Customer Reviews

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Sausages

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

 

 

A sow that has figured out how to achieve teleportation, a dry cleaners that magically moves lock, stock and barrel every forty-eight hours, a slice of medieval world within a loo, battling knights, chickens who believe they're human, and disappearing housing estates. Just a typical day in the world Tom Holt has created in LIFE, LIBERTY AND THE PURSUIT OF SAUSAGES.

I'm a big Tom Holt fan and was excited to see LIFE, LIBERTY AND THE PURSUIT OF SAUSAGES. It took me longer to get into this than any of my previous reads by Mr. Holt. There is a certain mindset required but even then it was hard to get into. For me it lacked the humor and fun that I've come to associate with Mr. Holt's flights of fancy. There were too many tangents, too many characters, and not enough cohesion. The result was a tad confusing on occasion and the tie together at the end was less than satisfying. It's worth the read, especially if you're a fan, but I felt it fell short of Mr. Holt's usual high standard.

I received this from Netgalley in exchange for my honest opinion.

Real Estate solicitor Polly Mayer fears she is losing her mind. First there is her coffee that someone else apparently drinks. Then there is her party dress at the dry cleaners; only problem is that the dry cleaning store is no longer at the spot where she swears she dropped off her dress. At work, someone has been counseling her clients and keeping her files current.

Desperate Polly talks to her brother Donald the jingle writer who boiled water for pasta but has an empty box. After wishing his neighbor upstairs would leave, the pest abruptly goes away. He next meets chickens arguing that they are human and a sow searching for her missing offspring, Donald muses like Sherlock Holmes until he concludes magic exists, but has run wild. With his stunned sister, he investigates the pasta fiasco only to find experts trying to control the chaos as if pigs could fly; chauvinist sows and porkers attending Harvard or Oxford are attainable except the species is so picky as to the company they keep.

This is an engaging irreverent slice of beef (don't say slice of pork, sausage or bacon unless you are in Congress) satirical fantasy. The story line contains too many subplots that fail to gel into a cohesive tale; yet readers who appreciate something different will enjoy the insanity of Tom Holt's chaos. Placing Gulliver's Travels in Animal Farm, Mr. Holt provides a Theater of the Absurd as the siblings learn pigs might fly.

Harriet Klausner

While I couldn't get into Tom Holt's earlier books, I think his later ones are all fantastic, and this is no exception. His recent stories remind me very much of those by Diana Wynne Jones, my favourite author of all time, except aimed more at adults. Although represented as 'comic fantasy', I tend to think of his recent books more as 'corporate fantasy'. He takes the concept of being stuck in an office doing an unfulfilling job and turns it into a surreal mystery or adventure. Definitely not something you read every day, and a great idea!

This particular book follows his corporate fantasy format. Polly and Dan, sister and brother, are minding their own business and doing their jobs, when strange things begin happening to them and around them, such as cups of coffee suddenly vanishing and reappearing, intelligent chickens, and a magical pencil sharpener. It's wacky and surreal and absolutely brilliant.

No doubt if you read Holt's books for the comedy factor, you might be disappointed (although there were some parts that had me giggling quite a bit). But if you are looking for a genuinely well-written modern magical adventure as opposed to laughs, this is the book for you! I love it and hope Holt continues writing in this vein for many years to come!

It feels as if this book has a cast of thousands - appropriately enough, since it's one of the ways in which the writing reflects the book's structure and theme, which unfolds gradually, although the reader begins to suspect what's going on well before the characters do.

Polly is a conveyancer for property developer Mr Huon. Her brother is a musician. When Polly notices that strange things are happening in her office - including the appearance of the word HELP in her diary - she turns to her brother for assistance, but he's preoccupied by his own problems. These began after he found a pencil sharpener in the pocket of a coat he'd collected from the dry cleaners. He tries to return it, but the dry cleaners has disappeared. Actually, we learn, the shop has moved, rather to the surprise of its owners, but they soon learn to adapt. Oh, and there's something nasty happening in the downstairs loo. It happens every day, at the same time. There's quite a few disappearances, in fact - piglets, people, a housing estate - and appearances can, of course, be deceiving.

