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Snowleg [Kindle Edition]

Nicholas Shakespeare (Author)
3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews) |
Digital List Price: £8.05 What's this?
Print List Price: £8.99
Kindle Price: £5.84 includes VAT* & free wireless delivery via Amazon Whispernet
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Kindle Edition £5.84   -- --
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Product Description

Review

"Already my bet for this year's Booker Prize. A superbly achieved and moving novel."
--Giles Fodden, "Guardian"
"Snowleg is his finest book yet. Beautifully written, rich in character, it displays all the courage for which its hero so desperately wants to be recognized."
--"Economist"
"This novel is one of the finest attempts in English to convey something of two very strange places which no longer appear on the map of Europe... Shakespeare has told a very skillful story."
--"Evening Standard"

Book Description

Keynote/Publisher Comment'Already my bet for this year's Booker Prize. A superbly achieved and moving novel' Giles Foden
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Product details

  • Format: Kindle Edition
  • File Size: 659 KB
  • Print Length: 400 pages
  • Publisher: Vintage Digital (13 April 2010)
  • Sold by: Amazon Media EU S.à r.l.
  • Language English
  • ASIN: B003ELY7RY
  • Text-to-Speech: Enabled
  • Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #130,042 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

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More About the Author

Nicholas Shakespeare
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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Too many coincidences 13 Jan 2008
Format:Paperback
A name like the author's is a heavy burden, and, as far as style goes, this Shakespeare here does quite well. His problem is how to organise a convincing plot, and, sad to say, this is where he fails, at least in the long run. At the beginning his story is really thrilling and quite unusual for a British author. On his 16th birthday young hero Peter Hithersay finds out, that his beloved father is not his biological one, as his mother had a one-night-stand with a German prisoner on the run in Leipzig in the GDR. From that moment Peter feels German, takes German language courses at his rather posh school and endures being mobbed for his German roots by his fellow students. He then studies medicine in Hamburg and gets the chance to go to Leipzig with a student drama group. Here he hopes to find out more about his father. Instead he falls in love with a girl called Snjolaug, a name that sounds to him like Snowleg. She takes him to the farewell party of her brother, who has finally been allowed to leave the GDR. Snowleg finds out, that this also means her personal future is in shambles. So after they spend the night together in a Schrebergarten datscha, she asks Peter to smuggle her out of the country. Although he first is glad about that, he then has second thoughts and in the end denies knowing her when confronted with her at an official reception. And now his and the reader's torment begins. Shakespeare is neither really interested in his hero's quest to find Snowleg again, nor in the dire situation he has left her in. What we hear about the infamous methods of the Stasi is just cheap sensationalism, nothing new or convincing. Like Housseini's hero in "The Kiterunner" Peter keeps moaning on and on about his fatal mistake. And, there are just one too many coincidences in the plot.
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21 of 24 people found the following review helpful
By Mary Whipple HALL OF FAME TOP 100 REVIEWER
Format:Hardcover
In one of the most elegantly written and carefully constructed love stories in recent memory, Nicholas Shakespeare introduces Peter Hithersay, who, on his sixteenth birthday, learns that "Daddy" is not his father. In Leipzig, East Germany, for a vocal competition, his mother had met and loved his biological father very briefly, only to see him arrested, and taken away forever. Curious about Germany, Peter spends his gap year in Hamburg and applies for and is accepted to its medical school, where he lives for the next six years. Eventually, Peter makes a trip to Leipzig, where he, now twenty-two, falls passionately in love with a young East German, whose Icelandic nickname, "Snjolaug," sounds to him like "Snowleg." When he has to leave, he is unable to forget her.

Peter's search for Snowleg, and secondarily, for his father, is told through flashbacks and memories, and the nature of their relationship unfolds in detail. The role of the secret police in their separation and the conflicts between the original ideal of communism and its later implementation are shown through Uwe and Hesse, two secret policemen, who appear in the prologue and in the conclusion and provide fresh perspective on the action, elevating this novel above the typical love story.

The vibrancy of Shakespeare's prose makes every page of this novel a delight to read. Filled with irony and, often, humor, the dialogue comes alive. Unforgettable descriptions, especially of the darkness, cold, and soot in Leipzig, reveal feelings as well as convey information. To Peter, listening to the radio, a love song "had red eyes and ran furtively across his mind...It was a rat dressed up as a promise." Repeating motifs--a van with a fish painted on it, a dying deer, the story of Sir Bedevere, a fur coat, and the bones of a muskrat--echo throughout the novel and connect scenes symbolically. Like most romances, the story relies on coincidence and fortuitous accident, but Shakespeare's writing is so strong and the story is so exciting that even the most jaded reader will willingly accept the implausibilities. Mary Whipple

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Good in parts 17 Jan 2006
By G. L. Haggett VINE™ VOICE
Format:Paperback
A story of love and longing which takes us into Eastern Germany past and present.

In common with other reviewers I found Shakespeare very convincing at evoking atmosphere and a sense of time and place. Less convincing, however, is the manner in which every loose end is tied up all too neatly at the end.

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