Warren Loveridge
It's terribly difficult for a single book to do justice to a subject as vast as English social history. Christopher Hibbert managed to very nearly pull it off with this wonderful effort. I have a few reservations, but these mostly reflect my own tastes and interests rather than the book itself. For example, I found the details of medieval banquets rather tedious, but the chapters on transport and industry immensely engaging. I guess you could say that there is something for everybody here, and as a reference book “The English” is par excellence. The only real fault I can find is that, approaching 1945, Hibbert starts to pile on the pace and gloss over the details. I can speculate as to why he might have done this, but it seems a shame that the period of the two world wars, with its dramatic effects on the social fabric of England, and all the wealth of material documentation available, might have been given a bit more space and depth. This alone prevents me from awarding the book 5 stars. I would allowed 4 and a half, but Goodreads does not furnish us with this facility.
I read this as an early teen, and more than thirty years later all I could remember of it was a lot of scrambling about in heather. There was no lasting impression. It was my first and (for the time being) last attempt to read Stevenson. Reading it again now, I see why. The historical background and geography would have been entirely lost on the 14-year-old me, along with Stevenson's rendering of Scotch English, and what would have seemed an interminable scramble across Scotland. I'm now wondering if I even made it through to the end!
To a 46-year-old man of the world, however, “Kidnapped” is an entirely different pan of drammach. It's a history lesson, a geography lesson and an adventure all rolled up in one quick, satisfying read. The ending is strange though. It cuts off almost as if there were some pages missing from the manuscript when it was handed to the publisher and nobody noticed. Maybe some of these loose ends will be resolved when I read “Catriona”?
Still, “Kidnapped” remains one of the great adventure novels, and very worthy of its prominent place in the pantheon.
I didn't enjoy this. There's a bunch of rather hackneyed characters I've met often elsewhere in Russian literature, such as the pig of a paterfamilias who rages impotently at everybody around him while his cherished world order crumbles. Read about one, and it seems like you've read about them all. Getting bored with them now. Perhaps the worst of it is the undeveloped, disjointed feel of the novel. We only learn in brief passing about Insarov and Elena's wedding, a fortnight after it occurs! Next, we've skipped to Venice, where Insarov dies of consumption just as the story looks like it might get going, and an indecently quick denouement closes the novel. Why make Insarov die? There was a fabulous story that might have been told about these two in Bulgaria as the Crimean War took hold. Well, too bad, Turgenev didn't care to take us on that trip. On The Eve is a very half-hearted effort.
There's only one thing you need to know about this book. It made me, a 45 year old man, cry. With sadness, with joy, with love. Through the eyes of Anna, through those of Fynn, I may finally have seen God. Indeed Fynn was right. Her life was not cut short. It was fulfilled.
For my money, this is the best of the so-called Karla trilogy. Tight plotting, tension, extraordinarily well-depicted characters, superlative writing, and at the very end... Karla, Smiley's mythical, remote, ruthless nemesis, suddenly exposed, frail and very human.
A masterpiece in all senses of the word.
Extraordinary. Just extraordinary. Take the historical settings of Renaissance Florence and the court of the Grand Mughal Emperor Akbar, a good number of historical persons, and tie them together by an extraordinary flight of imagination. Spellbinding. Not all of Rushdie's novels have managed to grip me, but this one was enchanting.
For the most part I did enjoy The Amber Spyglass, but when looking at it a little more critically I find that it delivered so little of what it promised. I see no need to go over ground that other reviews have already covered a thousand times. Suffice it to say that the book died for me about here:
“The Regent was a being whose profound intellect had had thousands of years to deepen and strengthen itself, and whose knowledge extended over a million universes. Nevertheless, at that moment he was blinded by his twin obsessions: to destroy Lyra and to possess her mother.”