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Sausages is familiar fare from Tom Holt, right down to the amusing title - if you know and like his work you're on safe ground, because this is a good one (for me, at least, he can be just a little hit or miss, though there are more hits than misses). You're not going to get to know the characters as well as in some, because it's not a very linear story, but he's good at creating people you like at once - here, the white and black knights are a good example, you're immediately caught up in their dilemma, and in how it links in to the rest of the story.

What all this reminds me of most - even down to the title - is Douglas Adams. Holt has been moving in that direction for some time - ever since, I think, The Portable Door (which is very good). I don't mean to imply that his writing is derivative - it's not, his voice is quite definitely his own - but that the philosophical bent feels like Adams, and the explorations of the possible permutations of a recognisable universe. Because it is recognisable - people react in familiar ways, so that it's easy to imagine yourself in place of Polly, or of Kevin who suddenly finds that he's a chicken. (If you were ever curious to know how that would feel, look no further!) Okay, Kevin's no Gregor Samsa - it's more Chicken Run than Metamorphosis - but Holt's not aiming for profundity, just fun with a little wry social comment on the side. And he does that very well.

I was very happy with this book as I am with all of Tom Holt's books. The story was exactly what I expected from a gifted writer. The twists and turns don't just take you down different streets, but into other dimensions. This is a must read for all fans.

Tom Holt is just amazing.

The second paragraph of this novel contains the observation that: "Pigs are highly intelligent creatures, with enquiring, analytical minds...The only reason you don't get more pigs at Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard and the Sorbonne is that they're notoriously picky about the company they keep."

If that doesn't convince you that this novel is great fun and occasionally absolutely accurate, there is nothing that I can say that will convince you otherwise.

If you're familiar with Tom Holt, all I have to say is, Have fun! If not, I should say a bit more than that. For those who are new to Holt's work, be prepared for a wild ride.

Something odd is happening in the offices of Blue Remembered Hills Development, and Polly Mayer doesn't like it. Someone is drinking her coffee. She's getting phone calls complaining about her failure to follow up on conversations she knows didn't happen. She's finding notes in her work diary that she didn't write, and work done in her files that she didn't do. Polly is not amused--and that's before she discovers that the dry cleaners where she dropped off her dress has disappeared. Not gone out of business--vanished as if it had never been there.

Something odd is happening at BRHD. Mr. Huos has lost his brass ring. And ever since the loss of the ring, clients and customers are starting to complain. Something about the land they bought being missing. Mr. Huos is also missing his past: He has no memory before he woke up on a mountainside in eastern Europe ten years ago, with the brass ring, steel earrings, and $100,000 in US currency. Oh, and the ability to understand any spoke language instantly. And to make deals that are not far off from turning sows' ears into silk purses.

Something odd is happening outside BRHD. Don Mayer, Polly's brother, found a brass pencil sharpener in the pocket of a suit he picked up from the dry cleaners' shortly before Polly discovered that that shop not only didn't exist anymore, it never had. Suddenly he can Make Things Happen, including the return of his sister's dress, and the disappearance of his annoying neighbor--whom he only wanted to go away, not cease existing.

Meanwhile, there are the hens who used to be lawyers, and Mr. and Mrs. Williams, the dry cleaners whose shop has been moving to new locations every couple of days for the last ten years.

And all of that is before things start getting weird.

If you're a Tom Holt fan, definitely pick up this one. If you've never heard of Tom Holt before, be adventurous and pick it up anyway! It's weird and wonderful and a lot of fun.

I received a free electronic galley of this book via NetGalley.

