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    A Changed Man
    A Changed Man
    A Changed Man
    Audiobook14 hours

    A Changed Man

    Written by Francine Prose

    Narrated by Eric Conger

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    “Francine Prose has a knack for getting to the heart of human nature. . . . We are allowed to enter the moral dilemmas of fascinating characters whose emotional lives are strung out by the same human frailties, secrets and insecurities we all share.” —USA Today

    One spring afternoon, Vincent Nolan, a young neo-Nazi walks into the office of a human rights foundation headed by Meyer Maslow, a charismatic Holocaust survivor. Vincent announces that he wants to make a radical change. But what is Maslow to make of this rough-looking stranger with Waffen SS tattoos who says that his mission is to save guys like him from becoming guys like him?

    As Vincent gradually turns into the sort of person who might actually be able to do that, he also begins to transform everyone around him, including Maslow himself. Masterfully plotted, darkly comic, A Changed Man poses essential questions about human nature, morality, and the capacity for change, illuminating the everyday transactions, both political and personal, in our lives.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateMar 1, 2005
    ISBN9780060839383
    Author

    Francine Prose

    Francine Prose is the author of twenty-two works of fiction including the highly acclaimed The Vixen; Mister Monkey; the New York Times bestseller Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932; A Changed Man, which won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize; and Blue Angel, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her works of nonfiction include the highly praised Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife, and the New York Times bestseller Reading Like a Writer, which has become a classic. The recipient of numerous grants and honors, including a Guggenheim and a Fulbright, a Director’s Fellow at the Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, Prose is a former president of PEN American Center, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is a Distinguished Writer in Residence at Bard College.

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    Reviews for A Changed Man

    3.5/5

    112 ratings8 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Vincent Nolan wants to be a changed man. Once a Neo-Nazi and a self-described "punk storm-trooper rapist," Vincent is looking for redemption in the eyes of Meyer Maslow, a Holocaust survivor. I didn't quite believe the situation. Why wouldn't Maslow be more suspicious of Nolan? How does he trust this guy wants to change just...like...that? Is he really A Changed Man? How has Vincent become a moral hero overnight? On the flip side, I am also suspicious that no one at Brotherhood Watch would be worried for Vincent's safety...if he really is a changed man. He just left a very dangerous, cult-like organization. Think gangs. Wouldn't ARM want retaliation? Wouldn't Vincent's cousin be looking for him after Vincent stole his truck, prescription meds, and Soldier of Fortune magazine, and then left his little hate club?
      The only parts I found believable were the times when someone was jealous of someone else (and this happens a lot): Brotherhood Watch donation coordinator, Bonny, was jealous of her ex-husband's new wife (very appropriate) and she was jealous of her ex-husband's importance in society (As a cardiologist, he saves lives. What does she do?); Maslow was jealous of Elie Wiesel's "Holocaust" fame, then he was jealous of Vincent's "changed man" fame; Vincent was jealous of the Iranian prisoner's story getting more attention than his own transformation and he was also jealous of Timothy McVeigh's limelight. Yes, that Timothy McVeigh. Threaded through A Changed Man is the real-life drama of the Oklahoma City bombing and the subsequent execution of McVeigh. It allows Prose to show both sides of a tragedy. The Jews were ecstatic when McVeigh was put to death while the neo-Nazis mourned and honored their hero. As an aside, Prose made Vincent look a lot like McVeigh for added creepville.
      Overall, A Changed Man might be heavy on subject (Holocaust survivor, neo-Nazis, etc.) but super light on drama complete with a Hallmark-like ending.
    • 4/5
      Is Vincent Nolan too good to be true? Meyer Maslow and Bonnie Kalen of World Brotherhood Watch, a human rights foundation believe he is sincere. And so begins a seriously funny adventure of presenting a changed man to the public and more importantly to donors.

      Prose is a pro at knowing how to show Meyer, Bonnie and Vincent, and their strengths and weaknesses developing and changing in response to their individual lives, and because of the the synergy between the three of them.

      Cute ending could be a bit stronger.

      I enjoyed this entertaining and light read about a serious topic.

      Can people change for the better? Can their experience help others change for the better? How do we find people who are ready to change, and how do we fully utilize them? Can we trust them?
    • 3/5
      A reformed skinhead presents himself at the front door of a foundation run by a Holocaust survivor, offering himself up as a “changed man” who wants to help others like him. What’s the catch? I wondered, naturally. But it turns out there is no catch. Certainly, the skinhead was never overly devoted to his cause, but as he moves in with the foundation’s development director and her two teenaged sons, it becomes clear that he has no agenda other than getting along for as long as he can. I probably would have liked the novel better if there truly had been some master plan in the works, if the changes referred to in the title had occurred further along in the story and much more dramatically. A Changed Man was mildly entertaining but never life-changing.
    • 3/5
      What is Vincent Nolan hiding? From the moment that Nolan---a former member of the Aryan Resistance Movement---walks into the Brotherhood Watch office to denounce his racist ways and offer his services to "keep guys like me from becoming guys like me," a nice tension develops around the question of what Nolan is not revealing as he carefully crafts---and edits---his narrative of redemption. This tension carries the reader through an often sluggish first two-thirds of the novel, as Prose mucks about in the bourgeois ennui of Bonnie, the divorced mother of two who takes Vincent into her home as part of his rehabilitation, and Maslow Meyer, the heroic Holocaust survivor who founded Brotherhood Watch but now questions his own commitment to the cause.

