- Hardcover: 352 pages
- Publisher: Jonathan Cape; First edition edition (5 May 2005)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0224051873
- ISBN-13: 978-0224051873
- Product Dimensions: 21.6 x 13.8 x 3.4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 528,744 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
The Rules Of Perspective
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle .
Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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. |
Product details |
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
"Excellent. The dialogue is shot through with humour . . . Thorpe is a remarkably accomplished writer, and in "The Rules of Perspective he puts on a powerful turn." "--The Sunday Times
--This text refers to the Paperback edition.
--This text refers to the Paperback edition.
Book Description
Sixty years on: a great novel about the end of World War II.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
There is pure gold to be found in the form of Adam Thorpe's The Rules of Perspective, which pulls off the challenge of finding something fresh to say about the human condition and the Second World War.
This is an extremely powerful novel, compellingly written and completely devoid of resistance workers, farmers wives hiding airmen or any of a dozen cliches of that conflict. Thorpe skilfully interweaves two stories - one of a young American soldier taking part in the liberation of Germany, and the other of a group of German art gallery staff taking cover in their museum under the Allied bombardment. We know from the very outset that they do not survive the ordeal as Parry (the American) finds their corpses as the novel begins, but we do not know how or to what purpose their stories will unite. Because the reader knows of the Germans' fate, the whole book is infused with a disturbing sense of doom - but Thorpe exhumes more than just their final hours and the conclusion of the book was, to me at least, totally un-anticipated.
Thorpe is a very poised and considered writer. I knew of him, but I shall now be seeking out the rest of his books
This is an extremely powerful novel, compellingly written and completely devoid of resistance workers, farmers wives hiding airmen or any of a dozen cliches of that conflict. Thorpe skilfully interweaves two stories - one of a young American soldier taking part in the liberation of Germany, and the other of a group of German art gallery staff taking cover in their museum under the Allied bombardment. We know from the very outset that they do not survive the ordeal as Parry (the American) finds their corpses as the novel begins, but we do not know how or to what purpose their stories will unite. Because the reader knows of the Germans' fate, the whole book is infused with a disturbing sense of doom - but Thorpe exhumes more than just their final hours and the conclusion of the book was, to me at least, totally un-anticipated.
Thorpe is a very poised and considered writer. I knew of him, but I shall now be seeking out the rest of his books
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The book opens in April 1945, just before the end of the war, with the art museum in the little town of Lohenfelde being bombarded by American artillery and finally receiving a direct hit from an American phosphorus shell and catching fire. Sheltering in the vault were four members of the museum's staff, whose corpses are found by an American patrol led by a young corporal, Neal Parry, who had taken an art course back in the States and had designed advertisement for cigarettes and such like.
After this opening, the chapters more or less alternate between, on the one hand, going back to the last few hours when the staff were still alive in the shelter and, on the other, going forward from the moment when Parry had found the corpses. The horrors of war, powerfully described by the author, are ever present in both parts. The rumble of guns, sometimes distant, sometimes near, is ever in the background; crumbling masonry has filled the air with dust, debris and smoke; objects and torn limbs have been flung about into the weird juxtapositions of Dada paintings.
The reader knows, when he reads the conversations in the shelter, of the characters' impending doom. They themselves are of course fearful; their talk is fitful and at times inconsequential, but suppressed tensions between the four come to the surface, as do suppressed secrets. They all have patriotic and dutiful feelings; the two women spout Nazi sentiments about Jews and Bolsheviks; the two men are more reserved in this respect.
The book asks us to think about what works of art can mean to some people in the midst of the ugliness and destruction of war.
The central German character is Herr Hoffer, the Acting Director of the museum. He loves the Germannness of German art, but he grieves for how much of its modern expressions had been declared degenerate, while other fine paintings had simply been removed by high-up Nazis for their offices or homes. (One SS man, an art lover who is obsessed by one painting in particular, plays an important role in the story.) Other pictures had been stored for safety in a salt mine for the duration of the war. Hoffer had managed to save from this deportation only a few of his most beloved paintings by hiding them in the Museum's vaults.
One of these was a small German landscape which Parry finds in the ruins and "appropriates". Parry's aesthetic feelings about art are not reflected in the coarse language in which he thinks and expresses himself (and which contrasts also with the formal language of the four Germans and also with Thorpe's often beautiful prose). But then most of his thoughts are not about art anyway, but about his army experiences, about all the devastation and all those "deads" he has seen, about his life back home, about his ancestors, about sex past and present.
At the end of most of the chapters there are a few enigmatic lines in italics. I was quite glad to have read a "spoiler" on the American Amazon website which explains where they come from. We can perhaps guess it towards the end, when they add a further dimension to the story - though even when (on the last page) we know whose voice they are and re-read them, they remain rather obscure.
The book has its longueurs in the middle; but each of the two stories comes to a tense and dramatic end.
