Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Perfect Book, 11 Dec 2006
I've just finished this novel, Murr's third published work which was longlisted for The Booker this year, and am amazed that I have heard relatively little about this author. This is definitely one of my top twenty books of the year and to my mind as good as the best of the 2006 shortlist.
The story follows the life of Raj, a boy born in the early 1940s, who has an Indian mother and an English father. Raj is deposited by his emotionally useless father first with his paternal uncle's family in England, and later entrusted to the care of the girlfriend of another paternal uncle in a small town in the USA. Much of the novel is taken up with Raj's childhood and friendships, and this part is an engrossing and delightful account of growing up in that era, written with perception and sensitivity. It sweeps the reader up into the achingly real milestones of life and holds them transfixed through the gamut of passions, tragedies and achievements that define any childhood. Raj has to deal with the petty prejudices of some of the small minded residents around him, but the story never becomes bogged down by the issue of race, and Raj is as unchippy and charming a child as you could hope to read about.
The evocation of small town life in the 1950s is saved from becoming cloyingly sweet by the undercurrents of sinister occurrences that are present in tandem with the easy community and unlocked doors in any parochial setting. A group of redneck residents swagger with macho bravado in the background. An unexplained murder years before Raj's arrival remains unsolved. Ostensibly chirpy nuclear families have their own troubles and secrets. As with life, the strong survive while some of the vulnerable crack.
Murr is a versatile writer; he can bring characters to life with a few choice words and can also conjure up the paradoxical feelings that can coexist in people: his characters are complex and sometimes inexplicable, the echos of their past experiences partly explaining their idiosyncrasies, just as in real life.
I give this book an unequivocal and would say that anyone who loved Black Swan Green by David Mitchell or The Little Friend by Donna Tartt will be blown away by The Perfect Man.
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14 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fantastic read, 22 April 2006
This wasn't at all what I expected, but is a wonderful novel--great story and characters. In particular I loved Ruth. A lot of the most beautiful writing is in her perspective--as well as the strangest, in her shocking journals.
I bought the book because of the TLS review, and the review was right--it really is a whole world in this small town, and much more than the coming-of-age of those four children. I also think it's about how difficult it is particularly for men to be good and loyal.
Great characters, an engrossing plot. This is the best novel I've read in a long, long while.
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9 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Perfect Book, 25 April 2006
This is Murr's best book yet: an array of characters set in a realistic, yet, sometimes, surreal setting. The plot is subtle, but has enough tension to make you read on. And , it is well worth it - the final denouement helps it all make sense. While the number of characters makes it occasionally challenging to follow, they are all well-drawn, creating empathy, if not sympathy, for many of them.
Murr's prose is poetic while his literary and cultural allusions are cleverly weaved into the text.
Although this book retains some of the darkness of Murr's earlier novels, it is somehow softer and more vibrant. A great read - get it!
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