The Clothes on Their Backs
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Review
** 'If you read only one novel this year, make sure it is The Clothes on Their Backs (SUNDAY EXPRESS )
** 'A beautifully written and truly moving book about the experience of growing up in Britain as a second generation immigrant (EXPRESS )
** 'It's a sublimely atmospheric and moving novel (LONDON PAPER )
** 'This is a vivid, enjoyable and consistently unexpected novel (THE DAILY TELEGRAPH )
** 'A beautifully written and truly moving book about the experience of growing up in Britain as a second generation immigrant (EXPRESS )
** 'It's a sublimely atmospheric and moving novel (LONDON PAPER )
** 'This is a vivid, enjoyable and consistently unexpected novel (THE DAILY TELEGRAPH )
Independent
'Her novel is at once a beautifully detailed character study, a poignant family history and a richly evocative portrait of the late 1970s'
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
29 of 31 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is a novel about identity. It is the story of Vivien Kovaks, the daughter of Hungarian-Jewish immigrants, as she struggles to find her place in British society in the late Seventies as well as understand her past, a past denied to her by her insular parents. By re-establishing contact with her Uncle Sandor, shunned by her Father for his work as a pimp and slum-landlord, Vivien establishes herself as the scribe for his oral autobiography and sets to work typing up the story of his life. In doing so she learns of her parents' past and therfore more about own. The book is her memories of these events from her middle age in a London shocked by the bombings of July 2006. The theme of clothing as a means of establishing or changing identity is not strong enough to provide the title and seems therefore an unusual theme to draw the title from.
Nor does the structure provide any real desire to read to the end. It is difficult to establish which if any of the vaguely interesting events were intended to fix the reader. Vivien, we know from the beginning is middle aged and sensible by the end, and yet she is the only character in which the reader is able to fully invest. The series of events which conclude the novel, therefore, are merely interesting and provide limited climax.
It can only be the detail with which each character is presented which won Grant her Booker nomination. Vivien the lost maybe-punk in vintage clothing with a useless English degree, her parents the timid Jewish immigrants self imprisoned in their flat on the Marylebone Road, Vivien's `play-thing' Claude, a skinny confused young man existing on the edge of sanity and of course Uncle Sandor a labour camp survivor turned pimp,businessman and cake enthisuast all appeal to the curious reader. All are written into life and interact realistically but there is little more to report.
Vivien herself tells Uncle Sandor, as she advises him on his method of dictating his own story; `if a book is to be publishable, it has to be more than chronology, it has to shed light on the human condition.' Grant achieves this in her portrait of the human need for identity and to a lesser extent the need for family, but I feel that an author with her ability to observe detail and write characters should have aimed for more. There are too many events in the book, rushed by in a page which are of more interest to those which provide the major scenes in the narrative. In short neither Vivien's nor her Uncle Sandor's stories are interesting or absorbing enough to provide Grant with the impact which her themes require.
Nor does the structure provide any real desire to read to the end. It is difficult to establish which if any of the vaguely interesting events were intended to fix the reader. Vivien, we know from the beginning is middle aged and sensible by the end, and yet she is the only character in which the reader is able to fully invest. The series of events which conclude the novel, therefore, are merely interesting and provide limited climax.
It can only be the detail with which each character is presented which won Grant her Booker nomination. Vivien the lost maybe-punk in vintage clothing with a useless English degree, her parents the timid Jewish immigrants self imprisoned in their flat on the Marylebone Road, Vivien's `play-thing' Claude, a skinny confused young man existing on the edge of sanity and of course Uncle Sandor a labour camp survivor turned pimp,businessman and cake enthisuast all appeal to the curious reader. All are written into life and interact realistically but there is little more to report.
Vivien herself tells Uncle Sandor, as she advises him on his method of dictating his own story; `if a book is to be publishable, it has to be more than chronology, it has to shed light on the human condition.' Grant achieves this in her portrait of the human need for identity and to a lesser extent the need for family, but I feel that an author with her ability to observe detail and write characters should have aimed for more. There are too many events in the book, rushed by in a page which are of more interest to those which provide the major scenes in the narrative. In short neither Vivien's nor her Uncle Sandor's stories are interesting or absorbing enough to provide Grant with the impact which her themes require.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I was suprised to see so much criticism of this book. I found the book moving, and gave a slant on 'the face of evil'. I thought that the characterisation of Vivien created lots of empathy, and her somewhat nilhilistic attitude towards life was quite understandable.