After this opening, the chapters more or less alternate between, on the one hand, going back to the last few hours when the staff were still alive in the shelter and, on the other, going forward from the moment when Parry had found the corpses. The horrors of war, powerfully described by the author, are ever present in both parts. The rumble of guns, sometimes distant, sometimes near, is ever in the background; crumbling masonry has filled the air with dust, debris and smoke; objects and torn limbs have been flung about into the weird juxtapositions of Dada paintings.
The reader knows, when he reads the conversations in the shelter, of the characters' impending doom. They themselves are of course fearful; their talk is fitful and at times inconsequential, but suppressed tensions between the four come to the surface, as do suppressed secrets. They all have patriotic and dutiful feelings; the two women spout Nazi sentiments about Jews and Bolsheviks; the two men are more reserved in this respect.
The book asks us to think about what works of art can mean to some people in the midst of the ugliness and destruction of war.
The central German character is Herr Hoffer, the Acting Director of the museum. He loves the Germannness of German art, but he grieves for how much of its modern expressions had been declared degenerate, while other fine paintings had simply been removed by high-up Nazis for their offices or homes. (One SS man, an art lover who is obsessed by one painting in particular, plays an important role in the story.) Other pictures had been stored for safety in a salt mine for the duration of the war. Hoffer had managed to save from this deportation only a few of his most beloved paintings by hiding them in the Museum's vaults.
One of these was a small German landscape which Parry finds in the ruins and "appropriates". Parry's aesthetic feelings about art are not reflected in the coarse language in which he thinks and expresses himself (and which contrasts also with the formal language of the four Germans and also with Thorpe's often beautiful prose). But then most of his thoughts are not about art anyway, but about his army experiences, about all the devastation and all those "deads" he has seen, about his life back home, about his ancestors, about sex past and present.
At the end of most of the chapters there are a few enigmatic lines in italics. I was quite glad to have read a "spoiler" on the American Amazon website which explains where they come from. We can perhaps guess it towards the end, when they add a further dimension to the story - though even when (on the last page) we know whose voice they are and re-read them, they remain rather obscure.
The book has its longueurs in the middle; but each of the two stories comes to a tense and dramatic end.
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This is a powerfully written novel written in the dying days of World War II and set in a small German town.
There are three main narratives running through the book. There is the US army arriving and their main task is to eliminate any remaining opposition and take control of the defeated town. The next narrative involves the museum staff hiding in a vault. From the outset we know they are dead which makes their petty quarrels and professional jealousies all the more poignant. The third narrative is an enigmatic anonymous disembodied voice. The explanation for this comes only at the end.
All three main characters are art lovers. The American Corporal Parry is a commercial artist but with ambitions for better things. Herr Hoffer is the museum director with a genuine love of some of the paintings held by his museum. There is also Bendel, an SS Sturmführer who is obsessed by a Van Gogh painting. His obsession is complicated by the fact that Van Gogh is not held in favour by the Nazis because of his perceived mental illness.
It's a tough read in parts but the writing is consistently excellent. The last third is tense and gripping and the reader really has no idea about how it will all end. Although it is set in wartime there are few heroic acts - but when these do occur they come from a surprising source.
I would not normally mention the cover but my paperback edition uses a Robert Capa photograph of a soldier resting on a window ledge which captures the tone of the book brilliantly.
There are three main narratives running through the book. There is the US army arriving and their main task is to eliminate any remaining opposition and take control of the defeated town. The next narrative involves the museum staff hiding in a vault. From the outset we know they are dead which makes their petty quarrels and professional jealousies all the more poignant. The third narrative is an enigmatic anonymous disembodied voice. The explanation for this comes only at the end.
All three main characters are art lovers. The American Corporal Parry is a commercial artist but with ambitions for better things. Herr Hoffer is the museum director with a genuine love of some of the paintings held by his museum. There is also Bendel, an SS Sturmführer who is obsessed by a Van Gogh painting. His obsession is complicated by the fact that Van Gogh is not held in favour by the Nazis because of his perceived mental illness.
It's a tough read in parts but the writing is consistently excellent. The last third is tense and gripping and the reader really has no idea about how it will all end. Although it is set in wartime there are few heroic acts - but when these do occur they come from a surprising source.
I would not normally mention the cover but my paperback edition uses a Robert Capa photograph of a soldier resting on a window ledge which captures the tone of the book brilliantly.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Unexpected, a gem
There have been so few books that deal with WW2 without cliche. There's this, and there's Robert Edric's 'Peacetime'. Highly recommended.
Published 9 months ago by Taylor
The rule comes after the law
April 1945 and the not very important town of Lohenfelde in Germany is about to be overrun as the invading British and Americans march towards Berlin. Read more
Published 20 months ago by Eileen Shaw
A Really Heavy Bomber
I adore Adam thorpe and consider his previous Novel 'No Telling' to be perhaps my favourite contemporary work of fiction, and certainly alongside my other favourites, the New York... Read more
Published on 4 Sep 2006 by S. Murphy
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.
|
