An Evening of Long Goodbyes [Paperback]

Product Details

• Paperback: 465 pages
• Publisher: Hamish Hamilton
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0241141818
• ISBN-13: 978-0241141816
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,177,001 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

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14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Some wickedly funny writing in its first part, January 15, 2005

By 

Debra Hamel (North Haven, CT) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: An Evening of Long Goodbyes: A Novel (Hardcover)

Twenty-four-year-old Charles Hythloday resides at Amaurot, his family's estate some ten miles outside of Dublin, with his sister Bel, an aspiring actress, and their Bosnian housekeeper Mrs. P. Charles wiles away his days in apparent indolence and drunkenness, mourning a love affair gone sour, watching Gene Tierney movies into the night, overseeing the construction of a folly on the property. But to Charles's mind his purpose in life is a serious one: he means to revive "the contemplative life of the country gentleman, in harmony with his status and history." For the first third of An Evening of Long Goodbyes Charles is thus an amusing anachronism, a Wodehousian character thrust into a less polite modern world. This makes for some wickedly funny writing, both in dialogue and narrative. (Out to a seedy pub with Bel and her Golem of a boyfriend Frank, Charles looks around with some unease at his fellow drinkers. "Was I the only one in evening wear?") But one senses that Charles's retreat from society is motivated by an underlying sadness.

Unfortunately, Charles's idyllic lifestyle cannot last. Events conspire to push him out of Amaurot and into productive society, where he engages in activities--paying work, for example--that were previously unthinkable. Charles grows as a human being, developing empathy, for example, and he is eventually compelled to confront the imperfections of his childhood at Amaurot, which he had long glorified.

While Charles's development is interesting to watch, he becomes a less interesting character as he changes from a wry commentator on a society that is alien to him to a productive participant in that society. The book, too, loses charm as it moves from the farce of its early pages to the melodrama of Charles's post-Amaurot life. Still worth reading, a lighter book that kept Charles in tails and gimlets would surely have garnered five stars.

Reviewed by Debra Hamel, author of Trying Neaira: The True Story of a Courtesan's Scandalous Life in Ancient Greece

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A bumpy ride, May 22, 2006

By 

E.B. (Troy, NY United States) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: An Evening of Long Goodbyes: A Novel (Paperback)

This one defies easy categorization. A disconcerting mixture of satire, melodrama, fantasy and farce. Unlike several of the reviewers, I felt that the account of Charles lolling about his ancestral home was forced and stagey. The dialog spoken by the pantomime characters is predictable and empty. Charles's take on the Irish economic boom, the so-called Celtic Tiger, however, is accurate, deft and very funny. His completely underwhelmed response to Ireland's ballyhooed economic miracle is worth the many speed-ups, slow-downs and improbablities that drive the over-heated plot.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Improving Book, March 11, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: An Evening of Long Goodbyes (Paperback)

This book really hit the spot for me. If Bertie Wooster were to wander into the world of "TrainSpotting", this would be the result....A witty, moving mixture of P.G. Wodehouse, Evelyn Waugh, Nick Hornby, Irvine Welsh, and Stephen Fry. Like Wodehouse's Bertie Wooster stories, this book is written in the first person, which makes it possible for every sentence to be funny. Ranks very high among the wine and spirits. Highly recommended.