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The Venturi Effect
 
 

The Venturi Effect [Kindle Edition]

Andrew Linzee Gordon
4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)

Print List Price: £10.99
Kindle Price: £1.53 includes VAT* & free wireless delivery via Amazon Whispernet
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Product Description

Review

Ian McEwan immediately springs to mind ... This is a writer who can write and has something to say ... reminds me of the best writing of Iain Banks. --Golgonooza

An impressive piece of work ... original, imaginative, well crafted, funny and affecting by turns. --Martin Ouvry, The Literary Consultancy

... writes with great confidence, vigour and creative energy ... modern, hip and edgy. --Cornerstones

Elegant, thoughtful, clever, very readable and highly original. --John Paxton Sheriff, Writers' News

`Vivid, cerebral.' --The Times

`Rich, dense and lathered in knowing pop-culture references, The Venturi Effect plays like Brideshead Revisited reworked by Iain Banks. It's a caustic and often funny book which belongs firmly in the literate, questioning tradition of John Fowles.' --Eddie Harrison, The LIST

`Andrew Linzee Gordon is not afraid to tackle the big questions. And for any man who has ever been obsessively in love with a beautiful woman, this novel is for you.'
--Rowan Pelling, 2004 Man Booker Prize JUDGE

Product Description

After you die it takes seven years for you to go to Heaven. Give or take the odd minute or two. This girl I loved told me that, seven years ago, just before she went and topped herself. Now I'm praying for her sake that it's true.

So begins Thomas, The Venturi Effect's faithless narrator, who is lying face-up, freezing and abandoned on the wind-swept tower of a Scottish castle. In his hand is a telescope, with which he hopes to discover, in a minute or two, the truth about his girlfriend's salvation...

Powerful and disturbing, this astonishing first novel leads you on a compelling and thought-provoking journey, on the trail of God's footprints, towards love, loss and letting go.


Product details

  • Format: Kindle Edition
  • File Size: 653 KB
  • Print Length: 448 pages
  • Publisher: Wild Wolf Publishing (9 Aug 2010)
  • Sold by: Amazon Media EU S.à r.l.
  • Language: English
  • ASIN: B003Z0D0YA
  • Text-to-Speech: Enabled
  • X-Ray: Not Enabled
  • Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #179,180 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Startling First Novel 13 Jan 2010
Format:Paperback
A startling first novel from Scottish writer Andrew Linzee Gordon. The title hints it will be a book of no mean ambition, but to tackle God, Love, Death and Alcohol so thoroughly in a single tome excuses its unfashionable length.

Linzee Gordon writes with a fluidity of language and ear for the vernacular that flows like a northern river in spate. There are elements of caricature reminiscent of Beerhohm, and occassional Landseer-like sentimentality, but the most original voice which emerges is that of a cerebral traveler, ever questioning the whirly gig of fate. All this is tempered by a diverting and astringent wit.

In addition to being most apparently a love story, in an almost courtly tradition, it is also a eulogy to a place (Aberdeenshire) and way of life (clannish,hierarchical) that is fast disappearing.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars The Venturi Effect 7 Dec 2009
Format:Paperback
This book is a great read. Surprising really, given that the prologue prepares the reader for a full-on Greek tragedy. It is all there; love, loss, suicide, death of the cosmos... Heavy stuff you may think, especially when enmeshed within the metaphysical ropes of Godly faith. What makes this book compelling reading from the start is its lively descriptive style, which, despite the central themes, is frequently very funny. Wit shines through, driving the narrative with a momentum that carries the reader through the darker aspects of the story.

The novel is set in London and Aberdeenshire. The central character and narrator, Thomas, tells us he is unobservant, but Linzee Gordon is clearly not. There are wonderful caricatures of London trendies and dropouts, whose desolate, cocktail-fuelled lives provide a sharp contrast to the rich portrayal of content Aberdonian crofters; the hardship of whose lives would finish off the trendies and most of the rest of us too. But the most entertaining characterisation is left to the author's own tribe - the Scottish landed gentry, who float through the narrator's consciousness in a very 21st Century Comedy of Manners: it's like an episode of "To The Manor Born" re-written by Irvine Welsh. Having said that, the Scottish Tourist Board should be pleased with this book, if only for the hauntingly beautiful descriptions of wintry Aberdeenshire.

Returning to the main themes of love, loss and faith, the reader is taken on a moving journey through hope and despair towards death, and what lies beyond; both for the living and the dead. The quest and question of spiritual faith is explored within a background of cataclysmic solar events, which foreshadow the human narrative unfolding beneath.
... Read more ›
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1 of 3 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars The Venturi Effect is a very funny book 12 Jan 2010
By T. Page
Format:Paperback
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book - refreshingly funny and hopefully the first of many from Mr Linzee Gordon.
Definitely worth a read if you like trying out new authors.
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0 of 4 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars A wierd story full of wierd people 2 April 2012
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
I bought this book (for kindle) as it came reasonably well-recommended on the Amazon site (only 3 reviews but all 5-star) and I have really struggled to find anything good about it. The whole thing is in such a skewed reality full of people, events, places that are just a carricature of anything that seems remotely realistic. I think the author is trying to make a point about something (religion, fate, faith?)and read doggedly to the end of the book in the hope that all would become clear - but for me it never did. I found myself dislliking all his characters. I seriously hope none of these people really exist - certainly have no desire to meet any of them!

The writing style doesn't help either; the book is full of unnecessarily long sentences. There were quite a few times when I had to go back to the start of the sentence (several lines earlier) to remind myself where it had set out from. I can't remember if this book has the option to download a sample - but if it does then I advise you to try before you buy. I'm reasonably well read and have reasonably eclectic taste but this just book didn't do it for me at all.
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