Customer Reviews

In Search of Love and Beauty

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

 

 

Absolutely love this work. The captivating prose just draws you into other lives and other places like the shifting bits of a kaleidoscope. A writer of enormous talent, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala can somehow make you feel that you know a character well with a deft and economical word sketch. Scenes appear so realistically in the mind's eye that one feels that it could never have happened any other way. There is not the least bit of spare fat or padding in her writing. The lack of a strong plot does not matter in the least when even the most mundane detail -- a hat, the cry of a baby or a hair-cut-- is rendered interesting from the poetry of her description. This is a book for those who love the sheer beauty of words, a book like shimmering silk which catches the light and leaves you gasping.

If you find this book mediocre or bad, jump to her master-piece Heat and Dust -concise but intuitive,wry humour and believable characters.But what happened here?It's awful.The main character,Leo Kellermann is a charmer/manipulator but the author makes him shallow and devoid of personality from the start so it just wasn't convincing that he could weave people round his little finger which seemed important if he was going to catalse important themes in the book.The story didn't feel like it had any flow or direction as though she was writing in snippets and i lost interest early on.

This books drags and is incredibly pointless and boring. It took all my strength to just finish this book.

When basic ethnography assimilates with fiction, the result is usually a vivid and somewhat accurate portrayal of society. Whether that is the intent here is in question, but the creativity in writing and juxtaposition of circumstance result in an entertaining novel nonetheless. The author's talent makes this a palatable read.