Customer Reviews

LOVE AND DEATH ON LONG ISLAND

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

 

 

Superb novel, parodying everything from Mann to teen B-movies, but with a tender affection for its main character, sardonic and infatuated novelist Giles De'Ath. Quite different from the (extremely good) movie, with much more time spent on Giles' life in England and less on his adventures in the US. Marvellous over-elaborated style, too.

A brilliantly witty and beautifully written short novel. Comparable to the prose stylings of a personal favorite, Graham Greene, his prose is eloquent and romantic. Adair proves himself as a wordsmith of the highest order, possessing an encyclopedic knowledge of the english language. I only wonder why a writer of his caliber lacks the publicity and popularity of his more noted literary confreres.

What a small gem! Only 137 pages, but a rich and full journey into the mind of a closeted academic as he works his way through an infatuation with vacuous teen idol Ronny Bostock. Gilbert De'Ath's encounters with the modern world in the form of multiplex cinemas, teenage fanzines, video recorders, pulp cinema and Pakistani newsagents is both hilarious and touching. A vast improvement on the somewhat lacklustre screen treatment.

I read the book after I saw the movie (which I loved). The book is excellent - the author can make the mundane so descriptive. I just wish the novel was 50 or so pages longer.

Mr. Adair may be a competent writer, but a reading of _Death in Venice_, by Thomas Mann, will reveal that he owes a great deal to Herr Mann. It may be to the contemporary readers' shame that we are more familiar with pop fiction than great art, but is to Mr. Adair's that he -- aside from not crediting Mann -- does not credit the reader with the education or the wit to tell a pale imitation from the real thing.