|
GHOSTS HAUNTINGS UFOS SUPERNATURAL |
Paranormal-Britain.co.uk |
|
 Side menuFeatured Products
NEWSAdvanced and Beginners Tarot Course - Learn to read the Tarot - Learn how to read the Tarot with our online tarot certification course which is designed for both beginners and those wishing to increase their knowledge of the tarot. Students have full tutor support during the course and can interact with co-students via the message boards and chat rooms. |
Netherland
RRP: £14.99 Our Price: £9.55 (subject to change) ReviewsAppropriately enough, doesn't really get anywhere Review date: 2009-01-06 Rating: 4 out of 10 This novel doesn't ever seem to really engage with its supposed central themes - post 9-11 New York and cricket in the American/immigrant experience. Instead, it seems to identify all-too-much with its depressed and isolated protagonist, who seems to spend a surprising amount of time mooching oddly about for a high-flying financier. Despite the hype, this just felt to me like yet another novel about (big letters) The Family. I could happily live the rest of my life without reading about another bloody middle-aged man feeling isolated from his wife and son. Not understated, just overrated... Review date: 2009-01-05 Rating: 2 out of 10 Oh dear. Another `important' book about 9/11. Another book with `aching prose' that is, allegedly, `poised and unsettling'. Or so the marketing blurb would have you believe. In fact, this is a dreadfully poor, under-edited work. I'm struggling to imagine the reader who would be satisfied by this book. Let's get one thing clear: any attempt to link this book to issues about 9/11 are just commercial hype to get you to buy it. It has nothing to do with the Twin Towers - any attempt to connect it as such, is a retrospective attempt to shoehorn something contemporary into a dull, meandering read. The narrator's stream-of-consciousness is no doubt deliberate, but it is tremendously annoying. The idea within an idea within an idea merely leaves everything elliptical, under-used, over-complicated, and robbed of any currency, wit, or impact. In fact, the absence of impact is one of the many flaws. The main character, Hans, is a drippy doormat who seems incapable of rousing himself to any kind of emotion at all. Wife leaving you? So what. Hate your job? Ho-hum. There is absolutely nothing that will gain this character's passionate attention, and therefore the reader's. The basic idea of this book is appealing. Cricket in New York has a quirky ring to it. Quite why the additional quirk of a Dutchman playing it has been introduced, is hard to say. It smacks of O'Neill simply trying to squeeze all the things he knows about, into one novel. It doesn't work. There is not a love of the game flowing through the words - it is too carefully aimed at Americans who have never heard of the game. Hence, the cricket-as-metaphor idea falls flat on its face. It is perfectly possible to write about cricket and the characters who love it. But not if you're trying to explain the rules to the reader. After 250 pages, you don't care what the ending is. There is no `big reveal', no satisfying outcome. Hans just stops gently whining. Nothing has hung together; nothing has resonated or given you pause for thought. This is an Emperor's New Clothes novel, which has somehow been marketed into a success, by implying that if you do not love it, you're intellectually unworthy of it. Great American Novel? It's not even an average novel. I would prefer it if O'Neill had characters I could believe in (even if I hated them), an idea of where those characters are going, and the skill to evoke an era or place with any colour or depth. A very important novel Review date: 2008-12-17 Rating: 10 out of 10 It's hard to add much to the discussion of this book. It is something of a marmite novel, sharply dividing opioion. I go with those who feel it is one of the novels of the decade. I concur witrh the echoes of the Great Gatsby - for my money this novel seems more assured and coherent even than Fitzgerald. I think this is the most restrained and effective depiction of the Anglo-American post-911 / post Iraq zeitgeist so far. I thnk the writing really offeres something new - while not 100% sucessful, I think the compromised and awkwardly triangulated narrator is about right for the age. The scene where he views the empty garden of his wife's London home on Google Earth sounds trite, but is haunting. This is the novel McEwan's 'Saturday' aspired to be. Must read. Turgid Big American allegory Review date: 2008-11-27 Rating: 6 out of 10 Even if it's not particularly long and the author is Irish, this feels a lot like a self-styled `Big American Novel' - the book is a rambling, outsiders' panorama of post-9/11 America with a symbolical narrative about (sort of) cricket. The main pull is O'Neill's highly lyrical writing style, which at times is quite evocative of John Banville - i.e. dazzlingly (self-consciously?) fancy/scholarly, and much easier to admire from a distance than feel genuine affection for. Product Details/SpecificationsAuthors: Joseph O'Neill Recording label: Fourth Estate Ltd Manufacturer: Fourth Estate Ltd EAN: 9780007269068 Binding: Hardcover ISBN: 0007269064 Number of pages: 256 Publication date: 2008-05-06 Language: English (Original Language) Language: English (Unknown) Similar ProductsJoin Our Mailing ListJoin our newsletter and you will be informed when this site is fully operational, the you won't have to keep checking back. Enter your email address and press send |
|
