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3.43 AVERAGE
3.43 AVERAGE
informative
tense
slow-paced
I listened to this one. Couldn't wait to get to a day I would be in the car long enough to listen to it. The ending was riveting.
Fictional account of the IRA bombing of the Grand Hotel in 1985 during Margaret Thatcher's visit. The book focuses on three fictional characters: Moose Finch, the hotel's assistant manager, his daughter Freya who is freshly an adult and unsure of what she wants and David, the young IRA member tasked with creating and setting the bomb.
It's interesting. The characters are compelling and insightful, there is some desperately good writing, but somehow the whole thing is a slog. After a slam-bang opening, the book settles into a bit of a meander as we discover the characters: Moose was once a promising diver who forewent college for athletics and regrets it deeply. He sees Thatcher's visit as a moment of redemption and is gunning for the manager's position. Freya is unsure whether to go to university, to the great chagrin of her father, and is somewhat stuck in her hometown and carrying on with a coworker called Surfer John because, well, he surfs. Dan lives with his mom and tends to his late father's garden when he's not building bombs for the IRA. He is a bit wobbly to his commitment to the cause as he worries about his mother's health.
In alternating chapters, Lee moves the narrative at snail's pace, supposedly building tension but really capturing, in not the best way, the feeling of malaise these characters have. We should feel it for them. We should not feel it ourselves. This wastes, again, some exquisite writing and well drawn characters.
Lee does not take sides so much as observe and empathize with both parties, which is refreshing.
One just wishes his novel moved just a bit more. Was a bit more lively.
It's interesting. The characters are compelling and insightful, there is some desperately good writing, but somehow the whole thing is a slog. After a slam-bang opening, the book settles into a bit of a meander as we discover the characters: Moose was once a promising diver who forewent college for athletics and regrets it deeply. He sees Thatcher's visit as a moment of redemption and is gunning for the manager's position. Freya is unsure whether to go to university, to the great chagrin of her father, and is somewhat stuck in her hometown and carrying on with a coworker called Surfer John because, well, he surfs. Dan lives with his mom and tends to his late father's garden when he's not building bombs for the IRA. He is a bit wobbly to his commitment to the cause as he worries about his mother's health.
In alternating chapters, Lee moves the narrative at snail's pace, supposedly building tension but really capturing, in not the best way, the feeling of malaise these characters have. We should feel it for them. We should not feel it ourselves. This wastes, again, some exquisite writing and well drawn characters.
Lee does not take sides so much as observe and empathize with both parties, which is refreshing.
One just wishes his novel moved just a bit more. Was a bit more lively.
I really like this novel, which deals with the bombing in Brighton that nearly killed Maggie Thatcher. It follows one of the bombers and two people who will be caught up in the affair, so it has a Day of the Jackal feel: we all k ow that Thatcher was not harmed, after all. Surprisingly there is a lot of humor in the book.
This book tells the fictional story of a real event - the attempted assassination of Margaret Thatcher by blowing up a Brighton hotel by the IRA. The author does an amazing job of blurring fact and fiction, although I certainly am not the most expert at this 1984 world shattering event. He focuses on the people, on both sides, and their often mundane experiences as they head towards this crescendo of violence.
So many fascinating turns of phrases and such interesting writing overcame my general dislike of novelistic retellings of known events. Heck, even I knew that Thatcher did not get assassinated. But he told the story at such a personal level, the actual event faded into the background. I am not sure I followed all the strands of the story but I sure had fun trying.
So many fascinating turns of phrases and such interesting writing overcame my general dislike of novelistic retellings of known events. Heck, even I knew that Thatcher did not get assassinated. But he told the story at such a personal level, the actual event faded into the background. I am not sure I followed all the strands of the story but I sure had fun trying.
I can't really think of anything I didn't like about this book, and yet it was just a 3 star for me. The characters were engaging and I felt like I really got to know them, and life in Brighton in the 1980's too. I like the author's writing style - it felt effortless to read but not at all fluffy, and I didn't mind that the bombing itself wasn't the central point of the novel. I think maybe it needed a little more narrative tension.
3-1/2 or 4. Got me hooked towards the end. Realized it was following Marina's goal for filmmaking, for telling the story beforehand.
File this one under "historical autopsy," alongside A Brief History of Seven Killings and other books that reopen historical events from the POV of the characters involved from some historical distance. I wasn't a huge fan of Brief History, but it definitely had ambitions, to explore post-colonialism and the war on drugs and the English language in a few registers. Next to that, Lee's book feels like it underachieves in its story about three folks involved in the bombing of a Brighton hotel in 1984, while Thatcher was staying there for a Tory party conference.
I didn't think there was much to the characters and that they felt kind of thin in the face of what was being proposed, to make this a signal moment in recent Anglo-Irish history. But strangely, the final strophe surprised me with how well it pulled together totally personal threads, especially those of the Dan character, but the other two were also really well handled. It shifted, I'm trying to say, from being about the history, to being about the characters, and Lee did that rare and challenging thing of finding an ending to his book that both fit and was surprising. And that ending elevated the book to me from what felt pretty mundane, if readable, to something better than that. Still not my favorite book of the year, still one that made me wonder, why are we hearing this story? But in the end, a well-resolved narrative.
I didn't think there was much to the characters and that they felt kind of thin in the face of what was being proposed, to make this a signal moment in recent Anglo-Irish history. But strangely, the final strophe surprised me with how well it pulled together totally personal threads, especially those of the Dan character, but the other two were also really well handled. It shifted, I'm trying to say, from being about the history, to being about the characters, and Lee did that rare and challenging thing of finding an ending to his book that both fit and was surprising. And that ending elevated the book to me from what felt pretty mundane, if readable, to something better than that. Still not my favorite book of the year, still one that made me wonder, why are we hearing this story? But in the end, a well-resolved narrative.
The characters, especially Moose, were enthralling. The book is encased around the bombing of the Grand Hotel in 1984 in attempt of the IRA to assassinate Margaret Thatcher, but it takes on its own life as a novel. I forgot about the bombing part until it actually happened in the book because I was hooked. Excellent book and best one I've read so far this summer.