Ruben Bt từ Torre la Sal, Castellón, Spain

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11/05/2024

Dữ liệu người dùng, đánh giá và đề xuất cho sách

Ruben Bt Sách lại (10)

2018-11-14 04:30

Combo Yêu Không Bến Bờ (Bộ 3 Cuốn) Thư viện Sách hướng dẫn

Sách được viết bởi Bởi: Nhiều tác giả

I read this book when it first came out in the mid-1990s, and it's still my favourite Jonathan Coe novel -- well, maybe joint favourite with The House of Sleep. It sizzles with rage, and yet makes you laugh out loud as well. As Michael, the reclusive failed writer who is the "hero" of the novel writes in a book review: We stand badly in need of novels, after all, which show an understanding of the ideological hijack which has taken place so recently in this country, which can see its consequences in human terms and show that the appropriate response lies not merely in sorrow and anger but in mad, incredulous laughter. Michael is clearly based on Coe himself -- even the titles of his two early novels are similar. Suffering from writer's block since a massive argument with his mother in a Chinese restaurant three years before the novel opens, he now spends most of his time alone in his flat watching old videos -- notably one of What a Carve Up!, a spoof horror film he saw part of on his ninth birthday before his mother dragged him out, claiming it was unsuitable. Now, he has a mysterious but well-paid commission from a vanity press to write a family history of the ghastly Winshaws, an all-powerful family with a stately pile, Winshaw Towers, in Yorkshire. The first, longer part of the novel alternates chapters about Michael and his gradually blooming friendship with his neighbour Fiona, with chapters each devoted to a member of the Winshaw family. They are a microcosm of the Establishment in Thatcherite Britain: an MP (once Labour, now Tory and a fervent admirer of Mrs T), a merchant banker, an arms dealer, the owner of a massive agribusiness churning out processed TV dinners and battery-raised animals, an art dealer, and a tabloid columnist. The savagely satirical chapters tear apart the morals of the 1980s -- yet even if they seem over the top, they are based on documented historical facts, many of which are clearly recognisable to anyone who followed current affairs in Britain in the 1980s. This part ends in very personal tragedy for Michael -- a tragedy which can be blamed at least partly on the members of the Winshaw family and what they have done to British institutions. The second part returns to farce in an over-the-top parody of a horror film, and more particularly the film What a Carve-up!, as various villains meet their ends in appropriately ghastly ways in the gothic setting of Winshaw Towers. Verdict: I still love this book, so long after the events it describes. I have never read such a perfectly balanced cocktail of venom, satire, lyricism, Greek myth, and lunacy. Coe's later, better-known novels (Rotters' Club et al) are excellent in a more conventional way, but this is truly one of a kind.

Người đọc Ruben Bt từ Torre la Sal, Castellón, Spain

Người dùng coi những cuốn sách này là thú vị nhất trong năm 2017-2018, ban biên tập của cổng thông tin "Thư viện Sách hướng dẫn" khuyến cáo rằng tất cả các độc giả sẽ làm quen với văn học này.