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"Stranger books have seldom been written, and when they have, they've seldom been this fast-paced, this funny, or this effortlessly readable."-"Detroit Free Press"
"The Collector Collector is the freshest, most fascinating novel I've read in years."-Tom Robbins
"The Collector Collector is the freshest, most fascinating novel I've read in years."-Tom Robbins
Product Description
To a small flat in South london comes a Sumerian bowl: but the bowl is the Collector Collector, clay with something to say, an object d'art who will offer Rosa, its owner, vast swathes of unrecorded history from thre last 5, 000 years. Meanwhile, Rosa tries to centre her life and to settle the disturbances caused by an uninvited guest, Nikki. 1001 Nights meets the inner city, THE COLLECTOR COLLECTOR is a comic masterpiece and unquestionably the finest novel ever narrated by a bowl.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is a novel written from the point of view of an antique bowl that "collects" (or, more accurately, catalogues) the people that collect it - hence the title. From this fanciful "fly on the wall" perspective, Tibor Fischer constructs an endlessly inventive and entertaining tale. In the main narrative people that appear normal later turn out to be deranged in a variety of interesting ways, and those that initially appear to be bizarre turn out to be behaving quite rationally. As if the interplay of characters in the present day were not enough stimulation, the book is liberally spiced with flashbacks into fantastical highlights from the bowl's observations over the previous 4000 years. The only flaw (if it is one) is the bowl's tendency to assign everything to ranked lists (e.g. "I equivocated about whether to place her at 133 or 132 on my list of people-readers"). This is initially amusing, then irritating, and finally ignorable. Overall, highly recommended.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book looks pretty uninteresting, and the synopsis reads very strangely indeed. A book narrated by an antique bowl is not one I would normally think of reading. Suspending my disbelief however was very rewarding.
An inanimate object makes an excellent narrator because, as the bowl itself observes, people don't notice it and act in ways in which they wouldn't in company. Also, the bowl is full of interesting and amusing anecdotes about the things it has seen in its long and varied 'life' which take over the narrative at times and stop monotony setting in.
The bowl, besides being a raconteur, is a philosopher and something of a magician. There are plenty of ceramic observations on the human condition here!
I'm sure this still sounds far too strange a book to consider reading, but it's definitely worth a go. The plot which revolves around the bowl's latest owner, her 'flatmate', a butch guardian angel and an obese tycoon is entertaining in itself.
A must for antique dealers and anyone from Market Harborough.
Format:Paperback
I bought this book because I was researching the literary device of employing non-human narration, for my PhD. I loved it. Quirky, funny, and ultimately engaging, which I didn't think anything narrated from the view point of a bowl could be! The characters were all great - weird and memorable, and the writing was wonderful. I'll definitely be buying more of Tibor Fischer's books.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Interesting, funny, but a guilty pleasure
I enjoyed this but can't help thinking that there's some stuff here that I am not necessarily proud of enjoying.
Published on 19 Oct 2009 by Jezza
Wolverhampton Libraries LGBT Reading Group Review
As people tend not to suspect that their ornaments might be watching, they will do all sorts of things right in front of them... Read more
Published on 27 Mar 2008 by Ms. R. Graham
Don't Judge a Book by its Blurb
Tibor Fischer's "Under the Frog" is my favourite book of all time...so when I picked this up and read the blurb, I though "He is *never*, in a million years, going to be able to... Read more
Published on 12 Mar 2008 by Tim Danaher
Unbelievable author
This author has written many fabulous books, each equally as brilliant as the next and this one is no exception. Buy it!
Published on 5 Jun 2005
Unlike anything I've ever read.
Authors often struggle to write from anything other than their own viewpoint - men rarely write well about female characters, Europeans struggle with African ideas and so on. Read more
Published on 25 Jan 2000
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