or
Sign in to turn on 1-Click ordering.
 
 
More Buying Choices
32 used & new from £0.19
Have one to sell? Sell yours here
 
   
The Aerodynamics of Pork
 
See larger image 
Share your own customer images
Publisher: learn how customers can search inside this book.

The Aerodynamics of Pork (Paperback)

by Patrick Gale (Author)
3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
RRP: £7.99
Price: £4.80 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
You Save: £3.19 (40%)
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
In stock.
Dispatched from and sold by Amazon.co.uk. Gift-wrap available.

Want guaranteed delivery by Friday, November 13? Choose Express delivery at checkout. See Details
18 new from £2.57 14 used from £0.19
Other Editions: RRP: Our Price: Other Offers:
Hardcover 6 used & new from £4.68
Paperback (Reprint) 4 used & new from £4.26

Frequently Bought Together

The Aerodynamics of Pork + The Cat Sanctuary + Friendly Fire
Price For All Three: £16.74

Show availability and delivery details

  • This item: The Aerodynamics of Pork by Patrick Gale

    In stock.
    Dispatched from and sold by Amazon.co.uk.
    This item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions

  • The Cat Sanctuary by Patrick Gale

    In stock.
    Dispatched from and sold by Amazon.co.uk.
    This item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions

  • Friendly Fire by Patrick Gale

    In stock.
    Dispatched from and sold by Amazon.co.uk.
    This item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

Kansas in August

Kansas in August

by Patrick Gale
3.7 out of 5 stars (3)  £4.45
The Facts of Life

The Facts of Life

by Patrick Gale
3.5 out of 5 stars (13)  £7.09
Tree Surgery for Beginners

Tree Surgery for Beginners

by Patrick Gale
3.2 out of 5 stars (9)  £5.97
The Cat Sanctuary

The Cat Sanctuary

by Patrick Gale
3.6 out of 5 stars (9)  £5.97
Dangerous Pleasures: A Decade of Stories

Dangerous Pleasures: A Decade of Stories

by Patrick Gale
4.5 out of 5 stars (2)  £4.99
› Explore similar items

Product details

  • Paperback: 208 pages
  • Publisher: Flamingo; New edition edition (4 Feb 2002)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0586091467
  • ISBN-13: 978-0586091463
  • Product Dimensions: 19.2 x 13 x 2 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 87,210 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category:

    #10 in  Books > Fiction > Authors, A-Z > G > Gale, Patrick

    •  Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

Product Description

Review

'It is packed with arch dialogue, affectionate caricatures and the feigned good humour more commonly found in memoirs written by chauffeurs of the famous.' Observer 'A sad, funny and deeply searching novel. Plotting, characterisation and dialogue quicken the reader's pace, just as the delicacy of the unfolding love stories quickens the heart.' Publishers Weekly 'A real craftsman, a master storyteller.' Independent on Sunday 'Gale's concoction is irresistible: modern relationships with period charm. I couldn't have liked it more.' Armistead Maupin


Product Description

In Cornwall, the Peakes are conducting their annual music festival as their two "children" - Seth a teenage violin prodigy and Venetia, a highly strung scholar - embark upon their first love. Seth gets involved with a sculptor named Roly while Venetia has to disguise a mysterious pregnancy.
See all Product Description

Tags Customers Associate with This Product

 (What's this?)
Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
 
(1)
See all 2 tags...

Your tags: Add your first tag
 
See most popular tags

What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

The Aerodynamics of Pork
62% buy the item featured on this page:
The Aerodynamics of Pork 3.7 out of 5 stars (6)
£4.80
Rough Music
12% buy
Rough Music 4.2 out of 5 stars (46)
£4.76
Friendly Fire
9% buy
Friendly Fire 4.1 out of 5 stars (9)
£5.97
A Sweet Obscurity
9% buy
A Sweet Obscurity 4.0 out of 5 stars (10)
£6.19
Explore similar items
 

Customer Reviews

6 Reviews
5 star:
 (1)
4 star:
 (2)
3 star:
 (3)
2 star:    (0)
1 star:    (0)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
3.7 out of 5 stars (6 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
Share your thoughts with other customers:
Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
38 of 39 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Happy, frivolous, peculiar, surprising - a must!, 2 May 2001
By A Customer
I'm really shocked to find there's no review of this book on Amazon. I read it when it first came out - and have read it many times since.

It's a delicious collision of the English middle class, magical realism, and within the many threads of the plot, delicious romance - both gay and straight.

Most novels - and if you browse through Amazon's gay & lesbian list, you begin to think all novels - begin by creating a coherent and believable world which is then torn apart and destroyed. In the Aerodynamics of Pork, the world starts incoherently, and as the story progresses, through some wonderfully impossible and magical twists and turns, threads draw together, and everyone's problems evaporate. It's an incredibly uplifting experience, very funny, and very gripping.

