- Paperback
- Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd (27 Jan 2000)
- Language French
- ISBN-10: 0140293817
- ISBN-13: 978-0140293814
- Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (76 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 4,497,290 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
The Drowning People
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
"My wife of more than forty-five years shot herself yesterday afternoon. At least that is what the police assume, and I am playing the part of grieving widower with enthusiasm and success...It was I who killed her." Thus begins The Drowning People, the media-hyped first novel by 20-year-old Oxford undergraduate Richard Mason. Your typical murder mystery it is not, for we are given the identity of the killer--the "who?"--immediately. The puzzle to be solved in this introspective novel is "why?"--why did 70-year-old James Farrell murder his wife Sarah? The answer, as it develops from his own confession, delves nearly 50 years into the past and roams from Prague to London, from France to a remote castle in Cornwall. At its core is an intoxicating love affair set amidst the stifling world of English aristocracy: James at 22, a talented musician and hopeless romantic and Ella Harewood, his wife's cousin, an American heiress to an English title, trapped by her heritage and destiny. A beautifully written exploration of self-absorbed first love and its tragic consequences, Richard Mason's The Drowning People soars beyond the highest of expectations placed upon it. --Shannon Bingham
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
`Assured, well-paced and ambitious ... the writing is a delight. An exceptional achievement. (GUARDIAN (1999) )
`Redolent of early Evelyn Waugh... Mason already displays narrative drive, verbal skill and technical mastery. (DAILY EXPRESS (1999) )
`One of the most talked about first novels of 1999. If you want to be au courant with modern fiction, you will need to read it...' (SUNDAY TELEGRAPH (1999) )
`A very impressive first novel ... the story immediately hooks you until the end' (THE TIMES (1999) )
An absolutely fantastic story: a cast of weird and wonderful characters, tangled love, secrets and deceits, deaths, and altogether a hugely inventive plot with a twist to beat all twists at the very 11th hour. (OXFORD TIMES ) --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
`Redolent of early Evelyn Waugh... Mason already displays narrative drive, verbal skill and technical mastery. (DAILY EXPRESS (1999) )
`One of the most talked about first novels of 1999. If you want to be au courant with modern fiction, you will need to read it...' (SUNDAY TELEGRAPH (1999) )
`A very impressive first novel ... the story immediately hooks you until the end' (THE TIMES (1999) )
An absolutely fantastic story: a cast of weird and wonderful characters, tangled love, secrets and deceits, deaths, and altogether a hugely inventive plot with a twist to beat all twists at the very 11th hour. (OXFORD TIMES ) --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
I am in the little sitting room (in days gone by a dressing room) which connects my bedroom to Sarah's. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
I am in the little sitting room (in days gone by a dressing room) which connects my bedroom to Sarah's. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I started this book on the basis that it was a love story and thinking it would be a light read, but I soon realised that it was a really intense, beautiful read .... I found it a very mature and wise book and was really surprised when I learned the age of the author. I would definitely recommend purely to enjoy the style of writing, which for me conjured up many beautiful images. However, this does not take away the fact that it is also a very interesting plot, so all in all, read it!
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
It is easy to guess most of the twists in the plot well in advance, but the book is still worth reading, a valiant first attempt by an author of only 21. Naturally, because he is only 21 he has no way of knowing how people really think and act as they get older and how the passions and obsessions of youth lose significance. So, wisely, he spends little time on his characters present (which must be set in about 2035) and much on their youth in the 1990s. It all has a rather old-fashioned air about it - there are up to date trappings like mobile phones but the book could easily have been set in the 1920s with very minor editing. There are few signs of the modern world - only one woman has a career and that's as a dress designer, for example. There are no contemporary references to politics or social trends. Characterisation is rather weak. The hero is so spineless you want to shake him, and it is hard to care much about any of these social parasites. Owes a lot of Agatha Christie and The Forsyte Saga. Nevertheless I will certainly read anything else Richard Mason writes, I have seldom read a first novel so promising.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
"The Drowning People" runs to 367 pages in my edition and I have to confess I had to finish it, as I couldn't believe anything this bad could have been published by Penguin and raved over by critics from reputable newspapers. True, it shows occasional flashes of literary technique and promise, but these are swamped by a relentlessly dreary, meandering narrative supposedly delivered by the central character, James Farrell, with as much soul-searching, hand-wringing, introspective flannel as any reader could possibly be subjected to in one book without losing his sanity. (Did anyone count the number of times he used the expression "you see"?)
