Rating: 
Summary: CAN YOU SAY, OVERHYPED???
Review: This is one of the most whiney, overrated and overhyped books in years. The characters are completely unlikeable and the story is barely interesting. Don't waste your time on this poorly written ..novel.
Rating: 
Summary: Splendid Look At American Expatriates in Budapest
Review: I was tempted to award five stars for Arthur Phillips's fine literary debut. His is a unique, distinct voice in contemporary literature, but I will be surprised if he can follow this impressive debut with yet another. That's because I don't think he is as disciplined or as skillful a writer as either Michael Chabon or Milan Kundera - both of whom are more lyrical, polished stylists than Phillips. Yet Phillips has wrought an impressive, occasionally inspiring, look at the lives of five young North American expatriates living in Budapest in the early 1990's. The hero of this novel is writer John Price, who has arrived in search of his older brother Scott; unfortunately Scott greatly detests his younger brother. He also meets up with Hungarian American Charles Gabor, seeking to incorporate Imre Horvath's publishing interests - including those seized by the late Hungarian communist regime - into yet another multinational media conglomerate. John also encounters Canadian Mark Payton, and pursues unsuccessfully Emily Oliver - an "innocent from Nebraska" - employed at the U. S. embassy. John will question the value of his own meager existence, as he hears dismal tales from natives about their lives under Communist dictatorship. Phillips excels in capturing the atmosphere of daily life in Budapest, often shifting perspective from the 1991 Gulf War to the failed 1956 Hungarian uprising and the waning days of World War Two. Without question, this is a fascinating look at a "Lost Generation" of young Americans in the ruins of the Soviet Union's eastern European empire.
Rating:
Summary: Would you like some whine with that cheese?
Review: I approached this book eagerly, in light of the critical accolades. Despite finding myself bored at the end of the first chapter, I pressed on, determined to see what the fuss was about. What a shame that nothing came to fruition. This book is populated by unlikable, spoiled, whiny whiny whiny characters about whom I found myself caring not one whit. Yes, that may be Phillips' point, but I found Russian Debutante's Handbook attacked similar themes with wit, style and grace--attributes this book clearly lacks.
Rating:
Summary: Budapest not Prague
Review: Since I met a travelor on the plane from Nice, France two years ago who praised Prague, I was attracted to this book when I first heard about it. Finally I bought it and just finished it. I am travelling to Prague this month and this book "hit the spot" for me. My only disappointment is that is was not about Prague at all. Rather it gave indepth descriptions, both physical and psychological, about Budapest. In fact during this read I often wished I was going to Budapest and not Prague!The characters are lively, daring, sad. It made me wish I could have been as brave as they are when I was their age. However, meeting Havre the elderly Hungarian who experienced and survived all of what Hungary went through, I know I will enjoy Prague since the two country's histories are similar. A good book for any person wanting to be an expatriot or to dream of being one.
Rating: 
Summary: Why I can't stop thinking about Prague...
Review: As a voracious reader and former English major, I feel compelled to defend this novel. A year after reading it, I find myself still thinking about it, about John Price and his Budapest. Simply put, the characters in this novel--and the city of Budapest is a character--got under my skin. I suspect critics may have missed Phillips' subtle humor (e.g. a character works on a thesis on the history of nostalgia), Prague's pervasive understated emotion, and the clever little treats along the way (e.g. the juxtaposition of communist Budapest and the clueless hipsters of the '90s; a character's imaginary wife of a photo left behind in the apartment he rents). Both heartbreaking and hopeful, Prague is top on my list of favorite books of 2002. I only regret I can't read it again for the first time.
Rating:
Summary: About as exciting as reading the phone book
Review: With the critics whipping themselves into ecstatic frenzies of frothy praise over this book, I figured "what the "heck" , it can't be all bad." I couldn't have been more wrong. Apparently, being a postmodern, post-ironic, post-gen X'er isn't enough for Mr. Phillips. He has to show us all that he is utterly post-having-anything-to-say. Phillips radiates the kind of smug satisfaction that makes me mourn the living tree that this book once was. And he goes on to let the reader know, through the thinnest-of-veiled self-portraits, that he is aware of this smugness, that he mocks it, that he is both bigger and lesser than this smugness, that he tears down its pretension and then goes on to tear down the pretension of pretending he can tear down its pretension, in an endless spiral that goes on until I want to gouge my eyes out rather than read another word this smug "person" has written. If tripe like this is the new cutting edge of American Literature, we are all in deep, deep, doo-doo.
Rating:
Summary: Slow read, inexplicably unimaginative
Review: You would think this Ivy League writer would know a thing or two about plot, creativity, and how to capture the reader's attention...after getting through 200 pages I took it back to the library...this book was soooooooo boring.
Rating: 
Summary: And why is the title of this book Prague?
Review: Three out of five bookclub members agree: "This book made me want to stop reading and drop out of bookclub." This writer has potential, but this book is a real drag...
Rating:
Summary: prague, the novel by a.phillips
Review: I am living here in MTL like in a cultural wilderness -meaning I do not have like-minded people to share my passions and hatreds with - well, because I am very uncommunicative. But I do love to read and write.
I am from Eastern Europe. And I passionately hated the novel - and its author. Not that I could really finish it,mind you.(Sure, there are no more Maxwell Perkinses out there in the USA unless I am very mistaken.)
Why I hated it? It is not that the novel is badly written and totally contrived (I just can see how the scribbler was sitting and calculating how to fit his petty, millions of times chewed-over (not his own)ideas into those dead-born characters); it is not that the first question that comes to mind is as to why the ex-pat bothered to labour this opuscule at all; it is not even the utter dullness of descriptions and the author's absolute inability to have an insight in what those Madyars might really be feeling; and it is surely not the lack of belivability that the novel inspires(the only thing it does), for as Hemingway said about Tender is the Night to the little Scottie (approx. quot.) "you did not write about the real people..." ; it is not that his writing skills is downright lame and dumb.
It is just that the so-called novel is written with a condescending, smelly attitude, narcissistic - "you will get what I am writing as a menu for you anyway, you will read it anyway, the book market is so hungry for any new non-commercial books that there will be many who will even like my insipid scribblings with pangs/pretensions at intellectual work, it does not matter that people like these characters are but vapid caricatures..." and so on.
You have to be sure you CAN write before you do anything, you have to LOVE your protagonists even if you despise them, you have to really truly greately care for them.
And then people with a genuine good taste will love your book too; then your book will be an authentic "bestseller".
Try to look up Aleksandar Hemon's books: the soul is there, the love is there, the literary mastery is definitely there, - and for Hemon English ain't even a mother tongue. So, ph*** Phillips very much!
Rating: 
Summary: Much Potential
Review: Reading between the lines, one can tell that this author, Arthur Phillips, has loads of possibilities. This particular execution, however, left something to be desire.
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