Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Countless Fallen Leaves,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: I'll Go to Bed at Noon: A Novel (Paperback)
This second book of Woodward's trilogy is very sad. But, then again, one certainly feels after coming to its conclusion, perhaps life is very sad. The Jones family, or at least all of them with the mother Colette's Waugh blood in their veins - in other words, all save husband Aldous - are afflicted with what I suppose one would call an "addictive personality" if one knew what in the world this term meant in any concrete sense. Perhaps it says something that the most seriously afflicted of all, eldest son Janus, is a true artistic prodigy, but perhaps it doesn't. All these characters who end up drinking themselves to death in the end are rather disparate and impossible to categorise. But, contrary to most of the other reviewers here, I found the two characters around whom the story indisputably wends, Colette and son Janus, likable and fun, despite it all. I found myself pulling for both of them, especially Colette, in their altercations with other more sober members of the family. The feeling the book left with me was that life is an extremely plodding, spiritless affair, unless one indulges in, well, spirits in one form or another, even if it leads to death, which life is going to do, spirits or no. Also, Woodward's prose has so many moments of sparkling grace. Here's the description of the environs around which Janus finds himself stumbling in one of his many nocturnal, drunken perambulations:"A rich odour of rotting pond life, of the sludge of countless fallen leaves, the sunken treasure of a hundred autumns, lurked in all the blind channels." Truth be known, I'm not at all sure what to say of this book save that it is full of Wordsworth's "still, sad music of humanity." One is not at all surprised to find Wordsworth's famous view of Tintern Abbey described herein, if all too fleetingly. The title, as another reviewer has pointed out, is taken from the Fool's last words in King Lear. Fool: And I'll go to bed at noon. I suppose the overall impression taken from the book is, perhaps, that the besotted fools of this world have, if not more fun, at least a less dreary time of it. They live in a world both blessed and cursed in a way in which the other drab characters do not. We'll see how the last volume turns out. Four stars, for, if nothing else, a textured, ambiguous view of persons in the throes of addiction without the resort to labelling, 12-step group think, or the other simplistic psychological caricatures to which most other writers resort.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Family Steeped in Ethanol,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: I'll Go to Bed at Noon: A Novel (Paperback)
KENT
Now, good my lord, lie here and rest awhile. KING LEAR Make no noise, make no noise; draw the curtains: so, so, so. We'll go to supper i' he morning. So, so, so. FOOL And I'll go to bed at noon The title comes from the Fool's last words in King Lear, another story of a troubled family-this book tries to convey the horrors of chronic alcohol abuse. Gerard Woodward writes about alcohol abuse in a family in a quiet British suburb. A passing trait of troubled souls from generation to generation. This book was up for a Booker prize and well it should. This is the second book in a trilogy of the Jones family. I have started backwards, reading the third book first, and now the second. Each novel stands on its own. I read that this could be a story of the author's family. Though steeped in ethanol, the story seems to be as much about the problems that accompanies all our lives, amd the love of parents for their children. Collette and August Jones live in a community just outside of London. They have raised three children, Janus, a remarkable musician who has turned to drink, beer his choice. Julian, a student who tries to avoid all family drama and Juliette, the daughter, the sober one, married to Bill, who does drink. And, then there are the brothers, Janus Brian, who drinks himelf to oblivion every night and Lesley who goes to one of the neighborhood pubs and gets drunk while his friends pour beer down his throat. This family seems more than maladjusted- there is some sort of destruction in every movement. Coleltte, herself an addict of sniffing glue and then drinking barley wine and now onto whiskey. Her husband, August has also started to drink. How is the family to be saved? Can it be saved? This is not all a sad book, there are many instances of frivolity and fun. You will laugh out loud at some of the passages, and through it all you have hope that this family survives. This is a tale about love- mother for children, hope for the future, sadness and above all survival. We can all see someone we love in this book. Can they be saved? Highly Recommended prisrob 02-08-09 August: A Novel A Curious Earth: A Novel
3.0 out of 5 stars
Slow going but worth it,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: I'll Go to Bed at Noon: A Novel (Paperback)
Although this book was a bit slow going, I eventually got caught up in this disfunctional family's affairs. I discovered that this is only one novel of a trilogy and I think this is the last - so I read it in the wrong order. It is really well written and I could totally visualise the family members, their dishevelled lives and untidy house. I grew to care for and enjoy the characters even though their antics were incredibly frustrating. I knew it would all have to end in disaster. A good read. I recommend it.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product).
|
|
|
