There is something to be said for inhabiting the gloomy corners of yourself; there are surprises to be gleaned there, jewels of the soul that only those willing to mine underground will ever find. (p.153) This is an extraordinarily imaginative, powerful and original novel – quite a stunning bravura performance and mind-blowing conception. Its dense […]
All posts found when searching for Howard Jacobson
The Very Model of a Man by Howard Jacobson (1992)
Posted by Simon on August 19, 2016
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2016/08/19/the-very-model-of-a-man-howard-jacobson/
Redback by Howard Jacobson (1986)
I walked back the way I’d come at a furious pace. I needed to exercise off my exasperation. No good comes of talking to old people, especially in Australia where they strike themselves as characters. Their opinions invariably lack truth and wisdom. And when they have finished listening you are denied all the usual methods […]
Posted by Simon on August 17, 2016
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2016/08/17/redback-howard-jacobson/
Coming From Behind by Howard Jacobson (1982)
[Sefton] had a highly developed respect for authority and even the slightest telling off made him feel queasy. He didn’t at all like this submissive quality in himself and he tried to disguise it by barking at menials whenever he could and by bullying and frightening students, but in the still reaches of the night, […]
Posted by Simon on August 12, 2016
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2016/08/12/coming-from-behind-howard-jacobson/
His Lordship by Leslie Thomas (1970)
Sometimes, with all his uncertainties and outrageous misjudgements, he felt like a man destined to stagger through life weighed down by half a dozen heavy, free-swinging slop buckets. (His Lordship, page 23) ‘It just seems to me that half the jokes in the world are on me. I’m always the one with his trousers down.’ […]
Posted by Simon on June 10, 2024
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2024/06/10/his-lordship-leslie-thomas/
Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee (1999)
Disgrace won the 1999 Booker Prize and four years later Coetzee won the Nobel Prize in Literature, partly on the basis of it. So we are among the heavy hitters, the big players, the prize winners. Unfortunately, although it rises to an awesome level by the end, for most of its length I really didn’t […]
Posted by Simon on January 12, 2024
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2024/01/12/disgrace-j-m-coetzee/
Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh (1928)
‘Besides, you see, I’m a public school man. That means everything. There’s a blessed equity in the English social system,’ said Grimes, ‘that ensures the public school man against starvation. One goes through four or five years of perfect hell at an age when life is bound to be hell anyway, and after that the […]
Posted by Simon on December 3, 2021
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2021/12/03/decline-and-fall-evelyn-waugh/
A Man of Parts by David Lodge (2011)
At forty-five she [Violet Hunt] had already lost the beauty for which she had been admired in her younger years, and painted heavily to disguise a poor complexion, but her body was still slim and limber, able to adopt any attitude in bed he suggested, and to demonstrate a few that were new to him. […]
Posted by Simon on September 13, 2016
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2016/09/13/a-man-of-parts-david-lodge/
Books & Boots 