I found the ending satisfactory, and I am not too sure how it could have been ended,apart from the concept of everyone lived happily ever after, and all the members of the family were reconciled to each other. There seemed strong comparisons between Sandor and Rachmann, though I was disappointed that the biography of Rachmann is no longer available, as I felt that this would have made interesting reading.
I have not read anything written by Linda Grant before, but I have just ordered 'We have never had it so good'as the symnopsis looks rather good.
What reviews do tell you is that everyone reads messages differently in a book. I great;ly enjoyed this novel, and its 1970's slant social history, and what live was like living in central London,and thinking about it there are not many novels that write from that standpoint. Would recommend this book as a good read.
I found the ending satisfactory, and I am not too sure how it could have been ended,apart from the concept of everyone lived happily ever after, and all the members of the family were reconciled to each other. There seemed strong comparisons between Sandor and Rachmann, though I was disappointed that the biography of Rachmann is no longer available, as I felt that this would have made interesting reading.
I have not read anything written by Linda Grant before, but I have just ordered 'We have never had it so good'as the symnopsis looks rather good.
What reviews do tell you is that everyone reads messages differently in a book. I great;ly enjoyed this novel, and its 1970's slant social history, and what live was like living in central London,and thinking about it there are not many novels that write from that standpoint. Would recommend this book as a good read.
32 of 38 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
A timely reminder of how a society is re-invented and inhabited (rather like clothes) by its immigrants. Also a revealing study of the alienation the children of those immigrants can evolve into should their parents choose to stop time as a way of integrating. Vivien, the protagonist, is the victim and a co-conspirator in the revealing of a family secret. The process by which this revelation is finally made is fascinating: Linda Grant has constructed a narrative as compelling and disturbing as that of her memoir 'Remind me who I am, again'.
Apart from feeling that the book was too short: I would have liked to know more about Vivien's second marriage; Vivien's relationship with her uncle's lover in the present day could have been made more of; I was left with that lovely feeling of having read yet another excellent book by a living novelist,and that there would be even more to look forward to. My advice is to stay in and stretch it over a weekend. Much food for thought.
Apart from feeling that the book was too short: I would have liked to know more about Vivien's second marriage; Vivien's relationship with her uncle's lover in the present day could have been made more of; I was left with that lovely feeling of having read yet another excellent book by a living novelist,and that there would be even more to look forward to. My advice is to stay in and stretch it over a weekend. Much food for thought.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Great prose, but lacking coherence & credibility
At her best Linda Grant is a good & insightful writer, but I can only give this book 3 stars. It is an ambitious book attempting to examine various themes such as identity, the... Read more
Published 13 days ago by patrician
Dull, dull, dull!
It just rambled and rambled. Fortunately I found it at a jumble sale and it only cost me 15p.I gave up reading it a quarter of the way through. I wouldn't recommend it.
Published 1 month ago by Velvet
The novel provides food for thought
It asks the reader to consider the question `are you really the clothes you wear?' this is because, as the title suggests, clothes are an important and dominant theme within the... Read more
Published 5 months ago by AbbieJHorton
Encounters with a Great Storyteller
The nature of evil has always fascinated Linda Grant. Here, she takes a character (loosely based on the infamous Peter Rachman, the slum landlord of Notting Hill, though Grant's... Read more
Published 8 months ago by Kate Hopkins
Justathought
Despite the somewhat vacant language, unresponsive characters and phlegmatic plot development, Grant did present some good ideas of the transience of fashion resembling the... Read more
Published 9 months ago by Prickler
Hard going
Vivien Kovaks remembers a period when she discovered family history through her Uncle Sandor, piecing together the past whilst coming to terms with her own life experiences. Read more
Published 9 months ago by JoTownhead
Good...up to a point.
I enjoyed this book ...up to a point. I found the narrative wandered a bit and I didn't care deeply about what happened to the central character, Vivien. Read more
Published 11 months ago by Freckles
Good but not great
Enjoyed reading it but probably wouldn't read it again, which for me is the real test of a good book. Interesting characters especially.
Published 11 months ago by Chris B
Good quality second-hand book, a decent read
This was the first time I have bought a second-hand book from Amazon. The book was in excellent condition and arrived very quickly. Read more
Published 16 months ago by Leicsliz
Book club replacement
I enjoyed this story well enough. I thought perhaps there wasn't as much emphasis on clothes as I may have first thought. Read more
Published on 24 Jan 2010 by M. McCulloch-Keeble
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