Before I read this book, I'd never heard of Tom Holt. I read this book for one reason: this blurb by my beloved Christopher Moore, which appeared in the NetGalley write-up:

"Tom Holt may be the most imaginative satirist to land on our shores since Douglas Adams." -- Christopher Moore

Funny that Moore (who Tom Holt kind of reminds me of) mentions Douglas Adams (who Tom Holt kind of reminds me of) because this book is in the same genre as Adam's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, with the difference being that Holt's band of motley heroes don't venture off into the galaxy (although they do visit other space-time dimensions). In other words, this is aggressively silly but smart stuff, and you either like this kind of stuff or you don't. I do (like this kind of stuff).

Why don't I try to tell you what the book is about so you can see for yourself? Take a deep breath. Here goes.

My Attempt To Describe The Book's Plot

The book starts with a sow working out some physics questions in order to determine where her piglets keep disappearing when they go inside a rather large trailer near the pig pen. When she finally makes her way inside, she seemingly vanishes into another dimension. (But more on that later. That is just the warm-up.)

The real start of the book is when we meet Polly, a lawyer at a construction firm who has had some rather odd things happening to her lately: disappearing coffee, work being done without her doing it, strange notes in her files. Plus she can't seem to find the dry cleaners where she left her dress; it has seemingly vanished into thin air. When she talks to her brother Don about whether she might be going crazy, her fears are allayed by his explanations. That is, until Don picks up clothing at the missing dry cleaners and finds a mysterious pencil sharpener that apparently lets him perform magic--magic that includes accidentally disappearing his annoying upstairs neighbor as well as the ability to create minions out of his hair.

From there, things get a little weird. As Polly and Don try to figure out what is happening, we bounce around meeting other characters, including: the couple who work at the dry cleaners that moves to a new location every night (and don't think about going in the downstairs bathroom around 10:30 in the morning); Mr. Huos (Polly's boss) who has a rather unusual back story as well as the headache of having the properties he's developed disappearing overnight; and Mr. Stan Gogerty, the only man who has a chance of unraveling all the things that are plaguing these poor people (but only if he can escape from a tube station that hasn't been built until 10 years in the future). Oh, and did I mention that the key to figuring out what is going on comes down to determining which came first ... the chicken or the egg?

So????

If reading the book description gave you headache or made you roll your eyes, this book isn't for you. If, however, you found yourself saying "Yes! Yes! Yes! This sounds like the goofy, abusurdist kind of book I like but just can't find enough of!", this book is for you!

I loved this book--although it occasionally caused me a headache trying to keep up with who was doing what and where and when. It is best not to think too much, sit back and let it all come clear in the end. When you read a book like this, it is like getting on a roller coaster: you sit down, strap yourself in, and prepare to have a wild ride that doesn't always make sense, has lots of twists and turns and craziness but is good, clean, mind-bending fun.

My only real complaint was that I often got confused about who was narrating. "Is this the chicken talking," I'd think, "or is this the knight stuck in the time warp?" (Yeah ... it is that kind of book.) It would have been helpful to have some clearer transitions (for example, a small heading saying "Don" if we are with Don). However, I did read the book in PDF format that I downloaded from NetGalley so it is entirely possible that the non-galley of the version of the book has this information. However, even with that minor quibble, I still very much enjoyed this book. In fact, I actually snorted with laughter a few times. Here are some of the passages that really made me giggle (although it is the kind of book where passage after passage is amusing).

Describing a rather special library: They called it a library, which was a bit like calling croquet on the vicarage lawn a fight to the death.

"Um," he said, and then his voice stopped working, a failure so abrupt and total it was hard to believe Microsoft didn't have anything to do with it.

The voice was very loud and when it spoke the ground shook under his feet, but he'd stood up to bigger bullies before. He'd used Windows Vista. He'd installed broadband. Incomprehensible and immensely powerful forces entirely beyond his control were all in a day's work as far as he was concerned.

I really enjoyed this book and was thrilled to find out that Tom Holt has quite a few other books for me to explore. How did I not hear of this author until now???? Well, at least I'm in the know now. If you're a Tom Holt fan, what would you recommend I read next?