Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
For anyone who has ever wondered 'what if' in a relationship, 15 Oct 2007
Before you spend time reading my review instead of the wonderful "The Post-Birthday world", let me tell you at the start - it's fantastic and you must rush out straight away to buy a copy. Then clear your diary till you've finished it!
The writing is accomplished, the story is compelling, but it is all the little asides, the philosophising about life that for me really takes Shriver's work out of the realm of the ordinary. Again and again while reading this book I was astounded at how she seemed to have written down - very eloquently - thoughts that have been jumbling about in my head for years. Some passages were so personally relevant to me, I felt she must have got inside my head somehow. Perhaps it's just that the theme she expounds upon is universal and perhaps many readers will feel the same way I did.
The story centres about Irina. She has been in a long-term relationship with stable, good-but-boring guy Lawrence. While Lawrence is away one night, she ends up going out for dinner with Ramsey the ex-husband of a former friend. Ramsey is a dapper, sexy, famous snooker player. They have a great night, end up going back to his house and at the end of the first chapter we find them just about to kiss.
Chapter two begins the story of what happened after the kiss. Subsequently we find there is a second chapter two which starts in a world where the kiss did not happen. The book proceeds in this fashion - two of each chapter showing what happens in each possible world.
We've all been there - wondering what would have happened if I left/didn't leave a certain partner. Would my life have been better if I opted for sexy rather than stable? Should I have abandoned security and gone for the dangerous option? If you've ever found yourself wondering what life would have been like IF ONLY ... then you have to read this book and see what happens in each of the post-birthday worlds.
The characters in the book are brilliantly drawn and achingly real. The arguments and rows are so authentic that you feel part of them. You won't find any two-dimensional stereotypes here - all the characters have their good and bad points, their strengths and flaws. There are no goodies and baddies.
Irina is much softer than the female characters in 'We Need to Talk about Kevin' and 'Double Fault' and I was really glad about this. While I loved those two books, I really wanted to see Shriver take on a more gentle character. I found Irina easier to relate to .. perhaps just because she's more like me.
I can't recommend this book highly enough. It was my best read of the year so far ... and that's saying something! Go out and get it and prepare to be absorbed!
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14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
One thing spoils it, 29 May 2007
I loved "Kevin" and "Double Fault" so I was eager for this to come out. I am halfway through it, and thoroughly enjoying the story. HOWEVER..... (and I see other readers have commented on this) Americans should not try to "write" in a British accent. I don't care how long they've lived here. The scenes with Ramsey in have dialogue that is toe-curlingly bad, and which makes me cringe as much as Dick Van Dyke's "cockney" accent in Mary Poppins. I don't know why Shriver felt the need to do it, but cor blimey guv'nor, I 'ope she don't do it again, like.
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31 of 39 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Not as dark as Kevin, but not a disappointment, 28 April 2007
The Birthday in the title is Ramsey Acton's 47th. Ramsey is a Cockney snooker player who's always runner-up in important tournaments. Irina in chapter one is living with Lawrence, a think-tank boffin Ramsey refers to as 'Anorak Man.' The trio have a tradition of meeting up for Ramsey's birthday, begun years back when Ramsey was married to Irina's friend Jude. On Ramsey's 47th birthday, Lawrence is away so Irina meets Ramsey on her own, uneasily aware of her attraction to him. They end up getting drunk together and Irina is overcome by the urge to kiss him.
The first chapter leaves the couple there, staring at each other on the edge of the snooker table. Chapter 1 is then followed by two chapter 2s, two chapters 3s and so on, which I thought was a brilliantly original idea. In one post-birthday world, Irina leaves Lawrence for Ramsey. In the alternative universe, she stays with Lawrence. I also loved the idea of having darker chapter numbers for the narrative in which Irina follows her wilder, darker impulses and grey chapter numbers for the narrative where she stays with Lawrence. Having said that, Shriver resists social stereotypes. In innumerable other novels, the heroine leaves her loyal, steady husband for a sexually exciting lover who eventually leaves her for another woman. Then she wishes she'd stayed with Mr Secure all along. In The Post-Birthday world, characters are more complex. The final chapter of the book is, like the first, just one chapter. What goes around, comes around. It's fascinating trying to work out whilst reading this final chapter which was the 'real' post-birthday world. But they're not real people, they're literary constructs, I hear the critics cry. Yes, but the strength of these novels is in the fabulously detailed, careful characterisation and especially in the continuity of characterisation, to use a film term. The flavoured popcorn is genius. And there is some wonderful use of figurative language. Taking Ramsey to a literary award ceremony is 'like navigating a formal dinner with a houseplant.' Ramsey can taste his envy of Lawrence's intellectual prowess 'like a fifty pence piece on the tongue.' The moral high ground is 'a lonely steppe.'
Ok, there may be off moments in Ramsey's Cockney/northern dialogue. Shriver has lived in the UK, but she doesn't appear to get the Cockney voice right and Ramsey's voice meanders from the East End into Coronation Street and back out again. This could be deliberate, though - Shriver does give Ramsey the surname Acton and at the end of the novel we learn that Ramsey's parents were middle-class, so when playing the working class snooker player he may be putting an 'act on' , ergo not always sounding 100% genuine.
I didn't find Irina quite as engaging and interesting a character as Eva or as Willy in Double Fault, although Irina is certainly more likeable and readers will identify with her in a way they perhaps couldn't with Eva or Willy. Her central dilemma - whether to go with sexy or safe - is one nearly every reader will have experienced at some point in their lives.The idea that sexy and safe may be one and the same is something we might not have considered.
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