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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
This complex and intriguing novel opens with an Englishman learning that his only son has committed suicide in Italy. His first emotion is not grief, but rather relief as he realises that he will at last be able to leave his wife to whom he has been bonded by their son's schizophrenia. As they travel back to Italy the narrator describes how his flamboyant wife, who both appals and delights him, lapses into "miserable and uncooperative mutism" as punishment.
Tim Park's protagonist is a fifty-something, disillusioned political journalist who is trying to write a book on Italian national character in order to predict the behaviour of the inhabitants of his adopted country, especially his wife's. "You cannot marry a woman in one language and think in another", he muses, convinced that what he once found vehement and exciting about her, and indeed Italy, has been revealed as shallow and distasteful. If he can discover how national character determines choice, then he will be able to act differently and leave. Mistaken for German in Italy and American in England, the Englishman articulates beautifully the dilemma of living in another tongue, seeing it as a "faulty contact" which inhibits true understanding. "The language is national destiny", he decides and so he and his wife are destined to confound one another.
Destiny is a highly astute study of the inappropriate behaviour that accompanies grief as well as a blistering account of a marriage of peers, of the failings of commitment and monogamy and of the endless loss and retrieval of love. The fractured, claustrophobic narration perfectly suits the narrator's ugly confusion and sublime lucidity as he evades then shoulders responsibility for his mistakes. An intelligent, enthralling novel about the meaning of identity and our maddeningly conflicted motivations. -- Cherry Smyth --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Book Description
The fantastic new novel from the author of the Booker Prize shortlisted Europa.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Although the narrator, a man viewing the wreckage of his marriage and the suicide of his son, is not especially sympathetic - few characters are - and little effort is made by the author to make his obsessions and concerns chime with those the reader may be supposed to share, the writing - very short on relief and long on paragraphs - seems so close to the act of thinking, or the way that thoughts present themselves unbidden to us, that I found the experience of reading this enormously pleasurable. Entering so fully into the mind of someone like the narrator, whose helpless pleasure lies more in pinning down past events with words inside his head than in ever effectively acting upon the present, makes for a very absorbing, intense sort of reading. It may perhaps require a reader with similar tendencies towards indecision and endless internal monologue to fully warm to the book - but for those who delight in this sort of thing, this is definately the sort of book they will delight in.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
How this virtuoso performance by Tim Parks could have been passed up by the Booker judges is beyond this reader. Parks writes what is arguably the finest novel of this year. Chris Burton, the protagonist, represents a character study that is one of the finest in contemporary fiction. A reader has to go back to the 1950s and Michel Butor's "A Change of Heart" to find anything similarly accomplished.
Highly recommended!
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This is definitely not a book for sunny beach reading. It demands a block of time to get used to its rhythms and themes. Not to be read on a subway or commuter bus either, since in order to get the full benefit, the reader needs to concentrate. It is defnitely worth any effort expended.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Destiny
Ok so the sentences are long, but be brave, take the plunge,please don't miss out on this man's genius. His understanding of feelings and emotions is staggering. Read more
Published on 4 Feb 2004
Quite impressive
While reading this I was certain that I had stumbled across the most original living writer in English literature. Read more
Published on 16 Jun 2003 by Adrian Lever
I liked this book
This book is not as depressing as it sounds, and is actually quite refreshing in places. Usual themes of love, family etc, but seen through an ongoing process of grieving dealt... Read more
Published on 27 Nov 2000
not easy
This book is not an easy read. The sentences themselves can be very very long. After a while I got used to the strange and the stream-of-consciousness writing style, and got more... Read more
Published on 14 Nov 2000
Park's best novel yet
Beautifully written and thought-provoking, Parks interweaves issues of identity, culture, and personal responsibility. Dark, but not unredeeming.
Published on 13 Sep 2000
Heavy-going
I found this rather heavy-going and rather obscure. (My partner called it "pretentious".) It's an example of a huge mismatch between the synopsis and the extracts of... Read more
Published on 13 Sep 2000
damn brilliant
yes extremely annoying to read - but stick with it and absorb this mans grief and emotions. He writes 3 subjects in one sentence and you dont know if you are coming or going- but... Read more
Published on 6 Mar 2000
should i try again ?
i found this novel to be both amusing and irritating. i couldnt force myself to finish it, , should i try again. Read more
Published on 24 Jan 2000
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