Customer Reviews

Imagined London: A Tour of the World's Greatest Fictional City (National Geographic Directions)

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

 

 

Imagined London is a wonderful love story. Anna Quindlen, who had visited London in her dreams for many years, made her first physical visit in 1995. She tells the story of that visit, and many subsequent ones, in this all too slim volume about the great city's many literary connections.

This book reminds me of Helene Hanff's The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street in that it focuses on literary London, but like that book, Imagined London appeals on many levels. A visitor to London can use it as a walking tour guide, for example. Even those who will rarely or never visit the city will find the elegant writing and deft descriptions are to be treasured.


My only complaint about Imagined London is that it is far too short! Had it been two or even three times as long, I would still savor every word!

Nothing could be finer than reading a fine book by a fine writer writing about a fine city of fine writers . . . . get my drift? . . . . and this book is a literary delight by an exceptionally fine former New York Times columnist.

Of course, it's not quite like being there. As Quindlen states, "Perhaps in a small way he wanted to drive home what is always a valuable lesson, when we insist on learning the world through books: that accuracy and truth are sometimes quite different things." True enough, I suppose. But, on a personal basis and having once visited London myself, her book brings back an "accuracy and truth" that was much better than my memories of London.

Anyone reading this is obviously a literate person; on that basis, Quindlen offers a fine tour of the literary highlights of one of the world's great cities. Why is London great? She says, "A third of London . . . is grass or gardens." She appreciates the people, places, writers and words of London and how they came to hold such a powerful place in literature.

In a world where Quarter Pounders with Cheese and Gap jeans are as ubiquitous as Burberrys and Harris Tweeds, London is distinctive. New York, like Phoenix and many American cities, was planned with a mathematical rigour that is as user-friendly as a straight jacket. If New York streets are a Mondrian painting, and Phoenix a Rorschach cookie-cutter test, then London is the genius of a Picasso. London just grew, and nothing from the collapse of Londinium to the Great Fire of 1666 to the Blitz of World War II has persuaded Londoners to destroy its human appeal.

A city this good deserves an author with the sensitivity and insight and perception of Quindlen; every reader of this book will be delighted she turned her loquacious talents to lovely London and its wonderful charms, its quirks and oddities and normalities and routines which create a city worth remembering. Quindlen is truly an author worth reading.

There is so much more to the imaginary London than the author conveys. This book feels like it was dictated to complete an assignment. Buy the Ackroyd book, London: A Biography instead...and then use your own imagination. I agree with previous reviewers who called it superficial with the real book still waiting for an author to write it.

As one who got into a lengthy discussion with a beefeater in the Tower about why Elizabeth I was most certainly NOT a man, I felt an instant kinship with Ms. Quindlen. I, too, was a voracious reader from early on, and London was always a special space in my imagination. I did get there a little sooner -- 1988 -- and was no less enthralled. Another writer, Isaak Dinesen, talks about being a traveler in the mind -- which I've always been -- and oviously, I'm in good company. This is a lovely (as the Brits say) book -- enjoy!

I had such high hopes for a book that got to the heart of my favorite city and my favorite literature. However, first it dismayed, then depressed, then just made me plain angry that Ms. Quindlen could be so superficial, so full of cliches, have such shallow skills of description and so absolutely little insight into either London or literature. Surely someone soon will pick up the inky scratches and try again.

i love anna quindlen, i love literature, i love landscapes of the imagination, and i love london, so i was ready to love this book. however, it didn't give me nearly the depth i wanted. the essays are oddly generic, the comments oddly superficial. i was left with little impression, literary or geographical. i'm sad.

London looms large, in literature, in "real" life, and in the literary and cultural imagination. In this delightfully absorbing book, Quindlen, a former New York Times columnist, describes her first introduction to London-through books-and her second-on a book tour trip. She admits that she was fearful of shattering the magical image she held of London, and so put off a visit to the actual city for years. Only in her mid-forties did Quindlen finally make the trip, and she was relieved to discover that its charms and quirks were even better than she had imagined.

The chapters are loosely connected, with witty gems that regular readers of Quindlen will expect. She alludes to the great writers who have lived in London, suggests out-of-the-way detours about the city, and reflects on the present-day capital of the United Kingdom.

If a reader expects the author to provide sound-bite sidebars and details about where to eat and stay, he or she will be vastly disappointed and probably not make it beyond the first few pages. But if you've been to London and loved it, or if you have read Thackery and Dickens, Henry James and Monica Ali, you'll revel in this literary tour. Quindlen's rich narrative style will have you, like it did me, looking for airline tickets for another visit to this amazing city. Don't forget to pack this book along with anything by Dickens.

This is the first book I've read by Anna Quindlen and based on the other reviews, I was expecting a much better book. I think the topic is fascinating and the author did have some good reflections, I just didn't agree with the angle. I consider myself well read, but unless you have read all of Dickens and Thackeray's work and are an expert in 19th century Brit-lit, you'll feel like you're missing something. The author does not do a good job of summarizing or tying these books to London, instead she just quotes passages at different geographic locations.

