Scan barcode
A review by katykelly
The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep by H.G. Parry
3.0
Sprawling literary world-hopping adventure.
Great prospect - book characters coming out of their source novels, interacting with people. And I did love that aspect of this. Books about books always appeal. And there was a good story at the heart of this.
Rob is roped into helping his brother Charley. Again. A prodigy, his younger brother, English professor, calls Rob up in the middle of the night when he accidentally lets loose Uriah Heep from a Dickens novel he's reading, and needs help returning him to the literary world of David Copperfield. And this isn't the first time.
Since Charley was a small boy, lawyer Rob has looked out for him and his secret complication. Charley, reading Dickens as a toddler, off to University overseas at 13, relies on his brother to help him out of these scrapes, though both are out of their depth when characters from books began causing problems in the real world, and it seems that there is someone else out there with a similar ability to Charley, putting more than one world in danger.
This started well, it piqued my interest, and I loved meeting various literary characters - Matilda popped up, more than one Darcy - but it did feel overlong and protracted. A fairly simple story, with a couple of twists (that I liked, actually), it took a long time to cover relatively little ground.
Literary references were well-integrated (there were a couple of characters I was unfamiliar with though), I didn't really take to Charley. Rob as narrator was of course the most likeable and sympathetic but I was more interested in the books and characters than the real world. That might just be me, as librarian/book lover.
Slightly disappointed I must say, that it wasn't tighter, though I did relish the literary aspects of this. I'd have moved faster through this on paper perhaps, not stopped so often.
A long audiobook, but well narrated. I wanted to like this more than I did, though I did appreciate the author's efforts at including realistic characters from famous books that represented and expanded their literary sources.
With thanks to Nudge Books for providing a sample Audible copy.
Great prospect - book characters coming out of their source novels, interacting with people. And I did love that aspect of this. Books about books always appeal. And there was a good story at the heart of this.
Rob is roped into helping his brother Charley. Again. A prodigy, his younger brother, English professor, calls Rob up in the middle of the night when he accidentally lets loose Uriah Heep from a Dickens novel he's reading, and needs help returning him to the literary world of David Copperfield. And this isn't the first time.
Since Charley was a small boy, lawyer Rob has looked out for him and his secret complication. Charley, reading Dickens as a toddler, off to University overseas at 13, relies on his brother to help him out of these scrapes, though both are out of their depth when characters from books began causing problems in the real world, and it seems that there is someone else out there with a similar ability to Charley, putting more than one world in danger.
This started well, it piqued my interest, and I loved meeting various literary characters - Matilda popped up, more than one Darcy - but it did feel overlong and protracted. A fairly simple story, with a couple of twists (that I liked, actually), it took a long time to cover relatively little ground.
Literary references were well-integrated (there were a couple of characters I was unfamiliar with though), I didn't really take to Charley. Rob as narrator was of course the most likeable and sympathetic but I was more interested in the books and characters than the real world. That might just be me, as librarian/book lover.
Slightly disappointed I must say, that it wasn't tighter, though I did relish the literary aspects of this. I'd have moved faster through this on paper perhaps, not stopped so often.
A long audiobook, but well narrated. I wanted to like this more than I did, though I did appreciate the author's efforts at including realistic characters from famous books that represented and expanded their literary sources.
With thanks to Nudge Books for providing a sample Audible copy.