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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wonderful book by a remarkable writer.,
By "gosibro" (Athens Greece) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Europa (Paperback)
I read this rather lenghty book in two consecutive days, immersed in Park's looping, breathtaking, inner monologue, stream of conscience writing. This novel is about an obsessive love afair, a troubled, alienated, at times self-loathing academic with his heart not in the academic game show at all, a tale about the "other" as another reviewer succintly put it, about the complexities of life and the self, and more. A tour de force for this remarkable but underrated writer, with a writing style unlike anything you 've read recently, managing to be literary without being tedius and artificial(see m. amis, pynchon, barth et al.for that), and a striking, powerful ending. Park's musings on life and philosophy, european history and themes are never out of place or turgid, and they make very good reading material, adding a texture to the words.Caught up in an unsatisfying marriage, a dead-end lifeless job, a failed yet once passionate and potentialy life-changing love affair, conflicting feelings and instability, Jerry the protagonist somehow agrees to take a trip to the European parliament to express his disagreement with the wage cuts on his job, which he does not particularly like, with a few fellow academics and a number of female students at his Italian university, and, of course, the french woman who is the cause (or is she just the pretext) for his recent worries. Riding on a bus through Europe and at the same time travelling intensely in his thoughts and memories, Jerry Marlow finds himself thinking more and living less in the present. While all too human interaction takes place, he stays a shadowy figure for the most part of the book for any outsiders to his consciousness. Memory mingles with outer reality, obsession takes hold of him, until they finally arrive to their destination (to his destination possibly) where the last act is played. The mental images from the various settings of the book come back to me very vividly as I write these lines. This is a really good book and I am not going to spoil it any more for you with my mediocre analysis. I hope I made clear that this is not your average type of novel. Do read it.
12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Gates is nuts. This is a terrific book.,
By MEG VARLEY (U.S.) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Europa (Hardcover)
In addition to all of the (positive) things said in the other reviews posted here, what struck me about this novel was that it was about a man who moves from being alienated (a man who only falls for "foreign" women, a man alienated most of all, from a mileu that celebrates, PC-wise, "difference" and "the other")--to...something else. The point being that he IS moved to something. I was afraid the book would end with one of those winky winky ironic, desolate flourishes--it does not. These are large, relevant themes--alienation, relativism, personal (and national) morality--and in the end, this book and this author is on the side of meaning, as so many post-modern, ironic novels are not. When everyone is "other," when every action can be rationalized as valid within the framework of an irrefutable (because unjudgeable), private morality, there is no meaning. When only words, or the way that we SAY things happen, our PERSONAL (or national) interpretations count, rather than what we have actually done, there is no meaning. No real connection or communication between every "other" (individuals, nations.) Interestingly, one human response to that (on the main character's, Jerry's part) is violence--he will MAKE something happen, make his actions mean something, even if it isn't the meaning he wanted, SOME meaning is better than none--which has got to be the only reason there is for random, apparently senseless violence. Besides all of this (ie, that it seems to me a thoughtful, philosophical but not pretentious, relevant, redemptive novel), Parks' writing is gorgeous, his characters human and familiar.
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Ruminations on a disastrous love life and the EC,
This review is from: Europa (Hardcover)
I've just finished an excellent book: Europa, by Tim Parks. It's the story of one Jerry Marlow, a 45-year-old divorced English language instructor on a bus trip from Milan to Strasbourg with a number of colleagues and students (the bus is dubbed the Shag Wagon by one of the instructors, for the number of nubile co-eds who've come along in a youthful show of solidarity and, it is hoped, a sense of adventure) with the goal of convincing the European Parliament to save their jobs with the Italian university. The instructors charge they are being discriminated against, in contravention of the new law of Europe, the EC. Marlow thinks it a dubious notion, and perhaps has agreed to go along merely because his ex-mistress is among the volunteers for the trip, and he is tugged against his will (if such a thing is possible) to be near her, despite her faithlessness, despite the "debacle," the "retreat from Moscow" that was their breakup. As an introspective examination of the aftermath of Marlow's marriage and affair, the book is only a mild success. But Parks manages to weave the betrayal of a wife, the betrayal by a mistress, the seemingly predestined mistakes the man makes, into a stinging commentary on Europe and modern social orthodoxy, that is to say, the numbingly bland popular beliefs of the apparent elite. Nothing is morally wrong, short of fascism-- not infidelity, not manipulation, not humiliation, not negligent reasoning.Parks' narrative style is stream of consciousness, long sentences full of self-interruptions, reiterations, movements back and forth in time, and, above all, commas. The apparent attempt is to mimic the disjointed way an obssessed person actually thinks. Although clever and observant, I grew tired of the method at times. But when Parks directs Marlow's thoughts to larger issues of the mystery of self-deception and of continental politics, and away from the self-pity of an unfaithful husband and man shocked at his own violence towards an unfaithful mistress, the book shines. I can't help but be reminded of War and Peace, with the main story's relationship to a larger point about the politics of the seeming center-of-the-universe (at least to the protagonists): Europe. The secondary characters are lively. Vikram Griffiths, the Welsh-Indian, emphasizing his difference to gain acceptance; "as if he had got himself born half-Indian in Wales on purpose." Then there's boring Doris Rohr, "whose own lessons one imagines must be the last word in the dusty formality of the day unseized." But the narrative is at its best with observations like, "I could no more go back to the church than to my wife." (Because that's partly the point, isn't it?) Later, after a particularly hypocritical speech full of aggrandizing homilies, Marlow recalls, "...[I]t is perfectly clear to me now that one need only open one's mouth in a public situation and the words will come...Orthodoxy is in the air." The story's conclusion in front of the Parliament in Strasbourg is entirely well-conceived and fitting. My recommendation? If you think you will enjoy an introspective, stream of consciousness novel about sex against the backdrop of feel-good European ecumenical politics, you'll enjoy this read. If not, you'll be safer steering clear. I, for one, enjoyed it.
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