Customer Reviews

69 Things to Do with a Dead Princess

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

i wasnt that impressed---i admit, although the sex scenes are pretty explicit, the rest of the book went on forever- i agree with the first guy: home sounds like he wants to be a critic, because the humor of Alan's character got old really quick. home is over-indulgant and doesnt know how to keep things moderate (over does the sex, over does the book criticism, over does a lot of things); i think he tries too hard to make Anna apathetic and modern.

however, if you take a million steps back and look at the story itself, its interesting--i just think home could have gone a better route of writing it.

I realize that I am in limited company in loving this book. It is very strange and mixes (intentionally) poorly written pornography with rambling discussions of avant-garde literature, descriptions of the Scottish countryside, and ventriloquist's dummy who can think. There is sex and books and then more sex and more books. The plot is hilarious: a book within the book by a man who drags Princess Diana's corpse to ancient stone circles, a pair who drag a weighted ventriloquist's dummy to said circles to test the validity of said book.

I write this positive review knowing that almost every reader will dislike this book. I eagerly await the day I meet someone else who loved it.

If it hadn't been a book for my English class, I never would have touched it. The very cover is repulsive, the sex scenes are grotesque, mechanical, explicit, and detached, and anything that isn't a sex scene (which is about 98% of the book) is high-brow literary criticism of books no one really cares about. The characters, even the female protagonist, lack depth and even Alan seems like an author-insert. This kind of trash belongs on a website with "pretentiousXXX" in the URL, not in bookstores.

This book could have been a lot more interesting. For instance, if you read through the Editorial Review on this page, you can see there's potential in the story, but reading the actual book is just a waste of time. As Home himself puts it in this novel: Bad literature is bad literature is bad literature.

Also, I'm a Finn and read the book in Finnish. I can't help but wonder why this book was translated to my language in the first place. It's not Home's best and the neverending gibberish about Scotland's stone circles and obscure forgotten writers has nothing to give to us.

Home has tried too hard to be all things in this novel, but finally comes across as juvenile, bleak and obviously trying to hit too many genres on Google.
The porn is 14 year old stuff and curiously unstimulating, the literary critique is spiteful and prissy.
I assume it's all a deliberate spoof, but it fails through lack of humour or any poetry.
I've given it an extra star for the writing mechanics.

While Stewart Home does show strong writing ability I feel that it was not utilized very well with this story. It is generally difficult to write sex scenes very well and he does not do it very well. The narrator has no mind of her own and after a couple of chapters in the books becomes annoying. I think that Mr. Home secretly has a desire to be a book reviewer rather than an author. You might find the book worth reading if it is your desire to be annoying and pretentious.