Rating:  Summary: A book to be recommended Review: Alexandra & Cristina We liked to read the book. It was full of tension. Especially at the end when you didn't know if he will help the police and identify Kev or not, it was very drammaticaly. It's good that the book hasn't a happy ending. It woudln't fit because the topic isn't delightful too. But the hole book is written in great detail so that you don't expect such a fast ending. We would also like to know what will happen to Andrea and Moira. For us it was also interesting to get to know more about the political situation in Ireland. But we can't imagine that you always have to live in fear of the bombings of the IRA.
Rating:  Summary: Lies of Silence Review: As I am very interested in everything that has to do with Ireland or Northern Ireland, it was a real pleasure to read this book. Although I thought that the book was sometimes very predictable it was really exciting and fun to read. The book is about a Irish man who is married to Moira and has a girlfriend Andrea. One night the IRA invades his house and they want Dillon to bomb a hotel the day after. We look at the IRA as a violent organisation (which they are of course) but when you read the book you conclude that they are people who are patriotic and love their country. The main character Dillon dies at the end of the story because he did something the IRA had forbidden him to do. I think I would have done the same thing as Dillon because I think you mustn’t be egoistic and let people die just because you don’t want your wife to die. The title ‘Lies of Silence’ can be explained in two ways: Dillon has a secret affair with Andrea and the fact that the British government doesn’t care about the situation in Northern Ireland. I think the title is very well chosen. I can recommend this book to everyone because it is a good thriller and because it is a good view on the Irish conflict.
Rating:  Summary: Terribly sad Review: Books about war are used to be sad and this one is an example. The IRA playes the leading part in this book about the civil war in Ireland. Michael is a good bussinesman, he is the manager of a hotel but what if he has to choose between your wife, life or lover? Imagine yourself running away and hidding all the time because of one decision you have made and this turned out to be not a very positive one for the IRA. Brian Moore is telling the story very exciting and you will be reading the book from the tip of your chair. Unfortunately I do not like books about the was very much, but if you do I think you would like it very much!
Rating:  Summary: Great book Review: I didn't know what the book was about when I started reading because I had to read it for school. I think the book is very exciting especially at the beginning of the book. I did not expect the book was about the IRA so that was a big surprise. But I liked the book very much.
Rating:  Summary: Lies of silence, how realistic is it? Review: I read the book Lies of Silence by Brian Moore. The first thing that I noticed was that it was very realistic. All the places exist in real life and the problems are real. Of course the actions are described excitingly but that is no problem. The dilemma in the book about warning the police and testifying or not is one about which you can discus for a long long time. I felt like I was looking of the shoulder of Michael and therefore understood is problems well. Eventually he did the right and brave thing. Second dilemma is who does he choose; the girlfriend or the wife. He uses the IRA problem to get rid of his wife. By reading this book, you understand a lot more about the problems in that area.
Rating:  Summary: Good Novel Review: I think nobody really can imagine the loneliness, that Dillon had to go through. It's not only the tension that makes this book good, but also how the whole situation is explained by the author Brian Moore. Sometimes I had the feeling of being involved in the story myself. I didn't know much about the situation in Ireland, but , reading the book, I got to know (and to feel) the situation in this country. But since I'm not surrounded by those problems, there are still some things I can't really follow. But the novel, as a reader, is very good. It's thrilling, and the most important thing is, it makes you think. MatÃas
Rating:  Summary: interresting Review: I thought the book was good becauce I learned so much more about what goes on in Northern ireland that nobody wants to say. Plus the ending was brilliant !!!