The sense of time is totally distorted. Don't ask me why, but I infer from the early pages of the book that the initial events took place in 1995, when Farrell was in his twenties, but he is talking as a 70 year old man, which places his narrative in the middle of our current century. The surrounding characters seem to have wandered out of Oscar Wilde's plays, or in the case of the two callous cousins Sarah and Ella, Hitchcock's films from the 1960's. Evelyn Waugh is in there somewhere too, but he'd probably turn in his grave to hear himself associated with this ham-fisted mess. And there is something comical about the way in which, after about 300 pages with never a mention of anything remotely twentieth-century, our hero disappears into the London Underground! Later on, a mobile phone is introduced, but the character using it is one of the Oscar Wilde refugees and the message she uses it to deliver is out of the same period.
The tragedy, if there is one, is that the 20-year-old author Mason, was not counselled by older, wiser heads and persuaded to edit this down to a quarter of its length, revise the story to take some note of how people interact in the real world, and produce a half-decent first novel. What seems to have happened, and God knows why, is that a novel needing several rewrites and a hatchet-job done on its dreary longueurs, was published in full and apparently acclaimed by the literary world. This can only be viewed as crass and dishonest.
It would be nice to think that Mason has honed his talents since this was published in the late nineties. Unfortunately the only recommendation I can make on his first outing, is to any aspiring writer, to read this as an object lesson in how not to write a novel.
The sense of time is totally distorted. Don't ask me why, but I infer from the early pages of the book that the initial events took place in 1995, when Farrell was in his twenties, but he is talking as a 70 year old man, which places his narrative in the middle of our current century. The surrounding characters seem to have wandered out of Oscar Wilde's plays, or in the case of the two callous cousins Sarah and Ella, Hitchcock's films from the 1960's. Evelyn Waugh is in there somewhere too, but he'd probably turn in his grave to hear himself associated with this ham-fisted mess. And there is something comical about the way in which, after about 300 pages with never a mention of anything remotely twentieth-century, our hero disappears into the London Underground! Later on, a mobile phone is introduced, but the character using it is one of the Oscar Wilde refugees and the message she uses it to deliver is out of the same period.
The tragedy, if there is one, is that the 20-year-old author Mason, was not counselled by older, wiser heads and persuaded to edit this down to a quarter of its length, revise the story to take some note of how people interact in the real world, and produce a half-decent first novel. What seems to have happened, and God knows why, is that a novel needing several rewrites and a hatchet-job done on its dreary longueurs, was published in full and apparently acclaimed by the literary world. This can only be viewed as crass and dishonest.
It would be nice to think that Mason has honed his talents since this was published in the late nineties. Unfortunately the only recommendation I can make on his first outing, is to any aspiring writer, to read this as an object lesson in how not to write a novel.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Great book
Thank you Richard for writing such a great book. I enjoyed the book. I could not put it down. I bought all your other books as well and can't wait to start reading them.
Published 8 months ago by C. V. D. Westhuizen
Disappointing Read
This book was originally written when the author was 18. Ten years later, at the request of his publishers, he revised and cut it and action originally set in the 1990s was moved... Read more
Published 12 months ago by Ann M
Impressive and timeless
This is an impressively crafted and fun to read story about an old man who kills his wife and looks back at the years that built up to that event. Read more
Published 12 months ago by M Dalgaard
Old favourite republished
So pleased to see this book republished. I loved it the first time around and it's even better the second time.
Published 14 months ago by Sea1212
Conventional but effective
The Drowning People is a classic tale of jealousy, love, and murder among the glamorous classes. Mistaken identities, an old Cornish castle, early Hyde Park mornings, and the... Read more
Published 23 months ago by reader 451
"The Drowning People", and "US" - Richard Mason: unbelievable amazing...
I've now read a few of Richard Masons books: he's an incredible writer. The Drowning People, and his other book, "US" are unbelievably seat gripping reads: I highly recommend them. Read more
Published on 23 Sep 2009 by HR Ryan
I am so bored I want to cry
I'm half way through this book and the only reason I was still reading was out of a very mild curiosity about what was going to happen. Read more
Published on 3 Feb 2009 by Marian Hartright
3 1/2 stars
I read this book as the monthly choice for an on line book group. On the whole I enjoyed it but I found it a bit slow to get into and was irritated by the frequent references to... Read more
Published on 19 May 2007 by DubaiReader
heavy handed, self-indulgent introspection
I was distracted, and irritated, throughout this book by the constant self-pitying, self-indulgent, introspection of the main character, James. Read more
Published on 17 May 2007 by H. Ashford
A book that will stay in mind for years to come.
This was an amazing book to read. I often during reading reflect on the choice of front cover and on this occasion it added to the overall experience. Read more
Published on 15 May 2007 by SJSmith
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