Shuttlecock

Rating:
Summary: I found these characters very tedious & unengaging.
Review: Are we even reading the same book? My son's Comp I class was assigned this book, and I tried to read it but didn't get past the first 100 pages. The main character is flat and boring, and he seems intent on sharing his every dull thought. I found this a disappointment and don't think it was a very good choice for a freshman lit class either.

Rating:
Summary: A magnificent book. Grippin, enthralling & completely unique
Review: Following Graham Swift's well-deserved successes with Waterland & Last Orders, I'm amazed this book remains virtually unknown. It is one of my all-time favourites, repaying multiple readings.

It works on several levels - as a straight thriller (is the narrator really paranoid? is Quinn insane? what's the truth about Prentice Snr, a mute inmate in a mental hospital), as a wonderfully vivid decriptive novel (Wimbledon, the London underground & Eastern France are all brought to life magnificently), a terrific gallery of characters, a study on family relations, guilt and expectations ... I could go on.

My advice: buy it, read it & pass it on to your friends.

Rating:
Summary: The one I have been looking for.
Review: For the past 40 years or so I have been looking for what I regard, the perfect book. This is it. I found it on my shelf, of all places. It had been sitting there for years ignored and overlooked for the more preferable reads, the bigger-better authors who garner the biggerst audience. Swift is magic. His main character, Prentis, is as I would draw him, ignomatic, real, diabolical. The book has a lurid, eeire feel to it, not creepy, but weird, the way I like it. Easy to follow but not shallow by any means. Anyone who becomes bored by reading Swift is a moron. There is a pile of substance between those simple lines, it just takes a littel intellect to find it.