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'Sharply written ... One of his great strengths, in a genre that usually takes physical description as read, is an ability to evoke a landscape' Guardian 'The ideas behind Thomson's novel buzz with originality, sparking contemporary connections and recalling Brave New World and even Gulliver's Travels ... Divided Kingdom thrums with ideas and is a moving and, at times, gripping book' Observer 'This book is brave in a Brave New World kind of way, and should earn Thomson tons of readers' Esquire 'A hyper-real hallucination lit by sumptuous prose and fuelled by a prodigal gift for atmosphere and suspense' Boyd Tonkin, Independent
Sunday Telegraph
‘Thomson creates a portrait of Britain that is seductively detailed, disorienting, sometimes funny and often horrifying’
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Superb stuff,
By Nicky Stitch (KENT, ENGLAND) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Divided Kingdom (Paperback)
A boy is taken from his parents in the middle of the night when the government decides to re-arrange the country according to personality type. Borders and guards are put in place creating four quarters of the country, each quarter very different from the next, as are its inhabitants. Or are they so different? How does society cope with these imposed classifications and restrictions? Do people become what they are told they are?
When an opportunity arises for this boy, now a man, to escape the life he has been forced to live for 27 years he seizes it and we follow his amazing journey as he crosses borders, both geographically and within. I don't think I will ever forget some of the places and imagery in this novel. The White People, The Museum of Tears, The Bathyshpere night club, are just some of the gems from the authors brilliant imagination. If you want a book that will immerse you and take you elsewhere, while subtly leading you to think more about the world we live in then this book will be right up your quarter!
4.0 out of 5 stars
Dystopia/Utopia?,
By
This review is from: Divided Kingdom (Paperback)
From the first paragraph of Divided Kingdom you know you are in capable, skilled hands. This feeling stays with you until the last page. Having not read any of Rupert Thomson's work - this certainly won't be the last I purchase - I didn't know what to expect other than the clear dystopian thrust. All I knew was that I was excited and apprehensive. And you know what? I still am.
This is a brilliantly conceived novel that conjures up the memories of Huxley, Orwell and Kafka. And like Huxley's Brave New World, you cannot decide whether or not the author is painting a utopian or dystopian picture. Of course, nobody would want to live in the Green or Yellow Quarter but the Blue and Red Quarter would certainly be an improvement on many UK cities. Buy it, read it, and continue to ask yourself what quarter you would belong to.
3.0 out of 5 stars
Powerful dystopia,
By
This review is from: Divided Kingdom (Paperback)
Thought provoking although a bit too much in the spirit of a boy's own adventure, the protagonist Thomas Parry never seems to really get hurt through all the danger and troubles he comes across in this dystopia come picaresque.
Parry is taken from his home in the dead of night at the age of 8 and taken to a school where he is indoctrinated into the new world order. The UK has been redesignated as four separate kingdoms according to the humour of the individual. The Red Quarter is for sanguine people, optimistic, outgoing and easily distracted, the Yellow for cholerics, quick to anger, passionate, the Green for melancholics, the thoughful depressives, and the Blue for phlegmatics, flexible easy going natured. Parry becomes a true servant of the regime, entering the civil service and being sent to a diplomatic in the blue quarter, but then he goes to a strange nightclub which brings back memories of his past and goes on the run, travelling through the various Quarters and even becoming a White person, a person who fits in no Quarter but travels between them, before finally returning to the Red Quarter a very changed man. Thomson shows through Parry's experiences that dividing humours negates the countering effects one humour can have on another, and does not allow for the ultimate aim of the theory of humours, that is, that we should recognise which humour is most dominant in ourselves, that is true, but that a truly balanced or humoured individual is one in which the humours are balanced, and therefore tearing apart the fabric of society cannot be right.
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