Rating:  Summary: a COMPLEX STUDY OF LIFE'S STRANGE TWISTS. Review: I TRULY ENJOYED THIS NOVEL. AS USUAL, MOORE DISPLAYS HIS ECONOMY OF STYLE, AND THOUGHTFUL SELECTION VOCABULARY. MOORE EXAMINES THE FRUSTRATION AND DESPONDENCY OF A SIMPLE MAN CAUGHT IN A COMPLEX LIFE ALTERING DILEMMA. IN HIS EXTRAORDINARY STYLE, MOORE WEAVES THIS STORY OF MIDDLE-AGE CROSSROADS WITH THE POLITICAL INTRIGUE OF IRA TERRORISM. MOORE'S GREATEST ASSET IS HIS AMAZING CAPABILITY TO TELL STORIES FULLY, WITH GREAT DETAIL AND CLARITY, IN FEWER THAN 250 PAGES. THIS SAME TALENT IS DISPLAYED IN "THE STATEMENT." IN AN INDUSTRY THAT HAS PRODUCED WEIGHT MORE OFTEN THAN GREATNESS, MOORE'S NOVELS, WHICH JOIN FICTION WITH HISTORICAL FACT, ARE DYNAMITE. BARRY SCHEINBERG [SCHEINY@AOL] SIMSBURY, CONNECTICUT
Rating:  Summary: Just Average Review: I want to offer a little dissent here. I thought the book to be a bit dull and slow. I really labored to get through it and becuase of it completely turned me off to the rest of his work. I just did not buy into some of the main stroy points. It could be that I spend too much time reading action fiction so I need a fast paced book to keep me interested.
Rating:  Summary: one of the most underrated and unread great authors Review: I wanted the book to read like a thriller, but to be something more, I didn't want to do a whole book about Northern Ireland, but I did want to talk about how often ordinary people are taken as hostages, their homes invaded - and the moral choices they're forced to make. I go back to Ireland often and no one ever talks about the hostages. We're in a position now where any of us could be hostages and that can create the dilemma of loyalty to family versus saving the lives of others. -Brian Moore, NY Times Interview When Michael Dillon's mistress is offered a job in London, he is finally forced into a series of difficult decisions : to leave his insecure, bulimic wife; to request a transfer from his Belfast hotel manager's job; to finally flee an Ireland which he loathes. But, that night, after he has been unable to confront his wife with his decision, IRA gunmen break into their home. They hold her hostage and demand that he park his explosives laden car opposite a dining room in the hotel where a prominent Ulster Unionist clergyman will be speaking. Dillon finds himself on the horns of an appalling moral dilemma : do as the terrorists say and blow up dozens of friends, coworkers and other innocents; or alert the police and risk getting his unloved wife killed. His eventual choice sets in motion a chain of events which will require subsequent, intertwining moral choices and which can not end happily. In a century which gave us a near infinitude of horrifying statements and sentiments, I've always found the following, from E. M. Forster, to be the most disturbing : If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country. The monstrous selfishness of this remark, gussied up in the guise of loyalty, is a fitting epitaph for an era that lionized the Hollywood Ten and vilified Linda Tripp. All too few authors and other intellectuals were willing to seriously question the full implications of such an attitude; Brian Moore is the exception. Combining elements of everything from The Desperate Hours to The Informer to The Heart of the Matter, Moore explores a series of moral questions, and manages to do so in the midst of a compulsively readable thriller. One of the most insipid canards going, accepted even by conservatives who should know better, is that the Left produces all of the great literature. As we look back on the 20th Century, it seems increasingly evident that it is the small group of writers on the Right, many of them Catholic, who actually produced the Century's most important and enduring body of work, among them : T. S. Eliot; George Orwell; Evelyn Waugh; J.R.R. Tolkein; C. S. Lewis; Flannery O'Connor; Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn; Andre Dubus; Frederick Buechner; Tom Wolfe; and Brian Moore. (Even Graham Greene, who--when both were alive--referred to Moore as his "favorite living writer," was at his unintentional best in books like Heart of the Matter and End of the Affair, where he did not even realize that he was writing from a conservative viewpoint.) If you've never read anything by Brian Moore, truly one of the most underrated and unread great authors of recent years, Lies of Silence is as good a place to start as any. GRADE: A
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