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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A masterpiece of precision.,
By
This review is from: Shooting Party (Mass Market Paperback)
Readers who admire careful, precise writing will thrill at Colegate's prose, which is so polished it sparkles here, avoiding pretension, excess verbiage, and empty lyricism. Instead, Colegate chooses words full of inference and irony, feeling and attitude. Broad themes, historical perspective, and a plot which contains a large cast of individualized characters from all levels of society come alive here in a mere two hundred pages.
Setting the novel in the autumn of 1913, before the outbreak of World War I, Colegate establishes her themes in the first paragraph, asking the reader to imagine an Edwardian drawing room of a country estate, with gas lamps, a log fire, and people from a long time ago, sitting and standing in groups. In the room beyond, a "fierce electric light" shines forth, overpowering the quiet, lamplit room, making it seem shadowy and the people like "beings from a much remoter past." The gentry in this snapshot are not naïve. Even they recognize that "an age, perhaps a civilization, is coming to an end," as industrialization and urbanization are changing the centers of power, and a war looms. A lively cast of characters is invited to Sir Randolph Nettleby's 1000-acre park for a weekend shoot, and as they converse and interact, they quickly become individualized, the reader learning of their attitudes and prejudices, their understanding of the code of behavior, and the details of their very "civilized" lives. When the shoot begins and the beaters send the birds into the air, the symbolic parallels between the world as it has been, the world as it will be during the coming war, and the world as it may be after the war become obvious to the reader, and the death of one of the characters is not a surprise. Colegate is never polemical, however, imbuing her story with a great deal of personal interaction, warmth, and feeling, and as the action unfolds, the reader feels simultaneously wistful about the loss of cultural identity which is about to occur and gratified that the stultifying "predictable-ness" of that life will change. This is a book to savor, written by a remarkable stylist whose prose clearly illustrates that less is more. One of the most remarkable novels of the last fifty years, it has also been made into an equally remarkable film, starring the unforgettable James Mason. Mary Whipple Winter Journey Deceits of Time (King Penguin) The Shooting Party
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A masterpiece of precision.,
By
This review is from: The Shooting Party (Hardcover)
Scheduled for reprinting in December, 2002, this novel will thrill readers who admire careful, precise writing. Like a jeweler, Colegate has polished her prose till it sparkles, avoiding pretension, excess verbiage, and empty lyricism, choosing, instead, words full of inference and irony, feeling and attitude. Broad themes, historical perspective, and a plot which contains a large cast of individualized characters from all levels of society come alive here in a mere two hundred pages.
Setting the novel in the autumn of 1913, before the outbreak of World War I, Colegate establishes her themes in the first paragraph, asking the reader to imagine an Edwardian drawing room of a country estate, with gas lamps, a log fire, and people from a long time ago, sitting and standing in groups. In the room beyond, a "fierce electric light" shines forth, overpowering the quiet, lamplit room, making it seem shadowy and the people like "beings from a much remoter past." The gentry in this snapshot are not naïve. Even they recognize that "an age, perhaps a civilization, is coming to an end," as industrialization and urbanization are changing the centers of power, and a war looms. A lively cast of characters is invited to Sir Randolph Nettleby's 1000-acre park for a weekend shoot, and as they converse and interact, they quickly become individualized, the reader learning of their attitudes and prejudices, their understanding of the code of behavior, and the details of their very "civilized" lives. When the shoot begins and the beaters send the birds into the air, the symbolic parallels between the world as it has been, the world as it will be during the coming war, and the world as it may be after the war become obvious to the reader, and the death of one of the characters is not a surprise. Colegate is never polemical, however, imbuing her story with a great deal of personal interaction, warmth, and feeling, and as the action unfolds, the reader feels simultaneously wistful about the loss of cultural identity which is about to occur and gratified that the stultifying "predictable-ness" of that life will change. This is a book to savor, written by a remarkable stylist whose prose clearly illustrates that less is more. Mary Whipple
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Beautifully drawn portrait of an about-to-vanish world,
By
This review is from: The Shooting Party (Hardcover)
Colegate is not a well-known author, not even in Great Britain, which is a shame because she's a first-rate novelist. The scene here is the late fall of 1913, the last pheasant season before the Great War, the true end of the old century and the beginning of the new. The setting is the Oxfordshire estate of Sir Randolph Nettleby, a thoroughly conservative but thoughtful and decent member of the landed gentry, and a famous host, as well. His guests include several ill-matched aristocratic couples, married only for reasons of finance and social standing (which opens the way to discreet affairs), and the author does a wonderful job of portraying them all in multiple dimensions -- especially Olivia and Lionel, both particularly sympathetic characters. There are also the house servants, and the beaters from the village who come out to assist in putting the pheasants overhead for the shooters -- especially the teetotaling poacher, Tom Harker, whose sudden death is the climax of the book. And there's even a wandering socialist opposed to blood sports for seriocomic relief -- though his last observation of the shooters is far from laughable. The effects of agricultural depression on the rural poor, the importance of private morality, the difference between "sport" and "competition," all are examined, satirized, and explained. At the end, she provides a "what happened to them" chapter, noting who died in the War, who survived, who had to leave town. Though I wish she had told us what happens to Ellen, the maid, and John, the footman, and to Sir Reuben, and to Tommy, who was already an army officer. Besides being interesting in its own right, this warmly written book would also be a good counterweight to _Gosford Park_.
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