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Author:
John le Carré
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 Brilliant story, 2010-03-23
I love all the John Le Carre books I've read and this is one of my favourites. It's well written, exciting and I really engaged with the characters. The relationship between Joseph and Charlie is well drawn and compelling and I liked the subject matter. A great read.
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Author:
David Mitchell
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It's hard not to become ensnared by words beginning with the letter B, when attempting to describe Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell's third novel. It's a big book, for start, bold in scope and execution--a bravura literary performance, possibly. (Let's steer clear of breathtaking for now.) Then, of course, Mitchell was among Granta's Best of Young British Novelists and his second novel number9dreamwas shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Characters with birthmarks in the shape of comets are a motif; as are boats. Oh and one of the six narratives strands of the book--where coincidentally Robert Frobisher, a young composer, dreams up "a sextet for overlapping soloists" entitled Cloud Atlas--is set in Belgium, not far from Bruges. (See what I mean?) Structured rather akin to a Chinese puzzle or a set of Matrioshka dolls, there are dazzling shifts in genre and voice and the stories leak into each other with incidents and people being passed on like batons in a relay race. The 19th-century journals of an American notary in the Pacific that open the novel are subsequently unearthed 80 years later on by Frobisher in the library of the ageing, syphilitic maestro he's trying to fl...
Beautifully Captivating, 2010-07-13
Easily one of the best books I have ever read, the only book that has ever made me question whether I was in the right frame of mind to appreciate it enough before a reading session! The book covers several different styles of writing, and never gets confused or jumpy. The contrast of the different styles and story lines is intricate and extremely well researched and executed. I have recently discovered the creators of The Matrix, the Wachowski brothers have bought the rights for it. Amazing.
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Author:
Giles Milton
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Customer service, 2010-02-15
I never received the item due to probably a postal service problem but the seller was extremely helpful and gave a full refund. Much appreciated. Very honest and professional seller.
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Author:
Jake Arnott
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Wonderful, 2010-07-18
A departure from his other novels, this is a complex story that needs to be read more than once. Having said that it was not a disapointment. Full marks for his research.
It grabbed me from the start and was hard to put down. I enjoyed the book and look forward to Jakes next novel.The Devil's Paintbrush
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Author:
Elizabeth H. Winthrop
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one of the best 2009 richard and judy reads, 2009-12-03
i've read most of the 2009 richard and judy bookclub books and this is one of my favourites.
Its not an action packed read by any means but filled two return commuter journeys into London easily. For maximum effect it should be read when exceptionally cold and snowing. The weather matched the mood of the novel perfectly. I was warmed up however by the characters who felt real - this is a story about the day to day difficulties of a family with a troubled daughter during a month period - December. If you are looking for a relaxing stress free winter read by the fire with a mug of cocoa this is for you. Wrap up warm you'll feel the cold when reading it! Nothing of any great significance happens nethertheless its a moving story and well written.
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Author:
Qiu Xiaolong
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Death of a Red Heroine, 2009-08-30
What a great book. Having read this one I was compelled to read all the detective stories by this author. As well as being a good mystery it introduced me to life in China & the history of the Cultural Revolution. Having read all his detective stories so far I am longing for his next one. I became immersed in Chinese culture as I read it.
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Author:
Tim Gautreaux
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Like William Gay? Like Jeffrey Lent? You'll love Gautreaux,, 2006-04-05
With Jeffrey Lent, William Gay and Kent Haruf jostling for room on the cover, so as to offer blurbs of admiration, you know exactly where Tim Gautreaux's novel is coming from. Set in his native Louisiana just after the First World War, The Clearing is one of those rich southern tales of a community trying to establish itself in the face of lawlessness and harsh unforgiving elements.
As Randolph Aldridge travels south from Pennsylvania by train and boat watching the wilderness unfold and the violence increase, I pictured William Blake making the same kind of journey in Jim Jarmusch's film, Dead Man.
Randolph goes to take charge of a sawmill at the end of the line - a marshland where the workers take it in turns to watch the night for the gleam of hungry alligators' yellow eyes - but is really there to track down his long lost brother, Byron, who, after returning from the Great War, has sought refuge in the wasteland where he deals out rough justice with a spade to the brutes that drink themselves stupid after their toil and sweat in the mill.
Like Gay, Gautreaux is a master of using elemental description to create thick atmosphere: "A hard steady wind kicked up from the south, pushing a tide that crept into the mill yard like pooling blood." "He got up and dressed, walking blindly out into the street, stumbling around a broad puddle lying like a filthy mirror, the moon imbedded in it like a vandal's rock."
The workers' only relief comes from the Sicilian owned saloon with gambling, whores and liquor. Inside is "a burled fog of hand-rolled smoke that stuck in the room like back-lit cotton".
Examining these uneducated men and women who struggle in the inhospitable swamps trying to make sense of life Gautreaux explores the foundations of modern civilisation. The men are "leftovers of the great killing". Not lucky enough for a quick death they remained to endure "the slower mortality of hate, which they would pass on to their children and grand children like crooked teeth and club feet".
Although the story revels in the reality of such a hostile and unsympathetic environment and time, it is a tale of transition. The coming of the "copper wire" means an end to this way of life. "Like a vein, it would soon run head to foot through the body of the world." So that "anyone who witnesses wrongdoing could call for a policeman or a newspaperman. People would know everything, because the phones weren't just ears and voices but eyes as well."
