- Jubilee offer: spend £10 or more on any product sold by Amazon.co.uk on or before June 6 and you can buy The Diamond Jubilee A Classical Celebration Album for just £2.50 Here's how (terms and conditions apply)
Heliopolis
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle .
Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Plus, get an extra £5 Gift Certificate when you trade in books worth £10 or more before June 30, 2012. Visit the Books Trade-In Store for more details. |
Special Offers and Product Promotions
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
`a witty, vivid and disquieting story' --Seven Magazine in Sunday Telegraph
"Ludo is a fascinatingly flawed narrator, and the language is alive with livid, unsettling imagery" --Sunday Telegraph Seven
`James Scudamore again achieves something magical'
--The Guardian
"A poignant and absorbing novel" --Bookmunch Blog
`slinkily assured, steamlined fantasy summons a teeming citadel, where the wealthy take to their helicopters "like fat flies". --Independent
'There's so much... brilliantly at work in James Scudamore's Heliopolis that it seems arbitrary to praise one element over another.'
-- The Irish Times
`Absolutely brilliant.' --Daily Express
"Ludo is a fascinatingly flawed narrator, and the language is alive with livid, unsettling imagery" --Sunday Telegraph Seven
`James Scudamore again achieves something magical'
--The Guardian
"A poignant and absorbing novel" --Bookmunch Blog
`slinkily assured, steamlined fantasy summons a teeming citadel, where the wealthy take to their helicopters "like fat flies". --Independent
'There's so much... brilliantly at work in James Scudamore's Heliopolis that it seems arbitrary to praise one element over another.'
-- The Irish Times
`Absolutely brilliant.' --Daily Express
Review
`(A) well-paced narrative.'
'He has the ability to take on the heaviest of themes with the lightest and most compelling of touches'. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
'He has the ability to take on the heaviest of themes with the lightest and most compelling of touches'. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
There is something about James Scudamore's `Heliopolis' that reminds me of the writing of the young Iain Banks. Given the importance of Banks in what might be described as `interesting mainstream' literature over the past quarter-century, that is significant praise.
The first thing that reminds me of Banks is the prose. It is clear and elegant, enabling the reader to place him or herself fully within a scene with the minimum of effort. Secondly, there is the setting. Sao Paulo as seen by Scudamore is a place on the edge of reality, a strange landscape of high towers and seething slums, of rich enclaves and threatening favelas, home to a society as strictly stratified as anything in The Bridge or Walking on Glass, in which the inhabitants of each stratum can scarcely comprehend the existence of those in any other - the rich seeing the poor merely as a threat, the poor seeing the rich merely as an irritation. This divide is elegantly expressed in the office where the hero works: a tower block fallen into disuse, converted into a shanty town and then, at the last minute, bought by an ad company, converted into their office, its graffiti and crumbling architecture perfectly preserved.
Next there is the protagonist and plot: a young man looks back over the blunders and blind alleys of his brief life, questing (knowingly or not) for the truth (or perhaps `the TRUTH') about himself and his family. The young man himself - Ludo, a boy taken from the slum of Heliopolis and raised amid the gated wealth of Angel Park - is a somehow charming combination of arrogance and naivety, capable of both deep insight and extraordinary insensitivity to others. Throw in a beating, kidnap, a mean-spirited trick involving human blood and a bra, near-incest and obscured sexual relationships and parental bonds and things could hardly be more Banksian.
And this is what worries me. When I was young, I loved no writer more than Iain Banks. I loved the headlong rush of his tales, their imagination, the power of his sentences. But now, 20-plus years on, I feel more and more that there is something Boy's Own-ish about his work, fun - certainly, thrilling - often, but substantial? - I'm not sure. And I feel the same about this book. Are the points it raises about poverty and wealth surprising? Are the characters - neatly drawn though they all are - the sort to last forever in the mind? The plot itself, for all its incident, is actually rather thin, and the incidents themselves often appear to have remarkably little consequence.
Perhaps the most substantial thing about the book is the food described within it. The food cooked by Ludo's mother, the food cooked by Ludo himself. It becomes - as it has done in many other novels - the vector for the expression of emotion, the way in which those - like Ludo, like his mother - too afraid to express their true feelings can give vent to their inner turmoil or joy. While the events of Heliopolis may leave relatively little by way of a lasting impression, the stews and sauces Scudamore describes will long leave a pleasant savour.
