Customer Reviews

Zigzag Street

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

 

 

Nick Earls is my favourite author - he lives near me in Brisbane, Australia. If you want to split your sides laughing, and see what life is like in a non-Sydney/Melbourne Australian city, then do yourself a favour and read anything by Nick! I love how he writes. He describes Brisbane exactly the way it is. His characters are so believable, so funny, so real! He is the only author I know who can make me laugh uncontrollably, embarrassing myself with tears of hysterics when I read in public places! And Nick is such a nice guy, very down to earth. He even takes the time to reply to his fans emails personally! I enjoyed all his books, but my favourites are Zig Zag Street and Perfect Skin (his new one).

I would read this book on the bus to work and everyone would stare at me because I was laughing out loud. It's perfect for any one who appreciates Australians bizarre sense of humor.

Nick Earls has a great way of letting us into his main charaters head. He grabs you and takes you for a ride in. A nice lazy ride through the romances and heart breaks of the main character in a way that we can laugh along even as we feel for him. He makes you want to kick the guys as he goes through things that seem all to familiar. Once you read one of his book you will want to get the lot Bachelor Kisses, Head games and the new one Perfect Skin are a must

Save your positive comments fellow Australians; I set the book for a class of US students and the 2 who bothered to read it missed all of the subtleties. I gave this review a contentious title in the hope it would tempt them to buy the book. Besides, the book is rare in the US--like people who get irony.

this book is really clever. i never thought about brisane this way (the way that it is) and it amazed me that these events are likely and could happen to anyone! i've read the book many times and today i decided to stop reading for a little bit and do something else. i live in red hill, very close to zig zag street and didn't think it was very special. so i'll keep this short and say that i love rick's long, meaningless pursuits...

Zigzag Street is a contemporary comedy of manners that is set in Brisbane, Australia. It explores the life of the male protagonist twenty-seven year old Richard Derrington. He has recently been dumped by Anna, his girlfriend from his university days. This throws him into a early mid-life crisis as he tries to reestablish his position in the world without her.

It is written in first person present tense as we experience Derrington's life since Anna's departure. As consistent with the conventions of this genre Zigzag Street takes a light and humourous approach to contemporary themes. Derrington somehow struggles through his work and social life using a mixture of alcohol and timtams (chocolate biscuits). His search for a partner to complete his life is reminiscent of works such as Bridget Jone's Diary.

There are some eccentic minor characters who interact with Derrington such as neighbour Kevin, his friend Jeff and boss Hillary. They help to establish Derrington as a decent person who through alcohol and bad fortune seems to end up in some embarrassing and hilarious situations.

Where Zigzag Street differs from other contemporary of manners is the location. Being set in Brisbane means that references to cricket, Timtams and The Triffids will be lost on many readers. However this is a minor problem. It is an engaging, genuinely funny book that would be a great holiday read, or for anyone that needs a laugh.

I read Zigzag Street during an extended stay in Brisbane and found it packed full of clever observations about everyday life, many of which made me laugh out loud, and a plot that tracks dear Richard/Rick/Ricky through a period of listlessness in life. Having cultivated a serious relationship through his twenties with a well-put-together woman with an anal retentive streak that has clearly led to him betraying his own character, he finds himself out in the cold -- trashed, in Aus -- and despondent yet also acutely sensitive. Who is he? His job, one senses, was taken to create a stable income for the family to be, and now is just a boring farce. His need to move back home , and then to his recently deceased grandmother's house, where he discovers details of her life in her correspondence and doddles over renovations while being henpecked by his mother, throws him into a true bipolarity as he craves teenage babes and a deeper understanding of self simultaneously. His friends have stable relationships, yet he is now single. Irony runs through this tale, something I guess is missed by some of the reviewers here, and the lack of movement of the plot is sort of the point of this study of the doldrums. I loved it.

I am not sure how anyone could trash a book in which the main character is lacerated by an orange cat named Greg, named after his Gran's doctor (who has flaming orange hair) during a flea bath, and then Richard gets Greg (the doctor) at the local clinic. Dr. Greg assumes it was a suicide attempt ... and so it goes with all the awkwardness one might expect in a society where people talk as openly as they do here. I can see how a person could give this book three stars if they lack a single ironic or sardonic bone in their body -- then it might be 'amusing but tedious' -- but only a fan of pulp fiction could deliver less. There is too much craft at work here for this book to be anything below three stars. As a bonus, there are lots of real Brisbane references that help give a feel for the city's western suburbs. A must for transplants.

It appears that readers of this book have fallen into one of two categories, they either gushingly loved it or absolutely despised it. This should not really be a surprise, as Earls dry humor seems to always evoke this sort of response. It is useful to compare Nick Earls' writing to a painting by Picasso--for some it is perfection on a canvas, while for others a picture cannot be discerned from the distortion. The biggest mistake one can make in embarking on Zigzag Street, or indeed any book by Earls, is to expect something in the order of Dickens or Austen...I'm afraid we are working in an entirely different realm of writing.

I found Zigzag Street to be written well, with the distinctive phraseology that is ridiculously contageous, to the point that the reader's thoughts begin to take the shape of the characters. In regard to the plot, the book moves rather slowly. I must make it clear that this is not a criticism. The story is a reflection of realistic human angst, and angst is arguably not an emotion that can be dealt with in a day. The slowness, and in fact insignificance of most events in the story are what makes it humorous and believable. Again, it comes back to the fact that you shouldn't be reading Earls if you need constant action or mystery to keep the pages turning.

The problem I had with this novel was not in it's general form, but rather with the ending. It felt too easy to be credible. After two hundred pages of torment over 'thrashing', all was resolved and a happy ending was reached. For me, Rachel did not live up to expectations. I anticipated a lot more from the woman who actively pursued a man that knocked her unconscious with a shoe in a shopping centre. After idolising her for so long, she became to real and faliable, and undermined the position of the neurotic, now not-so-one-of-a-kind Richard. This, more than anything else disappointed me.

Overall, the book was good. It was a characteristically Earls, but failed to maintain his high standard at the end.

I read Bachelor Kisses in full and was inspired by the favourable reviews of this novel. What a disappointment. I really did try and read the whole thing but found myself speed reading at about page 150 and finally decided to let it go. My main criticism is that nothing happens. Rick does have an affair and does dance naked in the office but the entire novel is deviod of any drama, insight or adventure. Each 'chapter' runs for 2-5 pages with very minor incidents eg: digging up a tree in the next door neighbors yard, getting drunk at a restaurant, playing tennis with his mates - does that sound very interesting? Its not. I really cant believe the acclaim this book has received. Bachelor Kisses was tolerable but I would be filing this for fans only. I have been reading a lot of Nick Hornby and Ben Elton who find a similar style but are a million miles from our Nick. Its a shame, as an australian, I would like to say this is a good book but frankly it is a very boring drive down insipid street.