(.) There is no need even to mention its stupid title, which somehow manages to exclude the population of the world who is either unfamiliar with, or does not enjoy, skiing." - Jenny Colgan, The Spectator (.) And let us not think about how, as editors get younger and titans of letters get older, it appears harder and harder to provide useful editorial feedback vis-à-vis how long books ought to be and whether or not they should include entire screenplays, even when it comes to a writer as famously warm and thoughtful as Irving.
The fact that this book is terrible is simply something we must all just get over. "The thing is, John Irving is a genius - a comic, warm, brilliant genius.But unless you’re an Irving superfan craving a big summing-up, the novel’s muchness might simply suffocate." - Alexandra Jacobs, The New York Times (.) Preachy and tauntingly bawdy in patches, The Last Chairlift does have pleasurable stretches, when the air is clear and the terrain smooth. (.) (T)his sustained sojourn can feel like an unrelenting avalanche of words from which one emerges blinking and dazed - a book to be not so much read as survived. "(A) tough old-fashioned bildungsroman that meanders more than it moves, with its creator’s customary herks, jerks, digressions and Rabelaisian excesses.I’m afraid the book is also very poorly edited - if at all." - Edward Docx, The Guardian His vocabulary lacks invention and his word selection is staunchly unremarkable. He has little of Dickens’s sophisticated and multivalent command of register, and only a fraction of his psychological dexterity. (.) Irving has been compared to Dickens, but on the evidence of this novel that is far-fetched. (.) It would be overstating the case to say that Irving is merely gestural in this book, but it’s as though he brilliantly imagines scenes and characters and then omits to give the latter much interesting or plausible interiority - like writing a screenplay and relying on a director or actors to bring the depth. He consistently avoids the cliches of setup and setting and deftly draws you in as a witness to the outlandish.
(.) The best of the novel comes in Irving’s unusual scene writing, and this remains his great imaginative strength. "This novel is not for those without readerly stamina.
General information | review summaries | our review | links | about the authorī- : a heap of a novel, with just too much piled in and on
Trying to meet all your book preview and review needs.
0 kommentar(er)