The first thing that reminds me of Banks is the prose. It is clear and elegant, enabling the reader to place him or herself fully within a scene with the minimum of effort. Secondly, there is the setting. Sao Paulo as seen by Scudamore is a place on the edge of reality, a strange landscape of high towers and seething slums, of rich enclaves and threatening favelas, home to a society as strictly stratified as anything in The Bridge or Walking on Glass, in which the inhabitants of each stratum can scarcely comprehend the existence of those in any other - the rich seeing the poor merely as a threat, the poor seeing the rich merely as an irritation. This divide is elegantly expressed in the office where the hero works: a tower block fallen into disuse, converted into a shanty town and then, at the last minute, bought by an ad company, converted into their office, its graffiti and crumbling architecture perfectly preserved.
Next there is the protagonist and plot: a young man looks back over the blunders and blind alleys of his brief life, questing (knowingly or not) for the truth (or perhaps `the TRUTH') about himself and his family. The young man himself - Ludo, a boy taken from the slum of Heliopolis and raised amid the gated wealth of Angel Park - is a somehow charming combination of arrogance and naivety, capable of both deep insight and extraordinary insensitivity to others. Throw in a beating, kidnap, a mean-spirited trick involving human blood and a bra, near-incest and obscured sexual relationships and parental bonds and things could hardly be more Banksian.
And this is what worries me. When I was young, I loved no writer more than Iain Banks. I loved the headlong rush of his tales, their imagination, the power of his sentences. But now, 20-plus years on, I feel more and more that there is something Boy's Own-ish about his work, fun - certainly, thrilling - often, but substantial? - I'm not sure. And I feel the same about this book. Are the points it raises about poverty and wealth surprising? Are the characters - neatly drawn though they all are - the sort to last forever in the mind? The plot itself, for all its incident, is actually rather thin, and the incidents themselves often appear to have remarkably little consequence.
Perhaps the most substantial thing about the book is the food described within it. The food cooked by Ludo's mother, the food cooked by Ludo himself. It becomes - as it has done in many other novels - the vector for the expression of emotion, the way in which those - like Ludo, like his mother - too afraid to express their true feelings can give vent to their inner turmoil or joy. While the events of Heliopolis may leave relatively little by way of a lasting impression, the stews and sauces Scudamore describes will long leave a pleasant savour.
20 of 25 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I had heard good things about James Scudamore's first novel, which someone told me was set in Ecuador and had been nominated for the Costa prize. Having spent several summers in Sao Paulo and travelled in Chile I was drawn to this book, hoping for an exciting holiday read that would remind me of my travels. I was not disappointed. This is a gripping and highly original novel with complex yet credible characters and an innovative plot. It evokes the squalor and neighbouring splendour of Sao Paulo memorably and accurately and I finished it in a couple of days. Sharp and satisfying fiction.
13 of 17 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Set in Ecuador The Amnesia Clinic was an impressive - and award-winning - debut about story telling. Buy it and read it. Then read Heliopolis. It too is set in South America and is an even more satisfying read. Dealing with super wealth and extreme poverty; nuture and nature; luck and choice; freedom and compromise... The author has created highly credible characters locked in often extreme situations, and manages to invoke empathy for all the major players. Get on with your third, Mr Scudamore. I have no objections if you want to return to South America - or visit Japan. But I'd love you to apply your brand of edginess to the UK today.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Easy to read but didn't really grab me
Having really enjoyed the Amnesia Clinic by the same author, I was keen to read this - it started well and had me interested. Read more
Published 12 months ago by Louise Mathema
"How sure [other] living things were of their place in the world,...
Raised in Brazil, Japan, and the UK, author James Scudamore sets this novel in Sao Paulo, a city he obviously knows well, revealing his youthful enthusiasm for life, his sharp eye... Read more
Published 18 months ago by Mary Whipple
Average at best
This could be an easy holiday read or one for a teen audience but it was not a brilliant, well written or particularly interesting book. Read more
Published on 15 April 2010 by LKAS
Evocative, satirical and beautifully written but not about Brazilians
An elegantly written morality tale set in Sao Paulo which is bitingly critical of the corrupt and self-satisfied Brazilian elite. Read more
Published on 7 Jan 2010 by Yellow Dog
A terrific read
I was given this out of the blue. I know nothing about the author and am not a traditional fiction reader. But it was great surprise. Read more
Published on 3 Nov 2009 by Don Van Vleit
Heliopolis... Interesting But Didn't Blow Me Away
If you have never been to Brazil, like me, then `Heliopolis' will definitely give you an insight. Though born in the UK Scudamore lived in Brazil (as well as Japan) during his... Read more
Published on 15 Aug 2009 by Simon Savidge Reads
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
