- Hardcover: 329 pages
- Publisher: Doubleday; First Edition edition (5 Sep 1996)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0385407890
- ISBN-13: 978-0385407892
- Product Dimensions: 23.2 x 15.4 x 3.2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,078,709 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Product Description
Buchan Gardens is a sedate square in West London. Charles Goodwin, the garden committee president, wants the garden to stay just the way it is; Bryony Mullins doesn't give a flying knicker elastic what happens to it; and, Mona Corinth is dead, and about to become part of the garden.
From the Back Cover
Sap Rising may well be a story about dark dank nature both human and vegetable and our uneasy relationship with the mystic natural forces that move the earth. It may be a parable on the fragile consensus that maintains and tends green England. On the other hand, it might just be a farcical love story set in a garden about nothing of any consequence performed by comic grotesques with a lot of swearing and unnatural sex.
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
From the outset it appears that Adrian Gill has no other intention than purely to shock and revolt. Through his apathetic style he creates some extreme characters whose totally outrageous and obscene antics initially led me to wish I'd paid heed to the curt but tantalising words of warning from the Guardian on the book's front cover. As the story progresses, however, it becomes apparent that the simple plot purports to nothing more than to serve merely as a vehicle for Gill to take an almost self-deprecating satirical swipe at London's surfeit of aspiring elite, and along the way provides an evidently much-needed outlet for his sometimes overeager imagination. This novel should be accepted as nothing more than the fanciful parody of love and class that it is, readers should relax into it, and savour the pangs of incredulity and disgust that many of it's scenes will undoubtedly provoke.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
another Scot beat Gill to it years ago. In Helen & Desire, beatnik junkie Alexander Trocchi fired off a shorter, better schoolboy squib. That had to be published by Maurice Girodias in Paris because of obscenity laws. In other words, it was ahead of its time. Sap Rising is strangely behind the times, being the kind of first novel everybody has to try---all the dirty words, all the over-writing, all the gargoylesque caricature instead of characterisation, and so on. Gill's Star-Crossed is realer, tighter and funnier. He may yet wish he had never published this junior work, like so many authors, for example Steinbeck's "Pot of Gold", which he would have given his writing arm to have withdrawn.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is not a novel - it is a wretched waste of paper. Mr Gill seems to be making a nice living reviewing restaurants. I would politely suggest that he stick to what he knows best and leave book writing to those with at least a trace of talent, wit and style. He could have done worse than read "Lucky Jim" by Kingsley Amis before he sat down to write this execrable trash. Not only is Lucky Jim screamingly funny; the character Bertrand Welch bears a quite extraordinary resemblance to Gill. Only when one has read a 'novel' by Adrian Gill does book-burning seem not such a bad idea after all...
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Offensively funny. Not to be read in public.
Don't read this, like I did, in public. People are likely to think you are mad for laughing so much to yourself.
It's a great read. Read more
It's a great read. Read more
Published on 22 Jan 2009 by Mr. P. Wren
An instant classic
If you think Political Correctness is a good thing, and that vulgarity is never acceptable within the pages of a book, then I suggest you take the advice offered by `The Guardian'... Read more
Published on 7 Nov 2008 by Peter Smith
Brilliant, original & funny !
An excellent book - brilliantly funny, well written, twisted and very original. His warped imagination results in one of the most memorable books I've read
Published on 5 Jun 2003
Not the most enjoyable read
..This, his first novel, is outrageously funny in places, repellant in others, and memorable for being mediocre all over. Read more
Published on 20 Feb 2002
If you were a pigeon, you could f**k forty times a day....
Who can deny that a book that starts and ends with that same line is not the work of genius. So informative!! Read more
Published on 19 April 2001
How odd...
...one of our funniest journalists, and certainly our best restaurant reviewer (okay, not the broadest of fields), yet I had to check I wasn't reading this book upside down, which... Read more
Published on 20 Sep 2000 by Jennifer Colgan
loved this book
I picked this book up as airplane reading at Heathrow returning to the States; I had no expectations except hoping for distracting sex. I was not disappointed. Read more
Published on 1 Feb 2000
I laughed so much my head almost fell off...
Foul, offesnsive and outrageously crude but undeniably funny. In this book, Gill does himself justice with a candid account of the upper echelons of society. Read more
Published on 31 Aug 1999
A poor effort
Mr Gill has already contributed, in no small measure, to the dumbing down of The Sunday Times; now he turns his attention to contemporary English fiction. Read more
Published on 22 April 1999
The Guardiuan knows best!
I was extremely disappointed with A.A. Gill's first novel. The novel is badly structured, with a rudimentary attempt at characterisation. The entire work smacks of laziness. Read more
Published on 31 Mar 1999
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