Byron embodies the innocence scarred by the war but forced to finally confront the tragedy and move on. His longing for the unburdened past is wonderfully realised through his wallowing nostalgia in old records.
Randolph is also touched by the force of music. "He pulled the accordion against him like a lover, his fingers wandering for the melody, and the way a hand finds a doorknob in a midnight hallway, he found the song, playing his way into it, hoping the missing words would come and ride the notes against the silence."
Even the landscape, so real you can feel the dirt under your fingernails, is something to be mourned. Randolph, standing in the ruins of the cleared woods, sees a blind horse left behind. "The animal had listened to everything coming apart and knew what was happening, that the human world was a temporary thing, a piece of junk that used up the earth and then was consumed itself by the world it tried to destroy. When Randolph understood what the animal knew, a bottomless sadness crawled over him like a winter fog come out of the swamp at night. He thought of the cottages and shutters made out of this woods and of the money in his Pennsylvania bank account, but looking at the horse he could see no worth in any of it."
This is a mesmerising and magical evocation of a past that informs modern America. It is deeply sad and tragic. Pour a whisky, stick on a bluegrass record, and enjoy the tense climax that comes as inevitably as a train on a downhill slope with no brakes.
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Author:
Thomas Cahill
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it's what I now expect, 2010-01-18
This is my umpteenth book from Amazon. The service Including the value) has always been excellent and continues so.
This makes it hard to depart for other 'climes' even the bookstore on Campus.
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Author:
John Berendt
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 travelogue-style visit to Venice, 2008-12-11
As a fan of "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" I probably am in the same class as most readers of both books in being disappointed by this second one. It has many similarities to the first: both are first person accounts of several years spent as the "outsider" observing the strange customs of an unknown foreign tribe, like an an early explorer in the wilds of who-knows-where. He brought that sense of awe and naivete more believably to us in "Midnight" where the people of Savannah, his fellow Americans, did come across as truly an unusual group with customs and ways new and different from the rest of us. Somehow, though Venice is an actual "foreign" city for most of us, it doesn't seem so strange; the author doesn't bring to the table the same sense of excitement, of being in a really new environment. And it shouldn't have been that way! There are certainly a large cast of characters; a possible murder that sort of fizzles out; the fire which destroys the old Fenece Opera house, a tragedy for Venetians and Opera lovers; but somehow I never FELT the loss myself...The only one of his little vignettes of which the book is made that I became emotionally involved in was the story of Ezra Pound, and his long-time partner Olga Rudge, their daughter and her family, and the attempts by a nefarious American woman to fleece Olga, then in her 90's, of not just money but more importantly the rights to the papers, and the memorabilia over 50+ years that she had from the late Pound. It is a sad story that if it took place here and now in the States now would fall under elder abuse laws, but there and then seemed to have been brushed off by the authorities, and even Ms Rudges' adult daughter and grandson seemed not to be overly concerned though they themselves took a financial loss. Berendt was perhaps prevented from pursuing further into this, but is was by far the most interesting and heart-tugging episode: Olga in her late 90's going by foot to the bank to get some of her papers from Pound and being told no, she couldn't have them, they now belonged to the "Ezra Pound Foundation" that is, the dummy foundation headed by the American woman and her attorney, and to whom Ms Olga Rudge had unwittingly signed over her control of everything she owned, even her house. That story just stops too. All the side stories seem to just end, with no real feeling of completeness. I know its non-fiction, and things don't neatly wrap themselves up, but in some of the cases, thing ends with a sort of flat thud. I also never got a clear visual of Venice, which is odd too; one would think the gondoliers, the palaces and St Marks Square would all be brought to life...It should have been but it was never clearly painted for me, I think it was assumed I knew it from photographs, but that should not be assumed by an author. Nor were the people he discussed well "painted " verbally. Overall-- though I stayed with it-- a disappointment.
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Author:
Pete McCarthy
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Still on the road..., 2008-02-06
Pete McCarthy has probably been selling at least a couple of thousand copies a week since the hardback came out in 2000, and deservedly so. It's maybe the best book I've read since 'Schindler's Ark' (which, you will recall, Spielberg renamed 'Shindler's List' on the basis that the original title was "too Jewish". Or something like that). Anyway, I have to keep putting it down so that I can laugh properly ('McCarthy's Bar', not the Schindler book). Quite remarkable.
McCarthy rarely if ever gives the impression that he's writing merely because he can, or must. It's all going somewhere. Around Ireland, in fact, in search of his past, its present, and his future. And, no matter how preposterous the stories get, they all have the ring of truth about them. Really, you couldn't make these up.
The author lives near me, but I'm not plugging his work because I know the bloke. On the contrary, I once spent much of a party staring at him and trying to work out where I knew him from. "Hmmm... reminiscent of Douglas Adams from this angle, but... who the hell... ahhh... aha!" Got him in the end. (Not the most exciting party, as you can imagine.)
I strongly suggest that you endeavour most earnestly to avoid being the last person in these Islands to buy the book.
His world-tour follow-up, 'Road to McCarthy', is out in paperback on Monday 17th March. It, too, has already been a hardback bestseller. There may still be a few tickets left to see him read & perform live at the Greys Pub in Brighton on Sunday 16th March (Mon 17th sold out) prior to a national tour of major theatres. Contact Mike Lance if you are interested. Mention me, and I might get a free pint out of it...
~~~~~~~
Abridged from review written 13 March 2003
Pete McCarthy died of cancer on 6 October 2004
This book had already been bought by one million people.
We all continue to miss him.
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