The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold
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Product Description
Product Description
THIS SUMMER'S HOTTEST STORYTELLING COMPLETE AND UNABRIDGED CLASSIC LITERATURE & QUALITY PRODUCTION CD ONLY RELEASE (4 X CDs / 5 hours approx) SLIPCASE PACKAGING In this sharply comic, thoughtful and disquieting novel Gilbert Pinfold, the established author, undergoes a period of mental breakdown. He attempts to cure himself on a cruise to the tropics, yet as he comes face to face with his imagination, the author finds himself on the brink of insanity. Understood by many scholars to be drawn on personal experience and what Waugh himself described as 'my late lunacy' - Richard Jacobs writes: 'The most interesting of Waugh's later novels...A work of dazzling craftiness, impossibly funny, and affecting in the least expected of ways.'
From the Publisher
Also by Ronald Harwood, Amber Lane Press have published his biography Sir Donald Wolfit - His Life and Work in the Unfashionable Theatre, and the plays After the Lions, Another Time, The Deliberate Death of a Polish Priest, The Dresser, Interpreters, J.J. Farr, Tramway Road, and an English version of Chekhov's Ivanov.
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First Sentence
It may happen in the next hundred years that the English novelists of the present day will come to be valued as we now value the artists and craftsmen of the late eighteenth century. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
It may happen in the next hundred years that the English novelists of the present day will come to be valued as we now value the artists and craftsmen of the late eighteenth century. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The beautiful grandeur of Brideshead was in the past, but if you are happy to read a somewhat disturbing and personal account of a man aging and suffering acute personal anguish this is an excellent novel. It has a certain intensity, like Thomas Bernhard, which for some readers is good. Others not. I dip into this book more than I do Waugh's earlier novels and I would recommend it.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD|Amazon Verified Purchase
The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold is an English version of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Taking a holiday cruise, Pinfold consumes an unwise combination of alcohol and drugs and enters a private world of paranoid hallucination. The book is based (according to Wikipedia) on a voyage to Ceylon made by the author in 1954. He called it 'my barmy book'.
Waugh is a five star stylist, and there are some laughs, but ultimately I found Pinfold's chemical dystopia rather claustrophobic. There is also perhaps something lacking in terms of narrative tension: the hero goes on a cruise, hallucinates, and returns home. At the end, there is an 'oh darling, it's all been a terrible dream' sequence with his wife. As a story, it doesn't fly in the way that, for example, Brideshead does.
No complaints about Michael Cochrane's reading in this audio version, which is done with a good deal of elan.
Waugh is a five star stylist, and there are some laughs, but ultimately I found Pinfold's chemical dystopia rather claustrophobic. There is also perhaps something lacking in terms of narrative tension: the hero goes on a cruise, hallucinates, and returns home. At the end, there is an 'oh darling, it's all been a terrible dream' sequence with his wife. As a story, it doesn't fly in the way that, for example, Brideshead does.
No complaints about Michael Cochrane's reading in this audio version, which is done with a good deal of elan.
6 of 25 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I've been reading for 50 years what a great novel this is, so I thought I'd better get to it. It relates an (autobiographical, they say) description of a man suffering from extreme paranoia as the result of overindulgence in pharmaceutical remedies and alcohol. Think "delirium tremens". He is stuck on a sea voyage, and a group of imagined devils is persecuting him.
But the details of his illness go on for what seem endless pages, episode after episode, at least 30% more than necessary - and this is a short novel. I kept reading out of curiosity about what would happen in the end. Nothing. He goes back home.
His publisher should have trimmed it, presented it as a long short story in the form of a novelette. But Waugh, an excellent writer when in good form, was a nasty piece of work, and not to be toyed with.
But the details of his illness go on for what seem endless pages, episode after episode, at least 30% more than necessary - and this is a short novel. I kept reading out of curiosity about what would happen in the end. Nothing. He goes back home.
His publisher should have trimmed it, presented it as a long short story in the form of a novelette. But Waugh, an excellent writer when in good form, was a nasty piece of work, and not to be toyed with.
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