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Product Description
Independent on Sunday, January 9, 2005
'James Hawes has a growing reputation, richly deserved, for sharp and snappy satires... deliciously entertaining and uncomfortable'
Guardian, January 8, 2005
'An assured, clever, raffishly inventive work'
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Once again the guy grasps the zeitgeist and does something new and unexpected with it - for my money the best and most underrated popular novelist we have. A great book which subtly contrasts the false images of 'the good old days' with the equally pernicious lies about how great life is now. As in 'White Merc' etc, Hawes remains concerned about the gap between the shiny lives the media constantly present as the norm and the stressed-out relative failures we all feel ourselves to be. Very talented, insightful writer, shamefully ignored IMHO.
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Mid life crisis-riven divorced father Marley goes on desparate last throw jungle reality TV show, survives slaughter of crew and contestants to be rescued by a tribe descended from British public school survivors of a 1950s plane crash, who return to our addled more-or-less present, bringing with them a promise of simplicity, truth and a self-confident Englishness. This very funny novel works by welding Marley's yearnings for lost promises and unmet expectations with the parallel yearnings of a clapped-out social order. The Headmaster, a wonderfully realised villain/hero, initially satisfies both - but can we really stop being knowing and critical? And doesn't it all end up rather horrible if we try? Underpinned by a sort of Waugh-ish sensibility, this novel fizzes and hisses with ideas, with wonderful riffs of polemical rhetoric. And for a really funny set-piece, the scene where Marley explains to the public school boys and staff what has happened since 1957 beats just about everything written by an Englishman since Gussie Fink-Nottle gave the prizes at Market Snodbury Grammar School.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
As already noted in one of the other reviews this book starts off reasonably well and then descends into yawn-inducing cliche. I bought it after reading a recommendation by Jonathan Coe. If only Hawes had a fraction of Coe's talent! The device of the fascist school master implementing a bit of 'back to basics' might have worked in the Thatcher or Major era, but seems at least a decade out of date in ultra liberal modern Britain - even the Tories have become right on these days. The central figure and the premise of the reality TV show had some mileage but even this all feels a bit laboured by half way through. At times this seems less an interesting take on contemporary Britain and more of a self-parody - a 'jokey' exercise in non-humour. Apparently Hawes is very popular in France, where he is regarded as an insightful critic of modern British society - a sign, if any were needed, that the French need to get out of France a bit more.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Would have given it none
I thought this book was dreadful. Passages are over-written, the plot is cliched and obvious, it's politically naive and completely unfunny in the same way that Punt and Dennis... Read more
Published 15 months ago by Larts
Parody at it's best!
I LOVED this book. Was given to me in a box of 'unwanted' books some time ago. I know one shouldn't 'judge a book by it's cover' but to be honest the cover caught my eye whilst... Read more
Published 16 months ago by AA Wakeman
A ripping yarn with food for thought.
This is a great piece of writing. Placing the main character in a reality tv show (a symbol of the depths that 'moden' culture has plumbed), then throwing him into a lost isolated... Read more
Published 17 months ago by M. Lilly
Good start
It starts with the interesting premise of a lost tribe of English public school boys discovered in 2006? Read more
Published on 8 Oct 2008 by S. Wright
Side-splitting
Hilarious parody of an English teacher who takes part in a depraved reality tv show. He ends up stumbling across a tribe of forgotten plane crash survivors from the 1950s. Read more
Published on 4 Jun 2006 by kehs
A spiffing story
So what would happen if we took a groups of 1950s public school educated men and women, brought up on a diet of Eagle comics and scouting manuals, empire and reds under the beds,... Read more
Published on 9 May 2006 by Kevin Roche
A Roaring and Ripping Yarn.
I had my doubts that Hawes could attempt to spin a tale that, in some ways, tended towards an imaginary 'golden age' of 1950's English culture. Read more
Published on 7 Nov 2005 by A. Reynolds
Speak for England
"Speak for England" has been my first exposure to the work of James Hawes.
The story starts off with the books' hero Brian Marley being the last surviving participant of a... Read more
Published on 20 Jan 2005 by Alasdair Fraser
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