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Product Description
Review
'A masterful new novel' --TLS
'The year's liveliest and most elating read. Buckley's extraordinary tour de force brims with relish and perceptiveness...it radiates vitality.'
--The Sunday Times 2011's finest and most memorable novels
'The year's liveliest and most elating read. Buckley's extraordinary tour de force brims with relish and perceptiveness...it radiates vitality.'
--The Sunday Times 2011's finest and most memorable novels
Book Description
Truth, imagination and the consolations of gossip
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Daniel, the protagonist of this excellent novel is a man in his forties suffering from a rare, disfiguring and ultimately fatal condition who has come to spend the closing months of his life being cared for in his brother's home. Astonishingly free of mawkish self-pity, Daniel is a man who learned to cope long ago by viewing life from a wry, intelligent and often humorous angle. Buckley masterfully gets under the skin of his characters and the genius of this novel lies not so much in the tender portrait of a man's final days but in the family dynamics which have developed around Daniel's illness since childhood. Charlie, the elder brother is a successful, if deeply conservative entrepeneur and his sister Celia is a brilliantly portrayed as the wayward sister, both rootless and charming, alternately infuriating and irresistible to her family. You will recognise something of your own family relationships in this astonishingly well observed work of fiction. Hats off to Buckely for resisting the temptation to sensationalise or sentimentalise death.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Parting is such sweet sorrow for the narrator of this extraordinary novel. Disfigured by a disease that makes him appear appalling to others and suffering from cancer, he is taken to his brother's house to die after being cared for by an employee and his sister-in-law.
Yet there is nothing depressing about the book. He passes the time by reading, watching and writing a journal. Precisely and with great wit, he records relationships and social transactions. He is perceptive in writing about friendship, lovers, marriage, parents and children, and social and national differences. There can be few readers whose experience is not touched by these penetrating accounts. Even the computer-belt rural setting and episodes in Europe are carefully written up, as are references to his esoteric reading. He is concerned with contrasts (here exceptional) between appearance and subjective reality. He is never bitter and sardonically accepts the weakness of those who cannot face his deformity while appreciatively noting kindness and practical love. Despite having the expected human weaknesses, he is an example of sensitive self-control but also an unreliable narrator.
The structure is unusual (I was reminded of `The Arabian Nights' or some eighteenth century novels). A simple story fans out into a dazzling range of glittering threads, digressions and time-travelling. The elaborately punctuated sentences swoop across the page and draw the reader on and on.
Does Buckley's method waver at the end? Yes. Can one forgive him? Yes, definitely.
Yet there is nothing depressing about the book. He passes the time by reading, watching and writing a journal. Precisely and with great wit, he records relationships and social transactions. He is perceptive in writing about friendship, lovers, marriage, parents and children, and social and national differences. There can be few readers whose experience is not touched by these penetrating accounts. Even the computer-belt rural setting and episodes in Europe are carefully written up, as are references to his esoteric reading. He is concerned with contrasts (here exceptional) between appearance and subjective reality. He is never bitter and sardonically accepts the weakness of those who cannot face his deformity while appreciatively noting kindness and practical love. Despite having the expected human weaknesses, he is an example of sensitive self-control but also an unreliable narrator.
The structure is unusual (I was reminded of `The Arabian Nights' or some eighteenth century novels). A simple story fans out into a dazzling range of glittering threads, digressions and time-travelling. The elaborately punctuated sentences swoop across the page and draw the reader on and on.
Does Buckley's method waver at the end? Yes. Can one forgive him? Yes, definitely.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
How to do justice to this extraordinary novel? Does anyone do a more forensic character sketch (without ever lapsing into caricature) or a more haiku-precise landscape description (without ever tipping over into the lyrical) than Jonathan Buckley? You feel that Buckley's virtuoso talents as a writer could take him off on any riff he cared to follow, yet he keeps them on a tight (and exhilarating) rein, always bringing them back to the service of his characters. And what characters they are. Buckley's risky decision to express a dazzling breadth of intellectual and emotional registers through a narrator whose physical world is so cruelly limited has the paradoxical effect of engendering great poignancy and tenderness. This narrator would rather cut off his own right hand (except he'd think of something much funnier than that) than indulge in self-pity, but through him we cannot help but ponder on the big questions of disability and mortality, love and humanity. With observational skills as sharp as a laser, an internal landscape as rich and dark and eclectic as a Borges creation, a coruscating wit that takes no prisoners (least of all himself), and a gift for empathy so finely honed and profoundly surprising that it leaves you feeling momentarily winded, this is a narrator to be treasured. Here is how he describes the doctor's response to his mother after delivering the devastating diagnosis of his incurable condition: `He'd pause after questions and do a quick frown, as though her words needed to be translated into something cleverer before he could understand them, then he'd reply in the soothing murmur of a man talking a distraught woman into putting the gun down.'
Buckley's prose does what poetry can do: it gives you the thrill of recognition that comes with the discovery of something that at some level you've always known but couldn't have put into words. His insatiable curiosity, enviable gift for deadpan humour and unbounded delight in language and its ability to shape and express human experience ensure a rich variety of treats and delights for the reader; his emotional range, meanwhile, and his lightly observed but none the less perceptive insights into human frailty and yearning, and into the vagaries of families and relationships, are thought-provoking, touching and deeply humane.
Do read this book: there's so much to enjoy.
Buckley's prose does what poetry can do: it gives you the thrill of recognition that comes with the discovery of something that at some level you've always known but couldn't have put into words. His insatiable curiosity, enviable gift for deadpan humour and unbounded delight in language and its ability to shape and express human experience ensure a rich variety of treats and delights for the reader; his emotional range, meanwhile, and his lightly observed but none the less perceptive insights into human frailty and yearning, and into the vagaries of families and relationships, are thought-provoking, touching and deeply humane.
Do read this book: there's so much to enjoy.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Eminently forgettable. A humdrum collection of weakly drawn characters
Not often I give up on a novel after reading almost half, but I gladly made an exception last night with Jonathan Buckley's Telescope. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Glengarry
on the shelf ready to read
Haven't read yet - xmas pressie.
Arrived on time and in good knick. Seller very efficient and accurate.
A book is a book is a book and if you want to read it, you should.
Arrived on time and in good knick. Seller very efficient and accurate.
A book is a book is a book and if you want to read it, you should.
Published 4 months ago by Esher
An interesting and amusing page turner
The other, glowing, reviews say everything positive you need to know about this novel. I agree mostly with what they say, but had to knock off a star because I felt I learned too... Read more
Published 6 months ago by Malcolm Black
Captivating, must-read novel
The shadow of death has never been so beautifully drawn as in this wonderful novel. Buckley's protagonist, Daniel, dying from a disfiguring genetic disease that has annihilated his... Read more
Published 10 months ago by Elizabeth Lawes
Startlingly original and moving
Daniel Brennan, approaching the premature end of his life, retreats to a room in his brother's suburban house. Read more
Published 11 months ago by M. Ellingham
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