Customer Reviews

The Putt at the End of the World

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

The talented Authors that put this book together combined to make a story that was very entertaining. Fast paced, non-stop readability! Sometimes erotic, sometimes violent, often darkly humorous. This is the rare gem that you'll likely read in a day, whether your a golfer or not. Unique characters along with a great story and locale bring this very original book together nicely.

Highly recommended

Computer mogul Phillip Bates proves he is the richest person in the world when he invites three former golf greats to play a round at his new course. If Senior pro legend Alfonso Zamora, women's great Rita Shaugnessy, and amateur champion Billy Sprague comes to his course at Rathgave Castle, Scotland, Phillip will pay them several hundred thousand dollars each. Alfonso may be losing his eyesight, Rita may be turning into an alcoholic has-been, and Billy may have gambled away his future, but each agrees to join the pro-am event along with many world leaders and celebrities.

However, an uninvited guest sees this tournament as an opportunity to cause massive destruction by blowing up a list of who's who. An anti-terrorist law enforcement team hopes to thwart the activist before the planned explosion makes a deep divot that wrecks havoc on the world scene. However, their bumbling reactions seem to only encourage the enemy whose goal is a special hole in one.

THE PUTT AT THE END OF THE WORLD is more than a golf thriller. The story line is a crazy eighteen holes punctuated by a group of weird charcaters with different agendas. Nine highly regarded authors contribute chapters to the novel. Though their styles vary, not one of them wavers from the main plot. In other words, readers gain a satirical anthology within a novel environment that is fun to read.

Harriet Klausner

It is said that a camel is a horse designed by a committee. Since a camel is very efficient doing what camels are intended to do, then the remark must mean that a camel is a very funny looking horse. Well, in The Putt at the End of the World, a committee of nine individually popular writers has turned out a very funny golf story.
The Putt at the End of the World is apparently the brainchild of last-listed author Les Standiford, shown as editor and compiler. It also seems to be a salute, at least in part, to recently deceased British writer Douglas Adams, author of the Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy series which includes The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. It is certainly reminiscent of Adam's work, with zany characters interacting amidst nefarious schemes, all centered around a golf tournament. But not just any golf tournament. Computer zillionaire Philip Bates has bought a Scottish castle and cleared original growth timber to construct the ultimate golf course-as well as rehabbing the castle into an exotic hideaway retreat. This infuriates both environmental terrorists and the last of the MacLout clan, who claims that the MacGregor sellers usurped his family's claim to the property and he should have gotten the money. Then Bates (no relation to this reviewer) scheduled a conference and golf tournament inviting all of the world's political leaders and top golf players.
One of the invitees is Billy Sprague, club pro from Squat Possum Golf Club in rural Ohio. Billy is a magnificent golfer, unless there is money involved in which case he can't even get the ball of the tee. Billy's mentor is the old retired family doctor whose life is golf, who build the Squat Possum Club and who dies immediately after giving Billy his invitation and telling him that he has to go to Scotland and play in order to lift the curse and "...save the world as we know it..." Then FBI and British Secret Service refugees from the Keystone Kops get involved because of the terrorist threat, and the rest is-not history, but hilarious.
Each of the nine authors wrote one of the chapters. They did a good job matching styles, and/or Standiford did a great job of editing, because the novel is seamless. It is a farce, but at the same time has a "Bagger Vance" note of paean to the wonder of golf. It reads fast, and it reads great.

This was a terrible book. Multiple authors were not able to successfully make the book flow from chapter to chapter. Character development was disjointed to say the least. Way tooooo much celebrity name dropping...it almost read like People Mag. Buy "The Greatest Player Who Never Lived" instead.

At first I thought this was going to be a serious mystery novel, until I realized that each chapter was written by a different author. It was almost like they were challenging each other, coming up with situations that were more and more ridiculous. I found myself laughing out loud. I should have known something was up when I saw that Dave Barry was one of the writers. It's a great book for those who like golf and for those, like me, that have never swung a club.

