Crocodile Soup: Amazon.co.uk: Julia Darling: Books

Amazon.co.uk Review

Gert works in the Egyptian room at a museum. At 35 her life is in stasis. Her mother, whom she hasn't seen for years, writes her a letter asking for help and forgiveness. At work, she sees a young woman ballroom dancing alone in the empty cafeteria and it's love at first sight. How can she seduce this pale-faced beauty? She starts remembering her strange childhood, how her father left for a crocodile farm in Africa and her mother started drinking while Gert and her twin brother Frank floated about in their own psychic spheres. Her articulation of this lonely time releases her from alienation and the novel pushes forward to its moving resolution.

Darling's prose would make any poet jealous. The idiosyncrasies of Gert's world and imagination are drawn so precisely that we can almost smell the house in which she grew up, almost feel physically transported to the particular corners of her outsider perspective. It is a novel about mothers and lovers and the struggle to grow up, a novel of spirit and humour wrought out of the mini-tragedies of adolescence and family psycho-drama which provoke Gert's mid-thirties crisis and its exorcism. Julia Darling is a real writer. This is a debut that promises a great career. --Hannah Griffiths --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

Crocodile Soup is an inventive novel about Gert, a museum Egyptologist, who falls in love with Eva who works in the coffee shop. This narrative thread is intercut by the poignant story of Gert's childhood. Abandoned by her crocodile-farming father, she is relegated by her mother to the Far Nursery, a place haunted by the ghost of a Victorian poet. Both touching and funny, the novel is packed with beautiful and startling images. Review by JACQUI LOFTHOUSE Editor's note: Jacqui Lofthouse is author of The Temple of Hymen, a tale of sexual intrigue and political unease. (Kirkus UK)

A British writer, reminiscent of Jeanette Winterson, debuts with an edgy, richly imagined and beautifully crafted novel that charts the search for love of a thirtyish lesbian whose life is a long surreal nightmare interrupted by the kindness of a few men and women. Archaeologist Gert, who tells her story with the occasional interpolation of pleading letters from her estranged mother, has fallen in love with Eva, a young woman who serves coffee in the cafeteria of the museum where they both work. As Gert relates her nervous pursuit of Eva, she also recalls her troubled childhood, growing up with equally troubled Frank, her twin, in a house haunted by a long-dead famous woman poet, and parents who didnt get along. George, her father, a man of confused ambitions, soon fled to Africa to raise crocodiles for handbags, and her stylish mother Jean, who married for money, couldnt cope with the responsibilities of being a wife and mother. Gert sees ghosts, roams the house at night, and once thinks she's been swallowed by Frank. A perceptive psychologist helps, but her fears and bizarre experiences continue, exacerbated when her father dies and the family money runs out. As an adult, her pursuit of Eva goes nowherea weekend at the seaside is a disaster; then Gert is injured in a car crash, escapes from a sinister hospital, and learns she's lost her job. She continues her recollection of the past that includes Frank's suicide and her surprisingly enlightening encounter with lesbian activists. And while she ponders a response to her mother, Gert finds herself befriended by an old friend of Eva's. A darkly comic, sometimes strained, but always impressively inventive story about family and the unpredictability of love as a woman, against heavy odds, finally finds herself. (Kirkus Reviews) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

Quirky little novel 3 May 2004

By unlikely_heroine VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

I started to read this book several times, and struggled to get into it. It is written in an off-beat, quirky style that really lets us inside the head of the main character, and somehow this initially deterred me from reading "Crocodile Soup". However, one day I found myself picking this book up and looking at it again and after reading through the first 40 pages or so, I was hooked.

This is a clever and intriguing story about a character, her sexuality and her life, and is very well-written, as well as being entertaining. The lesbian aspect is realistic and convincing and Gert is a likeable and well-drawn character.

All-in-all, not bad - something different yet (ultimately!) readable, and thought-provoking in places.

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Wonderful 29 May 1999

By A Customer

This is a moving, funny and insightful novel, with brilliant writing on every page. Julia Darling has a voice unlike anyone else's. It is quite simply a great book.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

Possibly The Best Book of 1998-9 27 April 1999

Julia Darling manages to write in such brilliance you wouldn't want to let go of the book for a minute until you finish it. It contains what seems to be true pain, that it's descriptive manner, made me hurt myself. Buy it buy it buy it. I wish they'd teach me such books at university, instead of the boring canonised contemporary authors that could make you sleep.

Perfect

The story of a 35-year-old curator in a Northern museum hardly sounds gripping, but Julia Darling's creation is about as perfect as a book can get. Read more

Published on 16 Mar 2010 by Mr. S. J. Mcfee

A Taste Crocodile Soup

If I could sum this book up in two words it would be `wonderfully bizarre'. Julia Darling's novel `Crocodile Soup' is a very clever piece that leaves you wondering if the... Read more

Published on 30 Jan 2009 by Simon Savidge Reads

Murky family soup

The narrator's dead brother Frank says that Gert always inteprets everything in an extreme way. Perhaps the au pair did not drown, only let the lilo adrift. Read more

Published on 5 Mar 2006 by Emily - London

Tender and Funny

This book reminded me very much of Kate Atkinson's "Behind The Scenes At The Museum" - which was fine by me, because I loved that too. Read more

Published on 29 Mar 2001 by Mrs. K. A. Wheatley

Just brilliant - can't wait for her next book

What a delightful, disturbing, funny, poignant, mad story! And so well written: encapsulated in crystals of descriptive detail, an engaging personality and life far from ordinary,... Read more

Published on 7 Dec 1999

Beautifully Descriptive

Exceeded all expectations. Great, twisting turning story. Loved the transportation between past and present, relating 'now' to all that went before. Read more

Published on 12 Nov 1999

If you buy one book this year, this should be it.

Lovely, poignant coming of age story, set in a northern town, in the Egyptian department of a museum. Unusual poetic style, blending reality with magic. A delight!

Published on 13 Jan 1999

Crocodile Soup [Paperback]

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