      Unfortunately, Prose fails to reward the faithful reader with a satisfying payoff. What Vincent Nolan is hiding is disappointingly prosaic. And for a book that seeks to explore the messy contradictions of being human, the ending is too neat, too resolved.

      Prose raises interesting questions: How do each of us craft our own narratives of self? And what gets left out of those narratives? What does it mean to do good? And how do we resolve the tension when our good deeds have unintended consequences? Why is it hardest to be charitable to those closest to us?

      I just wish that Prose had spent as much time developing the plot as she does on probing what it means to be a changed man.
    • 4/5
      If I'm in the mood for a frothy and funny summertime read, I wouldn't generally pick up a book about neo-Nazi skinheads. But I stumbled upon A Changed Man, and although I wouldn't call it frothy, it's an easy read and sometimes wickedly funny - a perfect beach read. It's about Vincent, a young skinhead complete with Waffen SS tattoos, who offers his help to a human-rights group headed by a Holocaust survivor. The organization puts Vincent up at he home of the development director, a tightly-wound divorced mom, and starts milking his touching reformation for all its worth in terms of publicity and donations.

      This is a book that could easily have devolved into something oh so very arch and mean-spirited, but in the end the flawed characters, with all their human ambiguities, are quite endearing. It made me smile.
    • 5/5
      I thought this was a beautifully written exploration of an unlikely relationship. The character, Bonnie, is the only person who is true to herself. The other characters, particularly the supposedly reformed neo-Nazi, Vincent, and the human rights activist, Meyer Maslow, are all hiding something and have unknown motives, which are not completely resolved at any point during the book. Is it possible that somebody of Vincent's character and history can reform? Unlikely, and yet Prose has us believing that this has indeed occurred.
    • 5/5
      I had been meaning to read something by Francine Prose for a long time to see what everyone was talking about. It was with some trepidation however that I read the outline of the plot on the cover of A Changed Man, thinking it was not very promising. I was so wrong. This is one of the best books I have read in a long time. The characters are not the stereotypes I had expected and the story is exciting. It is darkly comic, yet poses some of the most fundemental questions about how to be a moral human being. No one escapes the author's keen analysis of their behaviour and motives. A charismatic Holacaust survivor, Meyer Maslow heads a New York based Human Rights Organization. His crusade against intolerance and injustice have made him a hero and also a very rich man with a weakness for expensive clothes and wines. His heroism is practiced , for the most part, behind a desk in an expensive Manhattan corner office. Even before Vincent Nolan, a young neo-nazi wanting to change his life walks into his offices, Maslow is suffering from self doubt. His latest book is not selling well. His star seems in decline as he compares the media attention given to Elie Wiesel and to himself and finds himself wanting. Then he finds himself wanting because he cared about it.
      With the appearance of Vincent Nolan who says his mission is to "save guys like him from becoming guys like him", Maslow and his chief fundraiser Bonnie Kalen become convinced that Nolan may be their ticket to more media attention and more money. They literally take him in the same day, and this is a little unbelievable, he goes home with Kalen to stay at her cramped suburban home with her and her two young sons, aged 12 and 16. This a clear and foreboding demonstration of Maslow's ego and personal selfishness, that he demands that she do this rather than putting Nolan in a hotel and risk having him not show up in the morning. He spends not a moment worrying about her family's safety until he is reprimanded by his wife who is worried. Even then he lies to his wife and says that Kalen wanted to do it. Any sacrifice for the cause, so long as it doesn't disturb his elegant private life.
      Although Nolan tells them that his former neo-nazi buddies do not treat deserters kindly , neither Maslow nor Kalen have any real understanding of the potential danger Nolan brings with him or that he has not told them the whole truth. As the media frenzy grows, so does the attention of those Nolan left behind.
      The story takes place with the background of the trial and execution of Tim McVeigh and the bombings in Waco, Texas and a heightened media awareness of the danger of America's aryan nations, neo nazi, fringe groups.
      Bonnie Kalen is a complex and interesting character, more of a candidate for sainthood than Maslow, at least based on the events in this book. She is driven by her passion to "do good", to raise more money for the Foundation, to save more people but she is blind to other things, what is happening to her children, and how she is being manipulated by both Nolan and Maslow.
      Every character in this book including Kalen's sons, her ex-husband, and Maslow's wife are carefully drawn and fascinating.
      Full of wit and humanity, I recommend this book to everyone.
    • 3/5
      A skinhead escapes the life by heading to NYC to join with a former concentration camp prisoner's effort to bring humanitarianism to the world. I found the book somewhat predictable - the characters a little too formulaic - and I don't think that this is the best introductiont that I could have had to Prose.