‘Gwen, really there’s nothing to talk about. Nothing happened’
Imagine if you
will an author who could recreate the everyday in such detail that reading his
book seems at once overly familiar and a little strange. The characters of this
novel like to drink…. a lot and when they’re not drinking (and even when they
are) they are telling tall (or occasionally true) tales to and about each
other.
There is
something so vanilla and lifelike about this prose that it is akin to the
shaggy dog tales my mother recounts, where my eyes glaze over and I look off
into the sunset imagining I’m poolside in a resort, sipping on a frozen
cocktail somewhere. That being said, it takes a rare talent to render the
mundane with such proximity and by that measure, I’ve given this book a rather
decent score. Others have been far more generous in their praise and this book
was a Booker Prize winner.
I was not
massively entertained, nor was I particularly bored by this entry in the 1001
books you must read list. This reminds me of the kinds of scandals that groups
of friends endure after years in each other’s company. I’m writing this review
quite a few days after having completed reading the novel and my memory of it
is sparse – not a great sign I imagine.
4 out of 5 drunken Welshmen can fill
more than 300 pages with their antics.
No comments:
Post a Comment