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Summary: A comedian writes a bloody thriller & lives to tell the tale
Review: The first fifty-or-so pages of this novel are witty, and comic, as those familiar with Frye's previous work will expect. Then, the hero Ned Maddstone is betrayed (a la the Count of Monte Cristo), spends 20 years unjustly locked in a mental institution, and returns to seek his revenge. I've noticed that previous reviewers who liked the Flippant Frye were disturbed by the Spooky, Scary Frye who replaces him in mid-book.Let me give you another perspective: I think this was a change for the better. The young, flippant, self-centered, class-bound comic characters of the introduction made my poor Midwestern soul want to slap them silly. I can only take so much petulance. Over the course of the book, through the darker events, the charcters manage to grow and change. They are no longer twits. In their place, there is sharp writing, deft plotting (it may be Dumas' plotting, but it is still deft), and much excitement. In short, this book managed to surprise me even though I knew the plot outline in advance--and how often can you say that anymore? A final caveat - the violence is quite graphic, even sadistic (although believable in its way). Stay away if you don't like that sort of thing, and pray that Mr. Frye has a really good therapist.
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Summary: Story recap: Brood for years, revenge as quickly as possible
Review: There are a few wonderfully written scenes in "Revenge." Unfortunately, they all come before any actual revenge occurs. While the book spends a great deal of time setting a plausible scene, setting characters' motives in play, and following Ned Maddstone's transformation from hapless schoolchum to international man of mystery, the end of the book happens so quickly that Fry might have just as well said "and then he got back at all the people that wronged him." "Revenge" failed for me as a reader because it unduly strained my credulity and resolved itself with far too much haste. This book would have benefited greatly from a more nuanced and thoroughly plotted completion to its story. It pained me to read the afterword to this book and listen to Stephen Fry babble about how he planned out this novel in his head and about how he's not the "index-card, scenario, or flow-chart sort of person." Those are the precise actions I would want to see him use if he were to try a similar project in the future.
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Summary: Revenge with style, but no hope
Review: What keeps Mr. Fry?s ?Revenge? from having the same power and luster of ?The Count?? Revenge and hope. ?Revenge? comes very close to being a powerful retelling of the work by Dumas. The prose is rich and often splendid, and the characters have decent depth and history to them. Ned, the hero, is as likeable as the villains are duplicitous and, let us be honest, scummy. Ned?s descent into the abyss is shocking, gruesome, and disturbing. Ned?s resurrection is equally well done through a plot that does not quickly produce a moment of ?that would never happen in our day!? Mr. Fry does some damn fine storytelling, escorting the story smoothly into the end of the 20th century. Yet when it comes to the vengeance of our hero, ?Revenge? is at its weakest. What starts out as violent and satisfying ends up feeling forced and overdone. Where the story should make us feel the most involved, the characters seem to be the most distant from the reader. The second problem with ?Revenge? is not that it has a Hollywood ending- far from it. Rather, the conclusion lacks the elements of hope that concluded ?The Count.? With out these few touches, however saccharine and sanguine they may be, ?Revenge? rings hollow and may leave the reader feeling hollow as well. This is a well written novel in so many respects, yet the conclusion makes the book hard to recommend for anyone who is not a fan of the Dumas original or Mr. Fry?s other novels . If Mr. Fry would have elevated hope and vengeance to the same level as his dialogue and use of detail, then ?Revenge? would have been a new classic.
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Summary: Sometimes, too much revenge is just enough
Review: With 'Revenge', Steven Fry continues to cement his reputation as one of Britain's leading modern novelists. Previous novels like 'The Liar' and 'The Hippopotamus' were brilliant, profane, and very, very funny. Essentially a modern-day retelling of 'The Count of Monte Cristo', Fry has replaced the dashing sailor Edmond Dantes with naive English schoolboy and MP's son Ned Maddstone. Framed by a jealous associate in a fictitious drug transaction, an improbable series of coincidences involving IRA terrorists leads to Ned's imprisonment in a secret government insane asylum. There he is adopted by a polymath who teaches him languages, logic, history, and a variety of other useful knowledge. Further coincidence and years of imprisonment leads to Ned's realization of how he was framed, and by whom. Aided by his mentor, who has secreted a fortune in Swiss bank accounts, Ned escapes his prison and uses this wealth to recreate himself as a British Bill Gates. He then sets in motion a dark plan of revenge against all those who have wronged him. Although the plot is improbable to the point of impossibility (as it was with Dumas' 'Count of Monte Cristo'), the black humor prevents the novel from descending to the silly or trite. This is not a feel-good novel. Bad things happen to good people, and the novel's resolution involves bad things happening to bad people--lots of very bad things as it turns out. Some might find the extreme eye-for-an-eye mentality to be too much revenge, but one must remember that this novel is essentially farce; albeit the dark side of farce.
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