Customer Reviews

A Landing on the Sun

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I cannot find that any reviewer has properly taken the measure of the virtuosity of this work, apart from any of its other merits. Frayn anchors Jessel in the very same place as Serafin and Summerchild, the two people whose history he is investigating, and from that conceptual base he goes out on forays into differences of time and of identity. Jessel plays and experiments with abolishing those differences, but the sameness of place is flatly literal. It's delicious. --As well as the interplays between his time frame and theirs, and between his identity and theirs, there is the interplay between his happiness and theirs; and, for good measure, Frayn explores the interplays amongst these other interplays. All of this finely interwoven, never tangled; so funny and so sad; and bound together with a terrific detective story. --Frayn makes a brilliant job of making us believe (in a way) Jessel's own representation of himself as a dry, grey, prosaic civil servant, while also showing us how lively and responsive a mind he has. --The philosophy tutorials are wonderful: a lot of mockery, but also some real philosophy. Frayn makes the unlikely love between Serafin and Summerchild seem almost inevitable: all it took was an exchange of truly personal reminiscences, their sheer intimacy being the magnet that pulls the two people towards one another. --This is the most complex thing Frayn has ever done; he ran fearful risks with it; and the upshot is a triumphant, dazzling success. `

I read this book almost a year ago, but even at this distance I can say it haunts me. When I think of books I've loved, this is certainly one. In structure, it reminded me a little of AS Byatt's Possession (if not quite that complicated). It's smart and funny about the lives of civil servants, and keeps your sympathies shifting and swelling. A brilliant book.

With its enticing blend of sex, death, Establishment politics and academic philosophy (in this case the theory of happiness), the setup for this intriguing novel sounds like something by Ian McEwan. But Frayn brings to it his trademark sense of humor, so it never quite gets into the same territory. The comic aspects of an unlikely love affair between a devious public servant and the Oxford academic who is also his boss are fully exploited, providing a nice counterpoint to the more intellectually engaging philosophical material. In that sense, this novel makes a nice companion piece to Frayn's two most recent efforts - "Headlong" and "Spies" - both of which similarly deploy comic plots as devices for discussing more serious concerns. In the right hands, this kind of thing can really work. Frayn consistently manages to pull it off because he makes clever narrative choices. Here, he uses the first-person narration of an investigator, the transcripts of meetings, and audio tapes of the lovers to tell a story which unfolds in two timeframes. He also sets up an intriguing mystery - Who killed Stephen Summerchild? - to pull you through. Highly original and engaging, this should appeal to readers who prefer literary fiction but also enjoy the intrigue and pacing of crime/mystery novels. It's a challenging fusion of the two.

A Landing on the Sun is the story of love run amok, of love
consuming a person's life to the point of disaster. Anyone
who has ever been in love knows it can be like that; it can
overrule all common sense. This
book is the depiction of the (literal) downfall of a
British Civil Servant, Stephen Summerchild, who falls in
love with his superior, a philosopher investigating the
meaning of "the good life" for a newly elected British
government. The narrator is another Civil Servant
investigating Summerchild's death years later. The mystery
of Summerchild's death is slowly unraveled by means of an
overlooked cache of audio tapes made by the couple in the
course of their research. The reader can gradually witness
them coming apart emotionally under the strain of their
forbidden relationship until disaster overtakes them. The
outcome is bittersweet in the end for all romantics, but
incredibly draining as the best of story telling always is.
If you treasure love stories, this is one of the best.

This book is a strange, finely crafted, sometimes very funny, deliberation about beaurocracy, philosophy, love and insanity.

Totally ureal premise regarding the title; took slogging forever to get into. Best thing to say, "weird, but it is British, you know."

The book is an irritating dichotomy. A tightly woven,well-structured plot compliments an economical stock of carefully crafted and intriguing if ultimately plebian characters. At the same time the book preaches it is tedious and not terribly interesting. Frayn's stream of consciousness works well, though it falls short of Faulkner. Unfortunately, interesting questions remained unanswered, such as the teasing fascination of Jessel's family relationships and his resolution of an old love affair. The book is not in the least bit funny and should not be considered a comedy. I have the most profound respect for Mr. Frayn and his integrity. That's what makes the book so frustrating to read. I KNOW he can do better. It was as if he hadn't proofread his own work. The bittersweet description of this sordid love affair is painful and well worth the experience of reading but, in all, the book, as a work, fails.