Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
5 stars for the text; 3 stars for the footnotes., November 27, 2000
By A Customer
I've read a lot of Chesterton in the last year or so, and I guess I have mixed feelings about his work in general and this book in particular. Chesterton provides extraordinarily beautiful word pictures. I feel like taking a trip to England just to see if the real English sky can match a fraction of the descriptions Chesterton gives it. (Smog abatement measures may have made a fair comparison impossible.) Chesterton's love of paradox can be fun, but it may be best to take it in small doses for optimal enjoyment. The Father Brown stories are short enough that the character development suffers in comparison with G.K.'s novels; on the other hand, these stories benefit from omission of some of the more bizarre flights of fancy found in his longer works.Now for the footnotes. I've been reading Martin Gardner for a long time. As a young boy, I spent many hours in the local library reading and enjoying his columns in archived copies of Scientific American. I must say that I find his footnotes in this book somewhat obtrusive. They seem to give away too much of the plot too early, and are probably, therefore, best for a second reading of the text. Gardner has deep philosophical differences with Chesterton, and although he does a fairly good job of restraining himself, there are occasions when he apparently can't resist giving us his two cents. I found that a little annoying. The footnotes in the Ignatius edition of _The Man Who Knew to Much_ are an example of what I would have preferred in this book.
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Ingenious, entertaining and spiritually insightful, October 20, 2000
"The Innocence of Father Brown" is the first book of G.K. Chesterton's ingenious, thoughtful and lyrically written mystery short stories featuring the unassuming little priest who solves crimes by imagining himself inside the mind and soul of the criminal and understanding his motives. The stories are full of paradox, spiritual insight, and "Chestertonian fantasy," or seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary.This particular edition is enhanced by Martin Gardner's extensive notes, which are both entertaining and illuminating. He points out that it's worthwhile to take your time in reading GKC's stories so you can savor their many arresting, beautifully worded sentences. And by reading too fast, you might also miss out on some very subtle puns (there's one in the story "The Secret Garden" that would have gone right past me had not Mr. Gardner pointed it out!). At the end, you'll find an index of annotations, plus a comprehensive Father Brown bibliography compiled by Chesterton expert John Peterson. If you enjoy this book, you'll probably also like "The Annotated Thursday," Gardner's edition of GKC's "The Man Who Was Thursday."
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18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Master of Paradoxes, well built crimes, October 20, 1999
A masterpiece. GK Chesterton here introduces his character, and does it with flying colours (first & second short stories are impeccable, and offer two elegant surprises to the reader). Chesterton was the master of paradoxes, and his style ranks him among the greatest British writers of all times. No doubt these are crime stories (or whodounits) but they are also literary masterpieces.
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