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rjbs's review against another edition
4.0
I'm not sure whether the characters in this book were actually more realistic than those in most of PKD's novels. I've often found his characters to be of very few types, and those in Puttering About were largely of those types. Still, they seemed richer and more three-dimensional than those in so many of his sci-fi books. The story was interesting and sort of melancholy. I don't know that I would really recommend this book to many people, but I'm pleased to have read it.
rocketiza's review against another edition
3.0
Depressing and much more well written for a non-sci fi book that youd expect.
sartomiki's review against another edition
2.0
Non capisco lo scopo di questo libro.
Dick descrive dettagli abbastanza frivoli e non riesce ad appassionarmi.
Durante la lettura mi sono chiesto se si trattava dello stesso Dick di Ubik o soltanto una sfortunata coincidenza.
Dick descrive dettagli abbastanza frivoli e non riesce ad appassionarmi.
Durante la lettura mi sono chiesto se si trattava dello stesso Dick di Ubik o soltanto una sfortunata coincidenza.
jvendrell's review against another edition
3.0
Buena novela de Philip K. Dick en la que, pese a no ser ciencia ficción, aparecen de nuevo los temas que preocupaban al autor. Recomendable, aunque hay mejores cosas que leer.
thiswasatriumph's review against another edition
5.0
This book situates comfortably among other mid-50s observations of middle class, white middle-aged folks. In my head, I classify with “The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit” and “Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation,” although “Puttering” in more toward straight drama than either of those contemporaries. PKD’s style, well known from “Ubik” and “Three Stigmata” comes across in two aspects: carefully observed interior lives and a single scene in which Liz Bonner trips out inside her own head about the delights of sexual pleasure.
The book addresses themes relevant to both its dates: composed 1957, published 1985. For 1957, the anxieties around post-war stagnation, technological change, and racial diversity pervade. All four main characters are products of the Depression and the Home Front, and they try in their ways to create fulfilling homes for themselves or otherwise meet their needs. For 1985, a new set of worries were at play, and the book anticipates women’s lib and the crisis in masculinity that would result by the early 1980s. Roger Lindahl has much in common with the aimless men of Reagan-era sexual thrillers, except he encounters someone mostly harmless.
So why five stars? If PKD’s name weren’t on the cover, I wouldn’t have bought the book. If he weren’t the giant of SF that he is, we would judge this book against contemporaries and find that it communicates something significant about the causes and effects of marital infidelity. There’s no malice in Roger and Liz. They’re innocents acting stupidly. Virginia finds them out immediately and uses the situation not for revenge, but to renegotiate the power dynamic of her marriage and life for the better. She’s frail but correct at the book’s opening, and confident by its conclusion. She makes the right decisions. Roger, meanwhile, reverts to himself prior to meeting Virginia and at book’s end steals and runs. Liz Bonner hoped to become a magazine image: sexy, clear, and unchanging. All this comes through like a well-tuned TV picture. Worth a read.
The book addresses themes relevant to both its dates: composed 1957, published 1985. For 1957, the anxieties around post-war stagnation, technological change, and racial diversity pervade. All four main characters are products of the Depression and the Home Front, and they try in their ways to create fulfilling homes for themselves or otherwise meet their needs. For 1985, a new set of worries were at play, and the book anticipates women’s lib and the crisis in masculinity that would result by the early 1980s. Roger Lindahl has much in common with the aimless men of Reagan-era sexual thrillers, except he encounters someone mostly harmless.
