Customer Reviews

Stars and Bars

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

 

 

I have been so pushed to buy and read this book that my expectation grew up and so did my fear for wasting money on another boring novel.Surprise!A bright plot that has captured my attention from the very first line.Two lifestyles: a proper tea-sipping english lad vs a beer-drinker american buddy.What a clash.The main character floats on a sea of hazards and casualties and beg you to sympathize with his helpless effort to "sort it out".Boyd's irony is the dressing to that weirdo salad.

Give it five minutes and you'll find yourself taking a shower with the waterproof edition.

The first time I read this book I had to keep re-reading passages because it was so hilarious! I had tears in my eyes at one point. I recommend this book to everyone who loves the South and has a great imagination. The main character's portrayal of this odd range of Southern characters is priceless, as well as the New York City group. The plot is so full of twists and turns that you are constantly surprised. Out of all of William Boyd's books, this is the only one I have really enjoyed; I could hardly put it down and I reread it every couple of years. This is a true classic.

This book was written in the 1980s when life in New York City was a bit wilder than what it's become today. New Yorkers figure prominently here, as do American "southerners" and a Britisher, who embodies all of that country's cultural archetypes: restraint, "shyness," proper behavior, etc. Put these characters together and you get the joke: a series of cultural clashes and bloopers, mad people, bizarre behavior, appalled reactions, humiliations, revelations, improbable plot twists, and all other manner of silliness. But is it any good, you ask? I guess it depends on your mood. If you're in the mood to watch cartoons and giggle at stereotypes (rude New Yorkers, dumb southerners, brash Jewish princesses) you'll think this work is good. If you want some substance with your humor, you probably should go elsewhere.
I stuck it out because the plot does move along eventually and some of the characters are sufficiently kooky to be interesting, but I was mildly offended by the constant hammering away at the stereotypes, all of which have been utterly exhausted by standup comics, the movies, TV, etc etc ad nauseam. Reader, beware!

I have recently finished this book by W Boyd, which I thoroughly enjoyed, the flawed characters, the humour, and the irony, I seriously laughed out loud a few times. I'm certainly going to read more from this author.

This is a very very funny book - I found myself laughing out load several times when reading it. I see some reviewers have taken exception at the characters and stereotypes but it is all in good humour and the central character does have some depth and develops during the course of this novel. Boyd writes flowing prose and you will enjoy this book.

Years ago, I was assigned to interview Boyd for a film magazine on the topic of adapting books into screenplays, and dutifully picked up A Good Man in Africa to try and come up with some half-decent questions. While that book wasn't brilliant, it was awfully good and led me pick up others of his, and in the course of that, he's developed into one of my favorite writers. I realized the other day that I still hadn't gone back to read some of his older books, so I pick this one -- which came out in 1984 -- and blew through it in a few days. As always, it's a pleasure to read Boyd's prose, and his ear for the comic touch is in early evidence here. However, it relies a little bit too much on stereotypes for its plotting, and as a result, feels somewhat less polished and assured than most of his work.

The story is a classic fish out of water tale -- here the fish is Henderson Dores, an English art historian in his late 30s who has sought to change his life, and indeed, his very nature, by moving to New York to work for an auction house. Henderson is a kind of classically inept British gentleman, never comfortable in his own skin, constantly getting the wrong end of the stick, and generally getting into awkward situations through faults entirely his own. In Manhattan, he has begun to woo his ex-wife, while also engaging in a clandestine, prickly relationship with another woman. When he is sent to the deep South to investigate an elderly recluse's cache of impressionist paintings (a trove that may finally put his firm on the map), wacky antics ensue and Henderson may or may not find his true self emerge.

Contrasting against Henderson are a wide array of American types -- the Horatio Algerish old coot whose paintings he's trying to acquire, the man's perpetually angry son and the son's drawling pregnant wife, the man's mysterious sunglass-wearing southern gothic daughter, a Vietnam vet with an endless line in war anecdotes, a bevy of New Yorkers (including yapping dogs), and so forth. It's hard not to feel that Boyd wrote this book with a British audience firmly in mind, with Henderson's adventures down South as an exaggerated wry window into 1980s America. While the book more or less succeeds as a comic romp (it kind of depends on your taste for that kind of thing), one reads on not to unveil the next misadventure, but to find out whether Henderson will be able to redeem himself by the end.

Note: The novel was made into an apparently mediocre film starring Daniel Day Lewis as Henderson.

I have loved other books by William Boyd, and expected to like this one. But no. The main character, Henderson Dores, is infuriatingly gormless; he inevitably makes the wrong decision which gets him into supposedly funny situations. He is presented as a stereotypical Brit (shy, quiet, polite, self-effacing) and that is what brings him into conflict with the stereotypical Americans he meets who are loud, grasping, profane, and so on. None of this is funny to me. I didn't like any of the characters and quit reading after four chapters -- although I did skip to the end to see how it all came out. Sometimes that makes me want to read the book after all, but not this time.
Boyd has written some other books since this loser, novels with incredible imagination that feature engaging characters with depth. I'm thinking of Brazzavile Beach, The New Confessions, An Ice-Cream War, Restless, and Any Human Heart.
The question here is just how funny cultural clashing is. Is it funny enough to sustain an entire novel? Is funny at all? This is an early Boyd novel. It is virtually juvenalia.

I discovered William Boyd quite a few years ago and was very impressed with the two novels I read. Then he fell off my radar screen. Recently, I've begun reading more of his novels and I have yet to be disappointed. In Stars and Bars, Henderson Dores is unhappy with his life and after a brief self-analysis, decides all his problems are the result of his English tendency to "shyness", an extreme timidity in asserting himself. He admires Americans as the consummate models of confidence and self-assertion. He takes a job in New York with a private art dealer and attempts a reconciliation with his American ex-wife while simultaneously beginning an affair with another American woman. He is sent to a rural area of Georgia to acquire some valuable paintings and finds himself in a series of disastrous but humorous events which spiral out of his control. I was reminded of Bellow's Henderson the Rain King, where bizarre circumstances seem to bring out the man's every weakness. If you like British black humor, you'll enjoy this.

William Boyd's novel about a repressed Englishman trying to break free of his natural shyness and repressive habits is more like a series of set-piece vignettes than a coherent novel. The book has sketches of aggressive New York Jews, tweedy Wasps, evil and dangerous Italians, and impossibly benighted and Gothic Southerners. It's almost as if Boyd gave vent to every nasty prejudice he could mine -- all in the guise of writing a humorous novel. Because his characters' unpleasant aspects are so overdrawn, the resulting characters aren't believable, even in comedy. The only redemptive feature in this otherwise muddy little piece of work is that Boyd has an undeniable imagination, and he manages to write his characters in and out of some funny scrapes. But that strength cannot overcome the novel's fundamental flaw.

STARS AND BARS provided one of the most enjoyable reading experiences I've ever had. Henderson Dores and the befuddlement he felt at the various situations in which he found himself were a constant source of humor, sometimes hilarity, and of admiration for Boyd's inventiveness and style. However,while I'm no prude I found a couple of scenes offensive; sometimes Boyd comes across as a case of arrested development in his need to describe female genitalia. This trait is especially offensive in one particular scene where the context is not sexual and the details are beyond unnecessary. I've since read ARMADILLO, which is also great fun; it also is more substantial and contains less of the prurience. I look forward to reading more Boyd, as he is a top-notch storyteller. However, if he hasn't yet, he needs to get over his distracting little obsession.