| ||||||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Plus, get an extra £5 Gift Certificate when you trade in books worth £10 or more before June 30, 2012. Visit the Books Trade-In Store for more details. |
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
‘It is packed with arch dialogue, affectionate caricatures and the feigned good humour more commonly found in memoirs written by chauffeurs of the famous.’ Observer
‘A sad, funny and deeply searching novel. Plotting, characterisation and dialogue quicken the reader’s pace, just as the delicacy of the unfolding love stories quickens the heart.’ Publishers’ Weekly
‘A real craftsman, a master storyteller.’ Independent on Sunday
‘Gale’s concoction is irresistible: modern relationships with period charm. I couldn’t have liked it more.’ Armistead Maupin
Product Description
Patrick Gale’s first novel is suffused with heady wish-fulfilment as two contrasting love stories entwine in the space of one simmering summer week.
WPC Mo Faithe is overcome with lust while investigating a series of violent attacks on newspaper astrologers. Meanwhile in Cornwall, the Peakes are conducting their annual music festival, the cue for their two ‘children’ – Seth, a young violin prodigy, and Venetia, a highly-strung scholar – to embark upon a voyage of self-discovery. As Seth sets out in hot pursuit of unconventional romance on the cliff-tops, the virginal Venetia displays every symptom of an immaculate conception.
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
41 of 43 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I'm really shocked to find there's no review of this book on Amazon. I read it when it first came out - and have read it many times since.
It's a delicious collision of the English middle class, magical realism, and within the many threads of the plot, delicious romance - both gay and straight.
Most novels - and if you browse through Amazon's gay & lesbian list, you begin to think all novels - begin by creating a coherent and believable world which is then torn apart and destroyed. In the Aerodynamics of Pork, the world starts incoherently, and as the story progresses, through some wonderfully impossible and magical twists and turns, threads draw together, and everyone's problems evaporate. It's an incredibly uplifting experience, very funny, and very gripping.
All the way through the book, Patrick Gale makes the most uncannily brilliant use of music. Central to the plot, as it roughly centres around a music festival in Cornwall, if you know the pieces he uses, you'll find them ringing round your head as you read. Quite amazing.
But more than anything, you come away feeling that pigs really might fly, that your own life could take a magical turn at any point, and you'll come out ten times more optimistic than when you started.
Read it!
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I was introduced to Patrick first by Rough Music and then by Notes from an Exhibition - both of which I loved. I therefore decided to explore more of his back catalogue.
This is Patrick's 1986 debut and it is interesting to see how his writing style has developed over time. The story concerns the Peake family who travel to Cornwall to an annual classical music festival and a lesbian police officer who investigates a series of mysterious burglaries in London that target astrologists.
There is the usual exploration of relationships that you expect from a Patrick novel but the characters lack depth and it is difficult to warm to any of them. I found Mo, the police officer, particularly challenging. I wanted to care about Seth and his relationship with artist Roly but ultimately I wasn't really bothered; Roly was unnecessarily objectionable when he first meets Seth for no apparent reason and Seth seemed to be going through an adolescent phase rather than looking for any sort of meaningful relationship. None of it was as real as I've come to expect from Patrick.
That said, it was an enjoyable read as the plot developed and you came to realize how the two apparently disparate stories related to one another. Anyone expecting masterpieces of characterization and depth of relationships as experienced in Patrick's more recent novels will be disappointed.
This is Patrick's 1986 debut and it is interesting to see how his writing style has developed over time. The story concerns the Peake family who travel to Cornwall to an annual classical music festival and a lesbian police officer who investigates a series of mysterious burglaries in London that target astrologists.
There is the usual exploration of relationships that you expect from a Patrick novel but the characters lack depth and it is difficult to warm to any of them. I found Mo, the police officer, particularly challenging. I wanted to care about Seth and his relationship with artist Roly but ultimately I wasn't really bothered; Roly was unnecessarily objectionable when he first meets Seth for no apparent reason and Seth seemed to be going through an adolescent phase rather than looking for any sort of meaningful relationship. None of it was as real as I've come to expect from Patrick.
That said, it was an enjoyable read as the plot developed and you came to realize how the two apparently disparate stories related to one another. Anyone expecting masterpieces of characterization and depth of relationships as experienced in Patrick's more recent novels will be disappointed.