So why five stars? If PKD’s name weren’t on the cover, I wouldn’t have bought the book. If he weren’t the giant of SF that he is, we would judge this book against contemporaries and find that it communicates something significant about the causes and effects of marital infidelity. There’s no malice in Roger and Liz. They’re innocents acting stupidly. Virginia finds them out immediately and uses the situation not for revenge, but to renegotiate the power dynamic of her marriage and life for the better. She’s frail but correct at the book’s opening, and confident by its conclusion. She makes the right decisions. Roger, meanwhile, reverts to himself prior to meeting Virginia and at book’s end steals and runs. Liz Bonner hoped to become a magazine image: sexy, clear, and unchanging. All this comes through like a well-tuned TV picture. Worth a read.
marissavu's review against another edition
4.0
Here's my review cross-posted from SFFAudio. Puttering About Review. I'll update with our podcast discussion on it when the episode drops.
>>
Puttering About in a Small Land (written 1957 but first published in 1985) feels very different from Philip K Dick’s usual stuff. It’s a dark and funny slow-burn set in 1950s Southern California, but there are no simulacra, no time slips, and no telepaths, and the only artificial reality is the one built out of society’s expectations of suburban married life.
It also seems unusually sensitive for PKD – not in a corny or sentimental way but just finely tuned into human relationships. He captures the subtle and imperfect communications of a dysfunctional marriage where two people are pretending to work together but are really pushing and pulling below the surface, wanting different things and resenting each other for it.
The story is told in three alternating points of view: Roger, his wife Virginia, and the “other woman” Liz. All three are trapped, one way or another, in self-made realities they don’t enjoy.
Some readers complain that PKD writes unflattering female characters, and as usual these ones aren’t much to admire: Virginia is gossipy and judgmental, her mother is a controlling nag (who often corners Roger and has some of the funniest scenes in the book), and Liz Bonner is so naïve and childlike she verges on the idiotic.
But even so, Virginia has her strengths, and Liz Bonner is lovely in a quirky way. Her flaws and naïve unpredictability are exactly what free her from society’s expectations, and are what attract Roger. Despite the deceit and infidelity, their love story is somehow still beautiful.
And to be fair, PKD also writes pretty unflattering men. For example, Roger not only cheats on his wife, he also abandoned his previous wife and daughter and seems to be a compulsive liar. He’s a bristly, bad-tempered, and indifferent to his wife’s gestures of love and compromise. All he really cares about his TV retail-and-repair business, which is where the book title comes from: he’s a little king “puttering about in a small land.”
The waning of a marriage and infidelity appear in a lot of PKD’s stories, but in this one they really drive this plot. Normally I wouldn’t try to detect an author’s own life in his fiction, but since PKD has openly admitted he weaves autobiographical details into all his stories, it seems safe to see something of him in Roger.
His essay “How to Build a Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later” might give some more clues to his approach to fiction set in the real world. Just because the characters’ universe is based in reality doesn’t mean PKD won’t try to disintegrate it.
I listened to Puttering About in a Small Land on audio and read the print version too. The audiobook was read by Amy McFadden, Kate Rudd, and Luke Daniels, one for each of the main characters. All three were great, although using three narrators didn’t work so well for me since the story is in third-person. Hearing the same characters read in three slightly different ways gave the audiobook a patchwork feel and was a bit jarring and distracting sometimes.
I’d recommend Puttering About in a Small Land for PKD fans but not so much as an entry to his works. For anyone who knows his style, it’s very cool to see a more subtle side of him and to see how beautifully he can write about human relationships in the artificial universe we call reality. Definitely worth the read.
>>
Puttering About in a Small Land (written 1957 but first published in 1985) feels very different from Philip K Dick’s usual stuff. It’s a dark and funny slow-burn set in 1950s Southern California, but there are no simulacra, no time slips, and no telepaths, and the only artificial reality is the one built out of society’s expectations of suburban married life.
It also seems unusually sensitive for PKD – not in a corny or sentimental way but just finely tuned into human relationships. He captures the subtle and imperfect communications of a dysfunctional marriage where two people are pretending to work together but are really pushing and pulling below the surface, wanting different things and resenting each other for it.
“I’ll be back pretty soon,” he said. From his eyes shone the leisurely, confident look; it was the sly quality that always annoyed her.