My opinion shifts each time I think about this book. Liked, in fact, thoroughly enjoyed parts of it. Shmuck in places got in the way for me personally, while others might just like it because of its raw side. Golf story was intriguing, although the detective plot overrode any golf in too many places.

This group-written book has two things going for it: Colorful characters and a promising plot. But that's about it. Wading through several chapters to get to Dave Barry's part in this fiasco was a waste of time otherwise. While the characters are certainly vivid, NONE of them are likeable. At all. ZERO. To top it off there are more F-bombs here than a def jam hosted by Chris Rock, and not nearly as many laughs. The handoff from one writer to the next is sometimes fairly smooth, but the writing styles sometimes vary so wildly that one wonders if one is still reading the same book from one chapter to the next, and it's intended to tell one cohesive story, not be a collection of shorts. Pass on this.

Golf is not a team sport, but this book used ten different writers to come up with a murder mystery on a golf course full of celebrities. Each wrote a different segment, and sometimes the story line does not jell, but I'd say they had fun working on this silliness.

Golf used to be a man's game, and used to be called the "good walk" when the men used that means to exercise their bodies as much as their golf swings. Nowadays, they ride the golf carts and play at the game. They've actually started teaching golf in schools, and nine great values the game teaches for youth (sportsmanship, confidence, integrity, perseverance, respect, responsibility, judgment, courtesy, and honesty) ensures a future for the continuation of the game of golf.

Only one of the nine contributors was female who used such off-hand characters to pepper her chapter: Mr. Potato Head, Sensible Shoes, Book Bag Woman, 'Star Wars' star pilot, MacLout, and Cameron who directed the movei 'Titanic.' She laid out the sexual hijinks of the golfers at the castle in Scotland. Dave Barry had the middle to fill in so he used his usually raucous vocabulary as he led into an explouding golf ball made out of enough plastique to end the world as we know it.

Tim O'Brien, whose book IN THE LAKE OF THE WOODS I enjoyed, wrote "On an adjacent putting green, also under umbrellas, mingled such notables as Tony Blair and Al Gore, both decked out in tweeds and starched golf shirts. Nearby, Mu'ammar Qaddafi was giving a now-or-never, sink-it-before-you-die putting lesson to Jack Lemmon, while only a few feet away Chi Chi Rodriguez did his best to adjust the clumsy, rather primitive one-handed putting stroke of former senator Robert Dole." These are just a few of the names; Fidel Castro was present as was Dan Rather and other important people.

The ending was written by the editor whoever he is, preferred to stay anonymous. The ending was explosive, to match the varied styles of writing the international language of golf. Other writers taking part in this project are Lee K. Abbott, Richard Bausch, James Crumley, James W. Hall, Ridley Pearson, Les Standiford, and Tami Hoag. How many are golfers, I wonder?

I thouroughly enjoyed the first three quarters of this book, written in the style of Naked Came the Manatee. But unlike Manatee, where the concluding author made a genuine effort to wrap up the various plot lines to a more or less reasonable and satisfying conclusion, here the final author flies away from the plot and established themes to a most dissappointing and disconnected ending. All in all, however, the book is very entertaining and genuinely funny, and is well worth the read despite the conclusion.

I picked this book up at the library because I love golf and its literature and because I saw the names of two fine authors, Tim O'Brien and Richard Bausch, associated with the project. All I can say after spending a few hours reading this piece of junk is that they should be ashamed of themselves for being a part of it. The characters are cartoonish, the plot is ridiculous and incomprehensible and the writing appalling. This is supposed to be a comic novel, but I don't recall that I laughed one time reading it. I guess there would be some justification for a self-indulgent piece of foolishness like this if the proceeds from sales were going to some worthy cause, but there's no indication of that that I could see. The true crime here is that a worthy book probably was cast aside by the publisher in favor of this drivel.