Rating: 
Summary: It was great!
Review: I loved David Lodge's style of writing; he's both funny and thought provoking and extremely addictive. His world of Rummidge wi
th all its characters and their exploits become wonderfully identifiable with. I never wanted the novel to end
Rating: 
Summary: intelligent light reading
Review: i stumbled onto david lodge's "therapy" as a hand me down book. i was pleasantly surprised to find it light and relaxing without being stupid. Lodge writes deftly, even with such an indelicate character as Tubby passmore. a book to be enjoyed, containing funny references to kierkegaard as well as modern angst. great pageturner without the plot dragging the character all the way..
Rating:
Summary: John, from Chicago, doesn`t understand the book...
Review: I think that John, doesn`t have any background to understand this beatiful novel.
Rating:
Summary: Lodge at his best.
Review: Lodge's 'Small World' is a multi-layered text, rich with classical and theoretical reference. Links with the works of T.S Eliot, classical mythology and Arthurian legend are evident enough to be credibly acknowleged, yet subtle enough to be overlooked by the more casual reader. And it is incredibly funny!
Rating:
Summary: funniest book I have ever read
Review: Once you start to read David Lodge, you are hooked and would want more. I started with his newest book "Thinks" and ended up reading him nonstop. So far I have read "Home Truths", "Changin Places", "Practice of Writing" and then "Small World". I plan to read on. "Small World" is the best academic satire I have read; it is funny, pereptive and very true. Even on gloomy sleepless nights, it made me laugh so loud that I constantly startled my two poor dogs. They looked at me with their sleepy eyes and wagged their tails in bewilderment. Too bad to be a dog that you cannot appreciate such good and funny stuff. Having been a literature student and known many academics, I have been constantly struck by the sense of recognition. Lodge writes with his profound knowledge in literature and and his insight in people in the field of literarute. The pretentiousness in that world is mercilessly satirized. And the holy canon is hilariously and wonderfully parodized.
Rating:
Summary: funniest book I have ever read
Review: Once you start to read David Lodge, you are hooked and would want more. I started with his newest book "Thinks" and ended up reading him nonstop. So far I have read "Home Truths", "Changin Places", "Practice of Writing" and then "Small World". I plan to read on. "Small World" is the best academic satire I have read; it is funny, pereptive and very true. Even on gloomy sleepless nights, it made me laugh so loud that I constantly startled my two poor dogs. They looked at me with their sleepy eyes and wagged their tails in bewilderment. Too bad to be a dog that you cannot appreciate such good and funny stuff. Having been a literature student and known many academics, I have been constantly struck by the sense of recognition. Lodge writes with his profound knowledge in literature and and his insight in people in the field of literarute. The pretentiousness in that world is mercilessly satirized. And the holy canon is hilariously and wonderfully parodized.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful!
Review: One of the most consistently funny books I've ever read. It helps to know your literature and your pre-Internet academic life; there are a lot of literary jokes (including many in the plot itself) that will likely go over the average reader's head. But there's a good story and excellent set of characters to be had regardless. Writers who are working on books with many characters are advised to read this one to see how to handle them properly.
Rating:
Summary: Funny!
Review: Satire aside, this is one of the funniest modern novels in print. Fulvia Morgana's attempted seduction of Morris Zapp makes me laugh out loud every time I re-read it. And everyone wants an adventure like Persse's.