“I thought maybe we could talk,” she said.
He stood at the door, his hands in his pockets, his head tilted on one side. And he waited, showing his endurance, not arguing with her, simply standing. Like an animal, she thought. An inert, unspeaking, determined thing, remembering that it can get what it wants if it just waits.
“I’ll see you,” he said, opening the door to the hall.
“All right,” she said.
The story is told in three alternating points of view: Roger, his wife Virginia, and the “other woman” Liz. All three are trapped, one way or another, in self-made realities they don’t enjoy.
Some readers complain that PKD writes unflattering female characters, and as usual these ones aren’t much to admire: Virginia is gossipy and judgmental, her mother is a controlling nag (who often corners Roger and has some of the funniest scenes in the book), and Liz Bonner is so naïve and childlike she verges on the idiotic.
“She’s sort of a—” Mrs Alt searched for the word. “I don’t want to say lunatic. That isn’t it. She’s sort of an idiot with a touch of mysticism.”...
But even so, Virginia has her strengths, and Liz Bonner is lovely in a quirky way. Her flaws and naïve unpredictability are exactly what free her from society’s expectations, and are what attract Roger. Despite the deceit and infidelity, their love story is somehow still beautiful.
And to be fair, PKD also writes pretty unflattering men. For example, Roger not only cheats on his wife, he also abandoned his previous wife and daughter and seems to be a compulsive liar. He’s a bristly, bad-tempered, and indifferent to his wife’s gestures of love and compromise. All he really cares about his TV retail-and-repair business, which is where the book title comes from: he’s a little king “puttering about in a small land.”
The waning of a marriage and infidelity appear in a lot of PKD’s stories, but in this one they really drive this plot. Normally I wouldn’t try to detect an author’s own life in his fiction, but since PKD has openly admitted he weaves autobiographical details into all his stories, it seems safe to see something of him in Roger.
His essay “How to Build a Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later” might give some more clues to his approach to fiction set in the real world. Just because the characters’ universe is based in reality doesn’t mean PKD won’t try to disintegrate it.
“I like to build universes which do fall apart. I like to see them come unglued, and I like to see how the characters in the novels cope with this problem. I have a secret love of chaos. There should be more of it. Do not believe—and I am dead serious when I say this—do not assume that order and stability are always good, in a society or in a universe. … Unless we can psychologically accommodate change, we ourselves begin to die, inwardly. What I am saying is that objects, customs, habits, and ways of life must perish so that the authentic human being can live.”
I listened to Puttering About in a Small Land on audio and read the print version too. The audiobook was read by Amy McFadden, Kate Rudd, and Luke Daniels, one for each of the main characters. All three were great, although using three narrators didn’t work so well for me since the story is in third-person. Hearing the same characters read in three slightly different ways gave the audiobook a patchwork feel and was a bit jarring and distracting sometimes.
I’d recommend Puttering About in a Small Land for PKD fans but not so much as an entry to his works. For anyone who knows his style, it’s very cool to see a more subtle side of him and to see how beautifully he can write about human relationships in the artificial universe we call reality. Definitely worth the read.
arthurbdd's review against another edition
1.0
If you are a fan of dull, unlikeable people being horrible to each other, conveyed through a narrative voice which frequently slips into misogynistic caricature, I guess this is your thing. If you want more or less any of the stuff people actually look for in a Philip K. Dick novel, this botched attempt at non-genre literary respectability will tick none of your boxes. Full review: https://fakegeekboy.wordpress.com/2013/10/20/dick-out-of-joint/
albcorp's review against another edition
challenging
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
A PKD book along the themes of Tender is the Night. True to his style the protagonists are from a working world of shops and technicians
essjay's review
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
bruc79's review
3.0
Para quem como eu adora a vertente psicadélica e fantástica de Philip k Dick, esta abordagem realista é menos do meu agrado mas explora a infidelidade de uma forma intensa e interessante