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38 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Trying to be a 1940s zany romantic comedy, December 15, 2007
This review is from: Beginner's Greek: A Novel (Hardcover)
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Remember that cross-country flight you took when an interesting, captivating person sat next to you and the two of you talked about life, your interests, philosophy and literature?
Remember that work event you attended (by choice) at which everyone was witty and warm, rich and powerful, beautiful, well read, and articulate and found you equally enchanting?
Neither do I, and yet these things happen in Beginner's Greek.
It seems like Collins is aiming for that zany comedy feeling from the 40s. You know - boy meets girl, boy and girl fall in love, but then a series of events occur that keep them apart. Unfortunately, Beginner's Greek is set in modern times with characters who talk like they are out of the 40s, and it just doesn't work. I won't even go into the disbelief over a romantic man who longs to meet the woman of his dreams, and, when he does, puts all his faith in a hastily scribbled phone number on a torn piece of paper stuffed into his front pocket as the only means of contacting this goddess.
I kept trying to get into the book, and I kept trying to find something redeeming about the characters, but I finally had to admit defeat. The characters are flat and "sweet" to the point of being vacuous. The book is far too focused on the introspective lives of the characters, and no one actually seems to do or work at anything. There isn't one character here that I found sympathetic or likable. They all float around until something happens to them or around them, and then they sit around and talk about how odd or horrible or wonderful that thing is. Some characters simply drop out of sight altogether.
Finally, I can't help but comment on the overuse of BIG words. For the love of all that is holy, please do not write a book with your thesaurus by your side. And please never, ever describe a hockey team as "pusillanimous" or describe someone's earlobes as "pendant." Polysyllabism does not necessarily indicate intelligence; it is true that sometimes less is more. The characters in Beginner's Greek speak like they are reciting lines in their junior-high English class.
For a better romantic, intelligent story with interesting characters, an intriguing plot, and excellent use of rich language, I recommend A.S. Byatt's Possession.
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36 of 42 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
3.5 stars, October 19, 2007
This review is from: Beginner's Greek: A Novel (Hardcover)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
I've been reading so many bad books lately, I now start each book very skeptically. I'm ready to criticize any dialogue that doesn't ring true. I have begun to expect scenarios that seem contrived. Furthermore, I received an advance copy of this book. The last advance copy of a book I received was SO bad, that I expected this one to be the same.
Thankfully, I was wrong here. This book was actually pretty good. It didn't start out strong, though. I had to wade through several chapters until it found its rhythm.
One of the first things I noticed was that the protagonist of the story, Peter, didn't seem like any male I ever have known. The author characterized him in such a way that I assumed he was going to be rather nerdy throughout the book. Later, however, it was clear that Peter was just an upstanding and goodhearted guy who was also intelligent, witty, and well-adjusted. Somehow, I didn't get this impression when we first met Peter. He came off as neurotic, instead.
Another thing that really bothered me was everyone's excessive obsession with looks and contrived expressions and reading each expression and actively putting on a certain expression to elicit a certain response. This was very strange to read in the earlier part of the book. Yet, I can't really find any fault in it, because some of the whole forced expression thing seemed to ring true in the sense I could picture everything the author wrote. Also, towards the second part of the book, as the book really got better, this seemed to work more favoribly.
Overall, though, I really liked this book (towards the second half) and I liked how the characters were actually fleshed out and interesting. I found it easy to sympathize with the characters and began to actually cheer for them.
Beginner's Greek could have used some better editing. There were a few continuity errors which should have been caught in one of the review cycles.
All in all, this was a pretty fun book to read. The bad guys get their comeuppance and the good guys find their happily ever afters. And some of the characters who you think may be a bit unscrupulous, actually wind up doing the Right Thing. I definitely enjoyed this enough to recommend it.
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17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A comedy of manners, a dramady of errors, September 16, 2008
This review is from: Beginner's Greek: A Novel (Hardcover)
This spirited novel gets off to a questionable start. I believe it is intended that way, until you fall into its rhythm. At about page 60 I was hooked. By that time, I really grokked the narrator's flow and the prose became so natural that it was like I was living the story. The low-star reviewers did not get it. This was not "zany" or "40's style" or vacuous. The narration is intentionally tongue-in-cheek and subversive. And yet...and yet. The Woody Allen movie, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, had a similar style of narrator. It winks at you and yet it rings true. It is agile and poised and yet disarming.
James Collins' story is like a painting or a beautiful photograph. Do you know how a painting or photograph, although depicting something real, can seem fantastical because of the play of light and shadow and mood and atmosphere? Do you know how a painting can be something unearthly, unreal, but because of the emotional rendering and quality can seem more genuine than a realistic interpretation? That is how this novel unfolds. It reveals itself through the crevices of the seemingly obvious story. It is like this big paradox. From the (wink wink) outer story the aperture widens, or even narrows simultaneously. You are holding a camera and you focus it on a field and in this field is an array of images. If you choose to look at it shallowly, then you will only see genus and species. But if you are sympathetic to your surroundings, there is a whole palette of beautiful colors and tones and textures to capture and captivate.
This is a page-turning love story. The characters are not meant to mimic "real" life. It is a romantic tale that hovers above reality but is an equipoise between absurd and exquisite. It is very human with spare but striking prose. His "big words," as some reviewers complain about, (they need to get back to their James Patterson, I guess) are not pretentious or overblown. The author has an elegant, clean, and precise but artistic flow of metaphors and imagery. I do not see one false note in this story. Yes, the characters are almost bigger than life in its broad strokes. But it is the small and eloquent strokes that give it its invigorating originality and artistic merit. There is a skeptical and farcical outer shell harboring a thumping big red heart.
This is a classic bildungsroman. It is also refreshing, clear as glass, never canned. There is moral ambiguity and well-wrought characterizations, a noirish tale of bright and beaming sunlight. The whole unfolding is done in the colors of paradox.
I actually felt slapped by the bad reviews because they were so far off the mark. They read like bully reviews. It reminded me of people criticizing Picasso's art by saying, "It is just a bunch of squares." It is OK to dislike and criticize a work of art--each to his own--but when something that ignorant is said about a work of art that the viewer does not even understand, then it reflects more on the reviewer.
The beauty of this novel is that it is sublime but direct, sly but open-hearted, insouciant but mindful, irreverent but reverent, layered but simple. It does have a similar tone to a British comedy of manners but it is so much warmer and more generous.
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