Brave, a truly bleak story about a man who agrees to appear in a snuff film, after being promised quite a lot of money. It's a twisted, chilling horror story, and it will give even the toughest readers nightmares" (Carmeron Hughes, 2008) http://thrillingdetective.com/index.html
From Publisher's Weekly: "If Mcdonald meant us to get angry at an unthinking, heartless system---"The man from the government had stopped coming and then the food stamps had stopped" -- this spare, searing indictment should succeed. It is brilliant and devastating."
(http://www.amazon.com/Brave-Gregory-McDonald/dp/0942637348)
"Reading The Brave was a gut-wrenching experience...It grabbed me and held me. It is powerful. It is touching. It is tragic--the story of the ultimate situational exploitation of the poor and the powerless.....The Brave is a metaphor for all the miserliness that is reflected in today's social mirror." John Seigenthaler, Editorial Director, USA Today (bookjacket, October 1991)
And from the official Gregory Mcdonald Website, a look into the book and critical response to it:
The Brave, 1991(preferred title [French]: "Rafael, Last Days" )
Subject: Rafael agrees to sacrifice himself in the most grizzly way imaginable to rescue his family from their homeless life as toxic- waste dump pickers.
Critique: "(An) unflinching portrayal of a resourceful young man negotiating a malignant dystopian landscape...No part of the scene, not even one sentence, is prurient..." - New York Times Book Review
Critique: At the conclusion of an hour long discussion on EuroArts Channel (at which Mr. Mcdonald participated), the critic-moderator said, "With no insult intended to any author, living or dead, quite simply stated, Gregory Mcdonald's "Rafael, Last Days" is one of the two or three greatest novels ever written.
Comment: In France, this novel was voted Trophees 813 - Best Foreign Novel, 1997. Considered a revolting work by some, a great love story by others, a philosophical, sociological, theological, religious, political monument by many, shocking by all. Once read, this book can never be forgotten.
Inference: In true love there is sacrifice; have we forgotten?
http:/www.gregorymcdonald.com
Postnote: Mr. Mcdonald died in Sept. 2008 of prostate cancer.