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Product Description
Review
‘A triumph of imagination, interlaced with considerable wit’
New Statesman
‘Innovative and engrossing’
Independent
‘Astonishingly vibrant portraits of each person on the train… A disturbing, melancholy work, but also lyrical and totally engaging’
Los Angeles Times
Product Description
A cult classic in the making. 253 is the novel about everyone you’ve ever met and wished you hadn’t or wished you could again.
252 passengers and one driver on the London Underground. They all have their own personal histories, their own thoughts about themselves and their travelling neighbours. And they all have one page devoted to them.
Some characters are tragic, some are inspiring, some are mad/proud/foolish/infuriating (delete where appropriate) and some are just like the person near you right now. You’ll meet Estelle who’s fallen madly in love with Saddam Hussein; James, who anaesthetises sick gorillas for a living; and Who?, a character that doesn’t know where, or what, on earth he is. It’s a seven-and-a-half minute journey between Embankment and the Elephant & Castle. It’s the journey of 253 lifetimes…
This is the full text of the celebrated interactive novel that startled the Web when it first went on line. Only it can’t crash, the downloading time is quicker and you can read it on the Tube, the train, the bus,, the plane, by foot – even by car, so long as you’re not driving.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
15 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Anyone who has travelled on the public transport will have played the game: look at the person sitting opposite and try to guess who they are, what they do or what they are thinking. Geoff Ryman obviously played this game a lot. Only he has transformed this simple idea into an acclaimed new novel, leaving him exempt from the nagging question on all our minds as we read 253: 'why didn't I think of doing that?' Geoff Ryman shares with us a colourful array of thoroughly original characters. Two-hundred and fifty-three of them to be precise. And he is precise, every time. "A Bakerloo line tube train with no one standing and no empty seats carries 252 passengers. The driver makes 253." So he devotes exactly 253 words to each of the characters who've embarked on this unexceptional journey. We are offered a glimpse of each passenger's appearance, an essential insight into their background, followed by the exact thoughts they are having at the time we meet them.
Justin is a freelance journalist posing as a homeless person. Estelle wears an X-files T-shirt and is obsessed with Sadam Hussein. Harry Wade resembles a swollen cherub and finds nothing has made sense since childhood. And just who is that curious old lady who tries to get everyone to dance...?
Ryman creates characters more captivating and involving in 253 words than some authors manage in a novel of as many pages. Exposing all ages, nationalities and personalities, the tube train is a microcosm, a snapshot of modern London.
Read 253 on the tube and find yourself staring at the passenger opposite as a couple of hundred words begin to form in your mind...
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book is the most unusual I have EVER read. Absolutely NOTHING happens. The guy has the audacity to just write a book about 253 folk sitting on the tube doing nothing, and carries it off superbly. Either he has loads of friends OR a superb imagination. All the characters are so realistic, and after having read this, you'll never look at a bus full of people the same again. The most original piece of work in a long time, not a lot of depth but totally gripping and thought provoking.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
In London you cannot really avoid the underground, ok you can but you know what I mean, and getting on the underground means that you surround yourself with other people daily. People you know nothing about and yet don't you occasionally find yourself wondering who they are and what their stories might be. Well `253' is a novel, though in some ways it reads like a succession of very short stories that can interweave, that looks at one particular train during seven and a half minutes between Embankment and Elephant and Castle on one particular day and a very fateful journey.
As the blurb itself states "a Bakerloo line train with no one standing and no empty seats carries 252 passengers. The driver makes 253" and this is the story of each one of those people as they go through what is a daily routine to them and we step into their thoughts (all done in just 253 words per character) and learn a lot about them and why they have ended up in that particular train surrounded by those particular people. What Ryman does which only makes the book all the more clever is that on the train are people who know each other and so as the book goes you get additional twists to certain tales you have already seen.