Rating:
Summary: A delightful novel on the underwritten subject of academia
Review: SMALL WORLD easily takes its place among the very finest books ever written about academia. This provokes the question: Why are there so few novels, good or bad, on the world of higher education? A huge number of novelists and writers have attended graduate school, many are themselves teachers or professors, and yet the number of first-rate books covering the world of scholars are rare. Off the top of my head, I can think of Kinsley Amis's LUCKY JIM, A. S. Byatt's POSSESSION, John Barth's GILES GOAT BOY, Robertson Davies CORNISH TRILOGY, and several other novels by David Lodge, including the prequel to SMALL WORLD, CHANGING PLACES. I should also add Malcolm Bradbury's THE HISTORY MAN and magnificent parody MY STRANGE QUEST FOR MENSONGE. Many novels have characters attending college or university at some point, but as a whole it is a genre that is underrepresented. Even if novels on academic life were plentiful, this one would stand out. Lodge has written many superb books, but this one just may be his best. It was also one of the first to be widely available in the US. I still remember vividly in the 1980s having to search out Penguin editions published in Canada because he was largely unavailable in the US. The novel features some of the characters we came to know in CHANGING PLACES, including Philip Swallow and Morris Zapp, and takes place to a large extent at a number of academic conferences. Although a first-hand acquaintance with higher education isn't a prerequisite, anyone who has been to graduate school or taught will find a host of familiar characters and situation. Lodge magnificently lampoons the intellectual posturing and gamesmanship that fills the small world of the scholar. The novel manages to be both accurate and quite funny at the same time. At one point in my life, I worked in a number of bookstores. One of my happier experiences was to have been employed at a campus bookstore in Chicago during Lodge's first reading tour of the United States (I believe this was around 1990). I was happy to spend some time with him along with other employees before his reading, and I remember his being so surprised that so many in the US had read his work, given the difficulty at the time of getting his novels in the states. He was an enormously pleasant person, and he gave a fine reading from NICE WORK. A final word on that: many speak of NICE WORK as being the final novel in a trilogy. I have trouble with that. CHANGING PLACES and SMALL WORLD feature many common characters, none of whom reappear in NICE WORK. Fans of the first two may be disappointed to find that NICE WORK, as fine as it is, does not continue the story of the other two novels.
Rating:
Summary: A delightful novel on the underwritten subject of academia
Review: SMALL WORLD easily takes its place among the very finest books ever written about academia. This provokes the question: Why are there so few novels, good or bad, on the world of higher education? A huge number of novelists and writers have attended graduate school, many are themselves teachers or professors, and yet the number of first-rate books covering the world of scholars are rare. Off the top of my head, I can think of Kinsley Amis's LUCKY JIM, A. S. Byatt's POSSESSION, John Barth's GILES GOAT BOY, Robertson Davies CORNISH TRILOGY, and several other novels by David Lodge, including the prequel to SMALL WORLD, CHANGING PLACES. I should also add Malcolm Bradbury's THE HISTORY MAN and magnificent parody MY STRANGE QUEST FOR MENSONGE. Many novels have characters attending college or university at some point, but as a whole it is a genre that is underrepresented. Even if novels on academic life were plentiful, this one would stand out. Lodge has written many superb books, but this one just may be his best. It was also one of the first to be widely available in the US. I still remember vividly in the 1980s having to search out Penguin editions published in Canada because he was largely unavailable in the US. The novel features some of the characters we came to know in CHANGING PLACES, including Philip Swallow and Morris Zapp, and takes place to a large extent at a number of academic conferences. Although a first-hand acquaintance with higher education isn't a prerequisite, anyone who has been to graduate school or taught will find a host of familiar characters and situation. Lodge magnificently lampoons the intellectual posturing and gamesmanship that fills the small world of the scholar. The novel manages to be both accurate and quite funny at the same time. At one point in my life, I worked in a number of bookstores. One of my happier experiences was to have been employed at a campus bookstore in Chicago during Lodge's first reading tour of the United States (I believe this was around 1990). I was happy to spend some time with him along with other employees before his reading, and I remember his being so surprised that so many in the US had read his work, given the difficulty at the time of getting his novels in the states. He was an enormously pleasant person, and he gave a fine reading from NICE WORK. A final word on that: many speak of NICE WORK as being the final novel in a trilogy. I have trouble with that. CHANGING PLACES and SMALL WORLD feature many common characters, none of whom reappear in NICE WORK. Fans of the first two may be disappointed to find that NICE WORK, as fine as it is, does not continue the story of the other two novels.
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