Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"This is not a thriller, but a stark portrait of where we are now" - Coelho, 1 April 2009
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
THE WINNER STANDS ALONE sees Coelho move away from his usual themes, in some ways.
The novel takes place during the Cannes Film Festival, concentrating on four main characters. As Coelho describes in his preface, one of the recurring themes of his work is the importance of "paying the price for following your dreams". With this new novel, Coelho examines to what extent people's dreams can be manipulated. Three of his main characters are all people whose dreams are being manipulated by different forces; Igor, who believes that killing can be acceptable if it means he will win back the woman he loves; Hamid, a fashion magnate who began with good intentions but is now caught up in the world he tried to use to his own ends; and finally Gabriela, a young woman who believes that fame is the ultimate dream and reward.
Using the fashion world and the film industry as a backdrop, Coelho begins to weave the worlds of these characters together as Igor begins to make good on his promise to his ex-wife to destroy whole worlds to get her back. An intelligent, yet extremely dangerous man, Igor will stop at nothing to keep his word.
I have long been a fan of Coelho, enjoying how his books often make me stop and think as I read them. As with all of his works, THE WINNER STANDS ALONE is no different in that regard. There were moments when I felt as though Coelho had opened up my soul and looked inside, seeing those vulnerabilities which I try and keep hidden from others. At other times, there were moments when I disagreed quite wholeheartedly with what he had to say. For me, this makes the reading experience all the more satisfying - an author who will stimulate me, inspire me, anger me and placate me.
Although it is different for Coelho, I loved it.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Read his other books instead, 17 May 2009
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
This book is so frustrating to read! The chapter headings helped me get through the torturous 400 pages. Each chapter is a time of day and I kept thinking to myself that the day was nearly done and the book would be over. Phew, what a relief when it was!
The reader follows a Russian businessman called Igor, who wants his love back. Actually, it felt more like a case of "if I can't have her then no-one else can". His wife is with a new man called Hamid and his story and Igor's story is told intermittently throughout the novel. In order to get his wife back, Igor uses the Cannes film festival as a back drop for a killing frenzy.
I feel that although the book lacked any emotion, this was the author's way of getting across the insincerity of the stars and celebrities involved in the Cannes festival. Yet for some reason it didn't work. It felt too academic and became a chore very early on. This is my fifth read of Coelho's and is one I won't recommend to friends.
I can't even describe who this book would appeal to. It reads like it should be a thriller, but it isn't. I've given it two stars instead of one star, simply because once I made the decision to read it in as short a time frame as possible I actually got into the characters a bit more. In hindsight, this isn't actually a selling point and maybe it should join the one star reviews.
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15 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Disappointing, 22 Mar 2009
The Winner Stands Alone is a thriller set in the Cannes Film Festival. The main character is Igor, a wealthy Russian business man who is trying to win back his wife, after she left him two years ago. Igor has a very twisted view of how to win a woman's affection, and so decides to kill a series of people in order to attract her attention. The methods of murder were interesting, as they involved a great deal of skill, and some of the observations about how little people at the film festival notice their surroundings were well made, but the majority of the book was disappointing.
The writing was simple, so easy to read, but lacked the depth found in great books. This book is supposed to be a satirical look at the world of celebrity, but I thought the observations were too close to the mark, and therefore not at all funny. I found the characters to be shallow, materialistic, and extremely irritating, so I developed no empathy for any of them. The pace of the book was also quite slow, so it didn't really work as a thriller.
Overall, I found the plot to be too basic, and the ending disappointing. I'm afraid I can't recommend this one.
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