Customer Reviews

Blott on the Landscape

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Tom Sharpe, Christopher Brookmyre, P.J. O'Rourke, Stephen Fry, P.G.Wodehouse - they all fall into the category of authors who REALLY make me laugh. If you mix up Billy Connelly and John Cleese, you'll get the idea. In Blott on the Landscape (which was turned into a BBC television series), Sharpe's humour is as sharp as ever (pun intended) and his characterizations are an absolute scream. Of course, it helps if you appreciate British humour which, at times, can be quite black. (A woman getting a lion to eat her own husband?)

Tom Sharpe's 'Wilt' books were comical enough but, in Blott on the Landscape and Porterhouse Blue, he excels even his own high standards of comic writing.

This is the first Tom Sharpe I read, and it just seems so much better that the others...I first saw the t.v. series, and was even more impressed by the book. I loved eveything about it, the plot, the exagerrated characters, the way everything fits together at the end. I was a bit disturbed that I could laugh so much about a woman deliberately letting a lion eat her (thoroughly horrible and worthless) husband, but this is the mad world that Tom Sharpe takes you to. Ther way the betrayed wife should become best friend and ally with her husbands mistress is just hysterical! My other favourite character was the poor,bureacratically challenged head of the motorway planning authourity who had none! A great book to escape into.

This book is one of the funniest books I have ever read. It introduces a series of characters, from self-serving politicians to their innocent victims (his wife, in one case) and people who work for them, especially Blott.
An MP who married money and land wants an excuse to sell it for redevelopment. His constituents do not want it redeveloped, and neither does his wife, so he must appear to be against development while conniving to ensure that the government will proceed. His wife, and a longtime servant (who went there as a World War 2 POW) contrive ever more outrageous defences, ending in a military assault with heavy
weapons.
I have never found an American author as funny as this, and hope someone will recommend one to me.

This was the first book by Tom Sharpe I've ever read. Blott OnThe Landscape is a wonderfully funny, campy book that is hilarious!The contrived situations... A hysterical plot for a hysterical book. Read this in the summer when you want to feel light and bubbly. Have plenty of Gin and Tonic on hand! END

Why aren't there more books like this? Is it that humor is a sentiment lacking in most writers today? Sharpe has taken two classic plot devices: political intrigue and marriage's romantic ebb, and raised them to a Fawlty Towers-esque level of perpetual humor. The comedy doesn't detract from the intellectual farce of local British bureaucracy, and there are enough twists and turns to keep any reader interested. There should be sequels to this novel (instead of his despicable Wilt, which you should avoid). If anyone finds a writer comparable to Mr. Sharpe, please let me know. And I don't like to compare him with Wodehouse, as the critics do, for Mr. Sharpe's humor is much more accessible and less slapstick.

This one is not as great as Wilt, but still awesome. If you want to forget about everything and laugh a lot - read Tom Sharpe.

I enjoy listening to audio books during my regimen of walking. This is the first book that made me stop and laugh out loud. One wonders how my neighbors appreciated that! What an example of how a great reader can improve on an already fabulous book. More fans of audio books should find this talent of David Suchet's.

No need to look at of Tom Sharpe's novels if you are looking for refined literature. The man simply pumps out farcical stories which polk fun at the establishment and wealthy folks in particular. As with most farces, the reader can either find it all to be hilarious or simply stupid. Fortunately this reader found it to be hilarious.

'Blott on the Landscape' is about one woman's fight to keep her ancestral home at all costs, with the help of her gardener (Blott). We are exposed to the most improbable characters and actions imaginable, with rude behaviour and language in abundance. It all has a 1970s British television sitcom feel about it. Still I think most Brits will enjoy this book, and fortunately it is still in print over here.

Bottom line: Tom Sharpe in fine form. I'm still giggling.

Tom Sharpe is perhaps the funniest writer in the world. He makes P.J. O'Rourke (wonderful as he is) look like a Sunday school teacher. He should be more well known in America; if you're not familiar with his side-splitting work, here is a good place to start.

No, no.
Yes, yes.
This sheds new light on the meaning of Whip. It's so degrading.