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3.62 AVERAGE
3.62 AVERAGE
I almost gave up on this one. The author (and modern-day characters') intense fascination with all things Vienna at the turn of the 20th century felt inexplicable and extremely tedious to me. In fact there was lots of fed-up, dramatic sighing on my part while reading anywhere in the vicinity of my husband. I stuck with it and at 150ish pages I became mostly hooked once the story gained major momentum. Some odd, interesting turns and an oddly sweet relationship I didn't expect.
J'ai adoré ce livre au début... puis l'histoire a commencé à s'enliser, à tourner en rond et à devenir inintéressante.... un peu déçue au final....
Since it took 30 years for the author to complete this book, I guess it makes sense that it took me quite a few pages to get hooked into the book. The plot jumped from present to past quite often, before I felt I had formed an attachment to the protagonist. I did stick with it, though, and then didn't want to put it down.
"The Little Book" may have been a long-term passion project of Edwards, but it's not very interesting or good. The main characters are all so perfect --Smart! Talented at everything! Good-looking! Worshiped by others!-- that they are as boring as can be. I didn't find any of them engaging. Edwards' inclusion of real people into the book didn't help it either. If you are going to have Mark Twain be in the book, have him act like Mark Twain. Don't turn him into some blushing fool just to show the reader how pretty the main woman is.
"The Little Book" isn't the worst book out there, but it isn't worth the reader's time either.
Spoiler
And then the is the whole character having a romantic and sexual relationship with his grandmother thing. If the author hoped to convince the reader that it was anything other than icky, he failed. Waltzing again or not, that was his grandmother. How that got past the editor I really don't know."The Little Book" isn't the worst book out there, but it isn't worth the reader's time either.
I was very disappointed by this book. The blurb was extremely promising, but the story, in my opinion, could not follow it. The protagonist, Wheeler, is a rather boring character I couldn't have cared less about. There are so many mentions about his greatness here and there, but I didn't feel anything for him. He didn't come alive. That is only part of the problem. The book begins in Vienna at the end of the 19th century. We do not know why Wheeler is there, but we do know he traveled in time. Wheeler himself seems not even surprised, he doesn't question much why he is there or how he got there. Throughout the book he meets several people, including people like Sigmund Freud and Mark Twain, but these, too, leave one unsatisfied. Wheeler meets Weezie who turns out to be his grandmother. Well, he also meets his father (his grandmother Weezie's son). So his father, Dilly, tells him he is not his biological father. I think that had to happen, because Wheeler and Weezie embark on a relationship and even more they are the love of each other's life. So imagine a guy traveling in time, falling in love with his grandmother and you're supposed to enjoy this as some great love story. Sorry, that is not really my kind of story. Even more so, in this imagined Vienna (Dilly's appearance is reminiscent of Jack Finney's "Time and Again", because as I understand it he simply travels to the past by imaging the place) there is Weezie's later husband, Dilly's father and Wheeler's grandfather Frank Burden. He has already proposed to Weezie, but she has declined. then she has that relationship with Wheeler and frank Burden doesn't play a great part. Until the end; that's when Frank Burden kills Wheeler. Now there are several things I do not understand: how can Wheeler be killed and be born the same person again, later? Wouldn't his death mean that he is dead for all time? Apparently not. What I find rather appalling is that Weezie actually marries Frank; he is the man who killed the love of her life and she marries him! That doesn't make any sense to me. the whole book didn't. I cannot say what it is about. Soulmates? Where Weezie and Wheeler soulmates? I do not think so because Weezie knew her grnadson would turn into the love of her life (Wheeler, naturally not. He is "reborn"). All in all, I did not really enjoy the book. It's a wonder I finished it. Another thing that bothered me was Wheeler's mother, because she "told" the story as some kind of omniscient narrator that I just didn't buy.
And thus ends my string of time-travel-to-before-1900 novels. This one was really good, though, and refreshingly didn't involve Victorian New York (instead, mainly 1897 Vienna).
The story of what happens when a man travels to 1897 Vienna and meets his time-traveling father (much younger than he is), individuals who may or may not be his grandparents, Sigmund Freud and other real figures, this book embraces head-on worries about changing history and temporal paradoxes, yet it also doesn't dwell too much on the details. Instead, coincidences and destiny prevail, and the characters seem real and act as irrationally as you'd want real people to act in such strange circumstances. Edwards weaves a complex family history, and it all fits together by the end.
The story of what happens when a man travels to 1897 Vienna and meets his time-traveling father (much younger than he is), individuals who may or may not be his grandparents, Sigmund Freud and other real figures, this book embraces head-on worries about changing history and temporal paradoxes, yet it also doesn't dwell too much on the details. Instead, coincidences and destiny prevail, and the characters seem real and act as irrationally as you'd want real people to act in such strange circumstances. Edwards weaves a complex family history, and it all fits together by the end.
I was surprised I kept going on this one. Wheeler is quite a guy - Ivy League baseball star, rock and roll star, famous writer. Somehow he gets transported to late 1800s Vienna in order to meet his father and Freud and his grandmother and no, he's not his own grandpa, though he does get to meet "the child Hitler." He also turns out to be a fabulous psychoanalyst. The forced Boston Brahmin accent that the reader used for many of the characters was grating. Painful.
I had the delightful "problem" of having to buy a book on a recent trip, as I'd sailed through all the ones I had brought. This one caught my eye, and it was a delightful read. While the main character has moments of being "too perfect" that are eye-rolling, the circular storyline keeps peeling back layers and revealing fascinating tidbits and joyful discoveries.
A true find.
A true find.
In a lot of ways, this book reminds me of "Life After Life". Both have similar themes, unexplained but imaginative twisting of timelines, and were engaging enough that I had a hard time putting them down. The ending of "The Little Book" is much more satisfying, however.
Though not without faults - this is one of those books it's best not to think about too much - it's an enjoyable read.
Though not without faults - this is one of those books it's best not to think about too much - it's an enjoyable read.
Oh, I really wanted to like this book. The author spent 30 years writing this story of a time travelling top baseball player/famous pop star/famous author but it seems so contrived and unlikely that I just couldn't get into it and couldn't wait for it to end. I had to skim the last third of the book.