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3.8 AVERAGE
3.8 AVERAGE
This book was not easy to read, at least for me. The story had promise, but it didn't live up to my expectations. I felt the promising aspects of the book contributed to about 50 pages. Maybe I didn't read it at the right time, but I was bored with the book.
I really enjoyed this book. Except for some boredom over Sarah's letter to the Major in London, I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was a strange mix of farce, with the dilapidated hotel and the strange cast of characters, and drama, with the violence and conflict between the Catholic Irish and the Protestant English. Despite these two rather contrasting features, Farrell makes the book work. Just a great novel, and the ending seemed the perfect punctuation point on it.
I found the setting of the hotel fascinating. Very reminiscent of Mervyn Peake's sprawling castle in Gormenghast, the hotel sprawled with endless abandoned and forgotten rooms, inhabited by all matter of cats and other creatures. Like in Peake's book, the Majesty becomes it's own character, creating a somewhat eerie feeling, with the few inhabitants going about their business in this sprawling forgotten monstrosity. It provides a great atmosphere for the story.
I found the setting of the hotel fascinating. Very reminiscent of Mervyn Peake's sprawling castle in Gormenghast, the hotel sprawled with endless abandoned and forgotten rooms, inhabited by all matter of cats and other creatures. Like in Peake's book, the Majesty becomes it's own character, creating a somewhat eerie feeling, with the few inhabitants going about their business in this sprawling forgotten monstrosity. It provides a great atmosphere for the story.
challenging
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
After WWI, an English Major goes to Ireland to marry his fiance, a woman he has corresponded with for years but has barely met in person. Her family owns the Majestic Hotel, a huge and formerly glorious hotel that suffers from neglect and is falling apart. The Major stays in the hotel for a few years as it crumbles around him and its primarily English residents. Meanwhile, The Troubles are happening, and the English bemoan the incivility of the Irish.
This is one of those books where not much happens - it's a long, slow burn (perhaps too long). The writing is good, the humor is droll, and the symbolism of the decaying hotel is appropriately ponderous. It's a bit of a class satire as the English cower in fear from the Irish and get increasingly irrational in their retaliation. It's mostly the writing that makes this book worth reading: the writing is deceptively simple and very engaging.
dark
funny
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
This is my one of my all-time favorites.
This man can make the folly of colonialism brutally clear while also keeping you chuckling as you read. Who else can do that?
Take Cold Comfort Farm, move it to 1919 Ireland, add a larger cast of characters and an author who wishes to educate at the same time he entertains and you have Troubles. The Majestic Hotel is one of the best buildings as a character I've ever read, and the family and lodgers who cross her crumbling threshold are gothic to the perfect degree. Farrell uses newspaper articles to keep the entire story from becoming farce, and those historical touchstones come at just the right frequency to remind the reader that no matter how loony the story, the Troubles were very real.
A totally delicious read, a combination of history and irony. Farrell's writing style is so visual, that I feel that I have been living in the Majestic Hotel in Kilnalough myself for the past month.
The protagonist of the book, British Major Archer, stays in Ireland and in the Majestic without any real purpose (although there was a purpose to his arrival in the beginning), and it's only one of the many absurdities surrounding the lives of the characters of the book. The Majestic, a metaphor to the crumbling British Empire, is a crumbling and surreal place itself, full of old ladies, cats and a wildly spreading jungle of plants. The Major is simple-minded (although good hearted and likable against all odds) and struggles to grasp the meaning not only of the historical events around him (the Irish rising against the British rule), but also of his own personal "troubles", such as the unsuccessful love to Sarah, a smart catholic girl.
The Majestic to me is a metaphorical laboratory of oblivion, a shelter from reality, strangely attractive in spite of its decaying state. Don't we all tend to hide from the unpleasant reality and deny it even when our arguments have been invalidated long ago?
I am definitely looking forward to read the following parts of the trilogy!
The protagonist of the book, British Major Archer, stays in Ireland and in the Majestic without any real purpose (although there was a purpose to his arrival in the beginning), and it's only one of the many absurdities surrounding the lives of the characters of the book. The Majestic, a metaphor to the crumbling British Empire, is a crumbling and surreal place itself, full of old ladies, cats and a wildly spreading jungle of plants. The Major is simple-minded (although good hearted and likable against all odds) and struggles to grasp the meaning not only of the historical events around him (the Irish rising against the British rule), but also of his own personal "troubles", such as the unsuccessful love to Sarah, a smart catholic girl.
The Majestic to me is a metaphorical laboratory of oblivion, a shelter from reality, strangely attractive in spite of its decaying state. Don't we all tend to hide from the unpleasant reality and deny it even when our arguments have been invalidated long ago?
I am definitely looking forward to read the following parts of the trilogy!
dark
funny
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
One of the best books I've read in the last couple of years.
There are many splendid things to say about this book. I'm nodding off though, so I think it's time to go to bed and leave a full review of my last read of 2013 until tomorow. For now, I will just say that it's the type of book that you read and think, "What other read could possibly top this."