Customer Reviews

The Street Philosopher

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I love this book! The story is complex but compelling, so you follow eagerly through each twist and turn. I am a German-American with a British Husband who bought this book in London at the airport, and I cannot wait for the author's next work, The Gunmaker's Gift, to come out in February. My ONLY complaint, why isn't this darn book on the market as a hardcopy in the US yet?!?!? It is a beautiful and earthbound story, narrated by different characters as the story moves on. Plampin has internalized the medium of filmaking in his novel striking clear and poignant images as he leads us through the narrative. I can see this story becoming a film. He writes women the way that Jane Austin wrote men, you see the female characters through the eyes of a gracious and forgiving man, and I consider this a gift that lends the complex story, with multiple narrators, an overarching unity and makes the work feel satisfying and whole by the time you reach the end. More more more!

Thomas Kitson is a journalist, sent out the Crimea in 1854 to be the junior correspondent for the London Courier. The Courier team includes the senior correspondent, Richard Cracknell, a loose cannon who has an affair with the commanding officer's wife and pens scurrilous pieces for the newspaper; and Robert Styles, a young illustrator who quickly becomes disillusioned by the war. The war, culminating with the battle of Sebastopol, is interchanged with a second story line, in Manchester two years later, when Kitson is a social commentator for a local paper (a "street philosopher"), and trying desperately to run from the past. What, exactly, happened out in the Crimea?

This is one of those "unputdownable" books. I read it nearly in one sitting, on an airplane ride back to the States after vacation. I needed a distraction from the 300-pound gorilla groping his girlfriend in the seat next to me, and this book was perfect towards that end. I was glued to this book from start to finish, reading on and on to find out what would happen next.

At first, I thought I wasn't going to like the shifts in time--usually they don't work so well, but here they're done subtly. There are quite a lot of battle scenes, but the author's descriptions of them are particularly well-done. The author clearly knows his mid-nineteenth century history, but he doesn't overburden the reader with his knowledge, instead allowing the reader to take things in gradually. At the same time, the mid-nineteenth century, both in the Crimea and in Manchester, comes alive for the reader.

The story, too, is very well-written, and the plot unfolds gradually. There are hints of the unspeakable things that happened in the Crimea, but they aren't revealed until much later. The plot is complicated, and sometimes leaves the reader with more questions than answers, but not overly so. It looks as though rights for this book haven't sold in the US (at least not yet), which is a shame, because this is a truly entertaining novel.

THis was disappointingly boring. I mean, it takes place in Victorian England, and Crimea, includes battles, lust, and mysteries...but it put me to sleep. The author's prose is only ok, his characters seem flat and cliche, and for a period ripe with possibilities for a great story...there just isn't one. Skip it.