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3.29 AVERAGE
3.29 AVERAGE
Clever, good premise, humorous/not sure how dark. Made me really want to drink some Scotch.
adventurous
emotional
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This book was almost amazing. Ultimately, I felt as though it tried to do too many things and was unsuccessful in execution.
So...this is the story of a middle-aged advertising executive who has a mid-life crisis, and leaves his life in Chicago and heads to the Hebrides, off the coast of Scotland. Along the way, the hero (or anti-hero? he's kind of a jerk) drinks a LOT of whiskey, thinks about the consequences of his profession, gets divorced, walks around the Scottish island of Jura in unsuitable boots, and thinks about the novel 1984 while living in the house that George Orwell lived in. There's a teenaged artist, a possible werewolf, and a bunch of other quirky characters.
I liked a lot of the story, but the ending was abrupt and left me very unsatisfied.
I liked a lot of the story, but the ending was abrupt and left me very unsatisfied.
“Pouring a glass of whisky felt less like the right thing to do and more like the only thing to do (124).
In this fast-paced detour of a novel, Ray embraces the dream adventure to discover what it would be like to live on an island with no one around on a completely different level; moving to the island where the locals knew Orwell as Mr. Blair; where the locals don’t really want Ray there to sort himself out and there is a very distinct possibility that a werewolf roams the island.
The rich, piquant descriptions of the scotch will have you running off to research so you can enjoy a wee dram of your own. The humor and Ray’s misadventures on Jura will keep you reading.
In this fast-paced detour of a novel, Ray embraces the dream adventure to discover what it would be like to live on an island with no one around on a completely different level; moving to the island where the locals knew Orwell as Mr. Blair; where the locals don’t really want Ray there to sort himself out and there is a very distinct possibility that a werewolf roams the island.
The rich, piquant descriptions of the scotch will have you running off to research so you can enjoy a wee dram of your own. The humor and Ray’s misadventures on Jura will keep you reading.
Very well told story about Jura scotch and Orwell most famous book. Dark humor meted out deftly in this author's first novel. I liked it very much.
Ervin’s first novel is both slyly humorous and deeply thought provoking. Ray Welter is a wildly successful Chicago advertising executive- but he’s disgusted by his complicities in commercialism and alert to the Orwellian overtones in the world around him. Reaching rock bottom through too much whiskey and a failed marriage, he escapes to a remote island off the coast of Scotland. There he rents the house where George Orwell wrote 1984, hoping that isolation and immersion in Orwell’s writings will provide him the truth that he seeks. Taking up residence in an eccentric- and sometimes dangerous- community just may redeem him.