- Hardcover: 240 pages
- Publisher: Canongate Books Ltd (8 Feb 2007)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1841958921
- ISBN-13: 978-1841958927
- Product Dimensions: 21.2 x 13.4 x 2.2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 926,779 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
When To Walk
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Product Description
Review
"By far the best novel I've read this year. Rebecca is a genius." SCARLETT THOMAS "Clever, comical and unpredictable, When to Walk took me inside the mind of a woman half-way between stupor and crack-up, a mind in an odd equilibrium, half appalled and half wonderstruck by existence. I love the way the narrator thinks. She's clever, obtuse, pliant, stubborn, solemn, funny, easy-going, angry; a teasing creation." TIM PEARS"
The Scotsman 20.01.07
"an intriguing voice, cleverly constructed and refreshing. Gowers
is one to watch."
is one to watch."
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
When to Walk is a fantastic read, but you wouldn't know it from a back-cover blurb or review synopsis: We're told that Ramble's marriage suddenly ends over lunch, her husband calling her an "autistic vampire", how does she go on, blah blah blah. One is forced to (rightly) wonder: Surely this isn't compelling stuff? Is there really anything original left to say on this subject?
What's most surprising is what the blurbs DON'T say: namely, how extraordinarily FUNNY the book is! Ramble, deaf in one ear and with "a dysfunctional pelvis", has a mind that's both brilliant and bent; her attention to detail is almost panoptical, and her tendency towards digression, reflection, and bewildering interpretation is no less hysterical than it is astounding. Her internal dialogue can make the strangest sidesteps - as when the sudden appearance of someone surprises her, and she promptly recalls the earliest OED citation (c. 1513) of the word "wow".
This is the tenor of the novel's narration, and you'll either love it or hate it. The lunchtime pronouncement is a clear illustration, as it's NOT what the husband said, so much as her instant rewording: "He didn't put it like this, didn't use either of the words I'm about to use, but I found he was telling me that in the person of his wife, I have degraded into an autistic vampire." She's incredibly intelligent, possibly gifted, hopelessly internal in her workings, and one gets the sense of her being slightly surprised by most everything - if only for a second. At one point her husband complains that she spends too much time inside her own head, and we're annoyed to concede that he might have a point. (Not that this makes him any less of a bastard.)
The novel takes place over a single week - each of the seven chapters comprising a single day - and, given the kind of story it is, doesn't have the greatest amount of plot. This has seemingly frustrated some readers, but I had no quarrel with that fact; Ramble's character and voice are such a singular mixture of ridiculous and affecting, that my only complaint was that it ended at all: I gladly would have read many more weeks' worth of her strange and comical misadventures.
When to Walk is Rebecca Gowers' first novel, and it's an astonishing debut. I'll be anxiously awaiting her second.
What's most surprising is what the blurbs DON'T say: namely, how extraordinarily FUNNY the book is! Ramble, deaf in one ear and with "a dysfunctional pelvis", has a mind that's both brilliant and bent; her attention to detail is almost panoptical, and her tendency towards digression, reflection, and bewildering interpretation is no less hysterical than it is astounding. Her internal dialogue can make the strangest sidesteps - as when the sudden appearance of someone surprises her, and she promptly recalls the earliest OED citation (c. 1513) of the word "wow".
This is the tenor of the novel's narration, and you'll either love it or hate it. The lunchtime pronouncement is a clear illustration, as it's NOT what the husband said, so much as her instant rewording: "He didn't put it like this, didn't use either of the words I'm about to use, but I found he was telling me that in the person of his wife, I have degraded into an autistic vampire." She's incredibly intelligent, possibly gifted, hopelessly internal in her workings, and one gets the sense of her being slightly surprised by most everything - if only for a second. At one point her husband complains that she spends too much time inside her own head, and we're annoyed to concede that he might have a point. (Not that this makes him any less of a bastard.)
The novel takes place over a single week - each of the seven chapters comprising a single day - and, given the kind of story it is, doesn't have the greatest amount of plot. This has seemingly frustrated some readers, but I had no quarrel with that fact; Ramble's character and voice are such a singular mixture of ridiculous and affecting, that my only complaint was that it ended at all: I gladly would have read many more weeks' worth of her strange and comical misadventures.
When to Walk is Rebecca Gowers' first novel, and it's an astonishing debut. I'll be anxiously awaiting her second.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
Gowers has a touch of quirkiness and sheer originality to her protagonist's p.o.v. in this book. Her husband Con has left her, after telling her precisely why, but it is only slowly, gradually, do you realise quite how heartless he has been. Ramble (her surname, but she seemingly has no other) has a spectacularly disabling illness, but you're not given the chance to worry about it, since she doesn't. Her body seizes-up sometimes but she has fearsome medication and being left by the glum, miserabalist that is Constantine ought to be a bonus, and it is. She (sort of) makes friends with the alarming woman who's moved into the maisonette downstairs and is put right about how to cheat on the lecky and cover up the evidence.
There's some cheering sex action a bit later on, and prior to that she is trying to write a magazine article about ice sculptures, oh and then she goes to see her mother (who thinks Ramble is her son's wife rather than her daughter) Ramble Senior is rather cheerfully alzheimic. Sorry, I know I'm not making this sound funny, but trust me, it really is. I recently read her second book, The Twisted Heart, which has some nice connections (the randomness and the intelligence especially), but this one is like an early painting in the career of a soon to be famous painter. Maybe not as finished and worked over as what has come later, but special and wonderful, like the beginning of a beautiful song.
There's some cheering sex action a bit later on, and prior to that she is trying to write a magazine article about ice sculptures, oh and then she goes to see her mother (who thinks Ramble is her son's wife rather than her daughter) Ramble Senior is rather cheerfully alzheimic. Sorry, I know I'm not making this sound funny, but trust me, it really is. I recently read her second book, The Twisted Heart, which has some nice connections (the randomness and the intelligence especially), but this one is like an early painting in the career of a soon to be famous painter. Maybe not as finished and worked over as what has come later, but special and wonderful, like the beginning of a beautiful song.
7 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
Ramble's husband tells her their marriage is over and walks out the same day, this leaves her with many unanswered questions, not least of which, how she will pay the rent.
What follows is a slow meander through her thoughts, whether they be about her marriage, or about her grandmother with dementia, why the couple downstairs keep arguing, the meaning of photographs she has seen or why so many pigeons have missing toes.
There are funny snippets in this book, but it did leave me feeling slightly unsatisfied. Nothing much happens, and whilst this is OK if you are totally absorbed in the main character that just didn't happen for me with this novel.
Interesting, just not amazing.
What follows is a slow meander through her thoughts, whether they be about her marriage, or about her grandmother with dementia, why the couple downstairs keep arguing, the meaning of photographs she has seen or why so many pigeons have missing toes.
There are funny snippets in this book, but it did leave me feeling slightly unsatisfied. Nothing much happens, and whilst this is OK if you are totally absorbed in the main character that just didn't happen for me with this novel.
Interesting, just not amazing.
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