I did think writing 253 characters in the same amount of words would make the book somewhat repetitive and the fact each character is summed up in the sections "outward appearance", "inside information" and "what they are doing or thinking" would make it all rather formulaic and possibly a little bit dull. It wasn't at all. Each character is very individual from Estelle who is in love with Saddam Hussein, Justin a journalist posing as a homeless man, Jason who has just discovered he is made for older women, James who anaesthetises ill Gorilla's for a living... I could go on and on there are so many marvellous characters and tales to choose from.
I do think part of the success with the book for me was that I didn't read it as a novel. I would read about a carriage full of characters or just one or two between other things because if you read it in one go or maybe it was the only book you read for a week I think the charm could wear off and that would be a real shame as this book is brilliant. In fact what proves its brilliant further is that as someone who doesn't like footnotes or when an author steps into the work to give you extra titbits, I was fascinated by Ryman's.
As the blurb itself states "a Bakerloo line train with no one standing and no empty seats carries 252 passengers. The driver makes 253" and this is the story of each one of those people as they go through what is a daily routine to them and we step into their thoughts (all done in just 253 words per character) and learn a lot about them and why they have ended up in that particular train surrounded by those particular people. What Ryman does which only makes the book all the more clever is that on the train are people who know each other and so as the book goes you get additional twists to certain tales you have already seen.
I did think writing 253 characters in the same amount of words would make the book somewhat repetitive and the fact each character is summed up in the sections "outward appearance", "inside information" and "what they are doing or thinking" would make it all rather formulaic and possibly a little bit dull. It wasn't at all. Each character is very individual from Estelle who is in love with Saddam Hussein, Justin a journalist posing as a homeless man, Jason who has just discovered he is made for older women, James who anaesthetises ill Gorilla's for a living... I could go on and on there are so many marvellous characters and tales to choose from.
I do think part of the success with the book for me was that I didn't read it as a novel. I would read about a carriage full of characters or just one or two between other things because if you read it in one go or maybe it was the only book you read for a week I think the charm could wear off and that would be a real shame as this book is brilliant. In fact what proves its brilliant further is that as someone who doesn't like footnotes or when an author steps into the work to give you extra titbits, I was fascinated by Ryman's.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
a read with a difference
This book was recommended for a creative writing course I am studying at present.Great character descriptions.I like the fact that it is an easy book to read. Read more
Published 3 months ago by anne bronte
Fresh air in contemporary fiction
I love this book. I love the ingenuity of it, I love the contemporariness of it, I love the symetry of it and I love that you get 253 stories in one. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Leone
Interesting Idea But Flawed
I enjoy the idea behind this novel, and it is a refreshing format, but there are some fundamental problems. Read more
Published 7 months ago by Mrs Mitten
Thought-provoking underground read
This isn't a plot-driven page-turner but a fictional portrait of 252 people and one non-human on a tube train, each subject getting one page. Read more
Published 8 months ago by Hope
A Cult Classic?
A possible cult classic in the making - only time will tell on that though. I was given this as a birthday present from a friend and was dubious at first as there really isn't a... Read more
Published 8 months ago by Angela
Too many tube cars
This is an interesting idea spread far too thinly. Each page takes up a different character on a tube car, what they're wearing, what they're thinking etc. Read more
Published 20 months ago by Archy
Boredom
I really, really wanted to like this book. The concept had such potential: a full Bakerloo line train with 253 passengers, and 253 words dedicated to each passenger, providing a... Read more
Published 24 months ago by adkmtngirl
Maybe too many characters
The book started of good and I was able to keep up, but by the last couple of cars it got a little too messy and I was forgetting who was connected to who. Read more
Published on 19 May 2009 by G. Davies
A masterpiece of the Internet age
This is the story of a lifetime. The story of 253 lifetimes to be exact. It is the story of 253 twelve minute train journeys. Read more
Published on 14 Mar 2007 by Sam J. Ruddock
Exciting and gripping read
I loved this book. It is funny, witty, and insightful. Although you know that the train crash is coming, the surprise and the impact it has on the characters that you have come to... Read more
Published on 5 April 2006 by jonc@lacunae.org
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