Customer Reviews

Rebuilding Coventry

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

 

 

it's been about two years since i read this fantastical tale of coventry dakin's "lost and found" of self. although this novel is about a grown woman it is remeniscent of her adrian mole books in that it's about a person quite lost in the world they exist in. coventry is on the run, but from what and for how long has she really been running? it's a tale of assumed names and identities, of wacky professors and unbelievably dysfunctional families, the suburbs and the city. it's a quick read and a quality one as well. if you enjoyed kureshi's buddah of suburbia or atwood's edible woman, be prepared to jump into yet another world that reflects your own much more than you'd ever admit

Highly recommend this book. Very short but well-written. Its fun and yet as with many good books can be taken on different levels.

This book is my absolute favorite. Utterly brilliant. When The New York Times praises a short, obscure comedic novel, you know it's got to be excellent--and it is.

More action happens in this 134-page novella than I have read in novels four times its size. The heroine, Coventry Dakin, begins the novel by stating, "I am beautiful and yesterday I killed a man." From here, we go on a whirlwind journey, as Coventry eludes the authorities, abandoning her controlling husband and the two children she loves. She runs to London, lives as a homeless person, then as a domestic, and even stoops to one incident of prostitution.

Meanwhile, the brother she loves, Sidney, is off in Portugal with his wife, Ruth, and is no help to Coventry. There is the police inspector obsessed with capturing her, in a very Inspector Javert style. There is the relieved widow of the man Coventry presumably killed. And, there is the question that Coventry doesn't need to be running away at all. How could she have killed a man more than twice her size by hitting him on the back of the head with an action figure?

Sue Townsend's style is witty, acerbic, fast-paced, and incredibly different. It is amazing the characters she creates, and the situations she puts them in, and the novella is over almost as soon as you start it. Townsend is indeed a rare and gifted writer, and this book is a very worthy read.

This, like most of Townsend's work, is dark. There were things that Townsend wanted to comment on that she couldn't do with Mole, so she has made this protagonist a homeless woman on the run. However, as usual she is on form skewering the middle class, the upper-middle class granola crunching Gucci Socialists, and a society that allows people to fall so far. There are less laughs in this book, and there is a lot more darkness. But it is still Townsend, and her fans should give this one a try.