All the way through the book, Patrick Gale makes the most uncannily brilliant use of music. Central to the plot, as it roughly centres around a music festival in Cornwall, if you know the pieces he uses, you'll find them ringing round your head as you read. Quite amazing.

But more than anything, you come away feeling that pigs really might fly, that your own life could take a magical turn at any point, and you'll come out ten times more optimistic than when you started.

Read it!

Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)



 
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Don't be put off by the title!, 24 Oct 2005
By jfp2006 (PARIS/France) - See all my reviews
It must be admitted that the title of Patrick Gale's first novel, published in 1986, is weird, perhaps even offputtingly so. But the clue to its intepretation would appear to lie in the proverbial "pigs might fly". Which generally implies that what is theoretically possible is, in a pragmatic world, extremely unlikely. And that we should all be getting on with "real life" instead of speculating and dreaming.
But Patrick Gale would appear to be suggesting that such idle musing is precisely what makes life worth living...
This short first novel consists of two intertwined narratives. One, set in Cornwall, revolves around the fifteen-year-old musical prodigy Seth and his elder sister Venetia, a Cambridge undergraduate, the precociously gifted children of bohemian Evelyn; the other, set in London, centres on Mo, a heartily bluff gay policewoman. As such, "The Aerodynamics of Pork" lays the groundwork for Patrick Gale's subsequent work. The narratives are tentatively linked from the beginning, when Mo witnesses Evelyn as the unwitting victim of a pickpocket, through various common features (such as kippers...) to the imminent interaction of the characters in the final section, corresponding to the birthdays of both Seth and Mo.
The novel is a clever study in subversion and subterfuge. The echoes are discreet and varied, but the most obvious parallel is that between the incipient gay relationships between Mo and Hope in London and between Seth and Roly on the Cornish coast. These are set against the background of other problematic relationships, most notably that between Evelyn and her mysteriously absent husband, Huw.
If this is an "apprentice work", then it is quite clearly a very good one for a writer then only in his mid-twenties. It looks forward to the emotional complexities of Patrick Gale's later fiction, most notably in the wonderful "Rough Music", in which Roly reappears.
Patrick Gale is a strangely underrated writer, and one who will hopefully come to greater prominence in the years ahead.
Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)



 
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Not up to Patrick's current standard but worth a read, 7 Sep 2009
I was introduced to Patrick first by Rough Music and then by Notes from an Exhibition - both of which I loved. I therefore decided to explore more of his back catalogue.

This is Patrick's 1986 debut and it is interesting to see how his writing style has developed over time. The story concerns the Peake family who travel to Cornwall to an annual classical music festival and a lesbian police officer who investigates a series of mysterious burglaries in London that target astrologists.

There is the usual exploration of relationships that you expect from a Patrick novel but the characters lack depth and it is difficult to warm to any of them. I found Mo, the police officer, particularly challenging. I wanted to care about Seth and his relationship with artist Roly but ultimately I wasn't really bothered; Roly was unnecessarily objectionable when he first meets Seth for no apparent reason and Seth seemed to be going through an adolescent phase rather than looking for any sort of meaningful relationship. None of it was as real as I've come to expect from Patrick.

That said, it was an enjoyable read as the plot developed and you came to realize how the two apparently disparate stories related to one another. Anyone expecting masterpieces of characterization and depth of relationships as experienced in Patrick's more recent novels will be disappointed.
Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)


Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
 
 
 
Most Recent Customer Reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars Good debut novel
I read this some time after reading the excellent 'Rough Music' and was intrigued to find that it had links to that book. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Iain C. Davidson

3.0 out of 5 stars Human, elitiste and exciting!
A posh drama for everyone? Too posh for most! Again Gale has created an engaging story but yet again Gale has created characters we don't like enough to care about and too posh to... Read more
Published 17 months ago by Philip Thompson

4.0 out of 5 stars Two artists find love in Cornwall
Two interrelated stories run in parallel, one set in London and quickly moving to Cornwall, the other remaining in London. Read more
Published on 15 Dec 2006 by Benjamin

Only search this product's reviews


Customer Discussions

This product's forum
Discussion Replies Latest Post
No discussions yet

Ask questions, Share opinions, Gain insight
Start a new discussion
Topic:
First post:
Prompts for sign-in
 


Active discussions in related forums
   
Related forums

Listmania!

Create a Listmania! list

Look for similar items by category

Look for similar items by subject










i.e., each product must be in subject 1 AND subject 2 AND ...

Feedback

Ad

Your Recent History

 (What's this?)

After viewing product detail pages or search results, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in.