13 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
It must be admitted that the title of Patrick Gale's first novel, published in 1986, is weird, perhaps even offputtingly so. But the clue to its intepretation would appear to lie in the proverbial "pigs might fly". Which generally implies that what is theoretically possible is, in a pragmatic world, extremely unlikely. And that we should all be getting on with "real life" instead of speculating and dreaming.
But Patrick Gale would appear to be suggesting that such idle musing is precisely what makes life worth living...
This short first novel consists of two intertwined narratives. One, set in Cornwall, revolves around the fifteen-year-old musical prodigy Seth and his elder sister Venetia, a Cambridge undergraduate, the precociously gifted children of bohemian Evelyn; the other, set in London, centres on Mo, a heartily bluff gay policewoman. As such, "The Aerodynamics of Pork" lays the groundwork for Patrick Gale's subsequent work. The narratives are tentatively linked from the beginning, when Mo witnesses Evelyn as the unwitting victim of a pickpocket, through various common features (such as kippers...) to the imminent interaction of the characters in the final section, corresponding to the birthdays of both Seth and Mo.
The novel is a clever study in subversion and subterfuge. The echoes are discreet and varied, but the most obvious parallel is that between the incipient gay relationships between Mo and Hope in London and between Seth and Roly on the Cornish coast. These are set against the background of other problematic relationships, most notably that between Evelyn and her mysteriously absent husband, Huw.
If this is an "apprentice work", then it is quite clearly a very good one for a writer then only in his mid-twenties. It looks forward to the emotional complexities of Patrick Gale's later fiction, most notably in the wonderful "Rough Music", in which Roly reappears.
Patrick Gale is a strangely underrated writer, and one who will hopefully come to greater prominence in the years ahead.
But Patrick Gale would appear to be suggesting that such idle musing is precisely what makes life worth living...
This short first novel consists of two intertwined narratives. One, set in Cornwall, revolves around the fifteen-year-old musical prodigy Seth and his elder sister Venetia, a Cambridge undergraduate, the precociously gifted children of bohemian Evelyn; the other, set in London, centres on Mo, a heartily bluff gay policewoman. As such, "The Aerodynamics of Pork" lays the groundwork for Patrick Gale's subsequent work. The narratives are tentatively linked from the beginning, when Mo witnesses Evelyn as the unwitting victim of a pickpocket, through various common features (such as kippers...) to the imminent interaction of the characters in the final section, corresponding to the birthdays of both Seth and Mo.
The novel is a clever study in subversion and subterfuge. The echoes are discreet and varied, but the most obvious parallel is that between the incipient gay relationships between Mo and Hope in London and between Seth and Roly on the Cornish coast. These are set against the background of other problematic relationships, most notably that between Evelyn and her mysteriously absent husband, Huw.
If this is an "apprentice work", then it is quite clearly a very good one for a writer then only in his mid-twenties. It looks forward to the emotional complexities of Patrick Gale's later fiction, most notably in the wonderful "Rough Music", in which Roly reappears.
Patrick Gale is a strangely underrated writer, and one who will hopefully come to greater prominence in the years ahead.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Real Soft Spot For this Book
I read this when it first came out, as a young gay man it was also when I first came out. It seemed touching and sweet and impossibly romantic and I desperately wanted to live in... Read more
Published 7 months ago by Booksthatmatter
Patrick Gale
Another excellent read, though it's Patrick's first book, I didn't read it first. Brilliant as usual.
Published on 19 Nov 2009 by Fiona, Cupar
Good debut novel
I read this some time after reading the excellent 'Rough Music' and was intrigued to find that it had links to that book. Read more
Published on 4 Oct 2009 by Iain C. Davidson
Human, elitiste and exciting!
A posh drama for everyone? Too posh for most! Again Gale has created an engaging story but yet again Gale has created characters we don't like enough to care about and too posh to... Read more
Published on 26 May 2008 by Philip Thompson
Two artists find love in Cornwall
Two interrelated stories run in parallel, one set in London and quickly moving to Cornwall, the other remaining in London. Read more
Published on 15 Dec 2006 by Benjamin
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