I also thought that she felt the need to justify her interest in London and literature by (bragging?) about how she voluntarily read these major works as a child and wrote school papers as a teenager as using British diction. I know she was trying to establish credibility, but it came across as pompous because she said it over and over. It would have been a more interesting angle if she positioned this book as to why the READER should be interested in London and its literature, instead of why Anna was qualified to write about it.

How could anyone write IMAGINED LONDON in 2004 and neglect to mention Platform 9 3/4 at King's Cross, which actually exists now? I'm not even a Potterhead, but a book entitled IMAGINED LONDON should be interested in how real London spills into imagined London, and then imagined London spills right back into real London, which is what makes London fabulous.

My dear Watson, The Case of the Missing Platform illustrates two pernicious problems:

1. Quindlen didn't visit the real London until she was a successful journalist in her 40's. Her first (and only?) visit was for a book tour of her own book. Quindlen is cute when she gets excited, but she comes off like a Dickens fangirl with a free tourist map.

2. Either Quindlen hasn't heard of Harry Potter or considers Harry Potter beneath her. How about a little 1984 action and a bit of V FOR VENDETTA? Where are Wooster & Jeeves? IMAGINED LONDON is entirely devoted to classics from a high school reading list (Dickens, Thackeray, the Bloomsbury group), and the book is peppered with insecure bragging as Quindlen namedrops the big books she voluntarily read at a young age. She seems to know that she's unqualified to write this book and compensates by telling irrelevant stories about how she once wrote papers using British diction.

Then Anna does stuff like wander into Covent Garden on accident, fail to recognize it, and then fail to note that the unrecognizability of Covent Garden is a really interesting piece of urban sociology. Like Times Square, Covent Garden used to be a STD vortex. MY FAIR LADY depicts the "flower seller" selling actual flowers, but don't tell me you don't know what ladyflower Eliza Dolittle was selling. Today's Covent Garden, in an astounding feat of urban renewal, is made of tourists and plastic. See also: Globe Theatre and the South Bank.

If I led a literary tour of London:

- I'd point out the tiny little garden by the Temple tube stop, which is where TWELFTH NIGHT premiered. In this garden, actors in Shakespeare's histories would have plucked a red rose of Lancaster from a living rose bush.

- We'd stop for lunch at The Moon Under Water, one of the chain of pubs named after George Orwell's fictitious perfect pub.

- I'd gesture at a Hotblack Desiato real estate placard and invoke THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY.

- I'd point out a faded sign for a bomb shelter and remind everyone that this is why Lucy, Edmund, Susan, and Peter were shipped out to the Professor's house in the country.

- I'd take the group to Westminster Cathedral for evensong; even for unbelievers, a house where worship has been offered every day for a thousand years has a certain power. Feel free to think about the boys singing in THE DARK IS RISING, though that scene actually takes place in a country church.

- After having a bit of a sit-down at evensong, we'd go be groundlings at the Globe, hooray!

- Lastly, I'd take them to the strip mall at Angel tube stop, nip into the Sainsbury's there for an assortment of chocolate and biscuits, and hand everyone a complimentary copy of NEVERWHERE at the end of the tour. To this day, I crack up just thinking about Islington.* Plus, NEVERWHERE features my favorite bridge (Blackfriars) and all my favorite place names (let's hear it for Elephant & Castle!**).

In conclusion, don't waste your time reading IMAGINED LONDON. For imagination and a deep-seated love of London, NEVERWHERE is a better place to spend your time.

* Tangent: Islington's local animal welfare group is SNIP: Society for Neutering Islington's Pussies.

** A pretty cool neighborhood: very untouristed, has many brown people, and the absolutely amazing Imperial War Museum is around the corner. Be sure to check out the John Singer Sargent painting of mustard gas.

Sweet little gem of a book. Anna Quindlen has a fondness for the London she's experienced through much of the classic English lit she's read throughout her life, beginning in her childhood. I share that fondness myself. So this book is a magical mystery tour for readers and lovers of London!

Quindlen visits London (finally as an adult) and revisits much of what she's read while she's there. Heavy on Dickens, Waugh and Trollope, there is plenty here for everyone. I myself love Forster and Austen (both mentioned), and there is a smattering of Shakespeare, Maugham, James (PD and Henry), Eliot(both George and TS), Chaucer, Browning, Woolf...she covers many a haunt..you may not have read them all, but even if you haven't, you will be encouraged to after this travelogue.

Quindlen's ramblings about her most favorite literary city and telling and warm, even when the city is not so friendly itself. She is obviously quite fond of the place, and reading this gave me even more of a hankering to visit there. It also added a few authors and books to my TBR pile. Charming, quirky adn quick, this book also shows off the immense talent of Quindlen as author and journalist, able to really express a feeling in one short sentence. I love her use of unusual and archaic language, which in the writings of others might come off as pretentious or overly scholarly, but in Quindlen's work, seems natural and the vocabulary of a great reader. I truly admire that. Neat little book.