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The Rules of Perspective (Hardcover)

by Adam Thorpe (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
RRP: £12.99
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The Rules of Perspective + Ulverton + Between Each Breath
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Product details

  • Hardcover: 320 pages
  • Publisher: Jonathan Cape Ltd (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: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 685,420 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category:

    #18 in  Books > Fiction > Authors, A-Z > T > Thorpe, Adam

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Product Description

The Sunday Telegraph

"Thoughtful, gripping and increasingly gripping novel" --This text refers to the Paperback edition.


Product Description

It is April 1945, and the small provincial town of Lohenfelde is about to be overrun by the Allied Third Army. Huddled in the vaults of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Museum to escape the artillery bombardment, are Heinrich Hoffer, the Acting Director, and his three colleagues: two women and one man, underground and under siege. Their petty rivalries and resentments surface quickly in this claustrophobic confinement, and the vaults become a stage for an intense psychological drama of secret histories and shared terror, as the four prepare themselves for their fate. Above the ground, picking through the rubble, is Corporal Neal Parry, who wishes he was back in West Virginia studying art and not dodging snipers in another hostile German town. When he finds an exquisite painting in what remains of the museum vaults, he is immediately reconnected with a lost world of beauty and order: the world of art. It is this small 18th-century oil - the appropriately titled Landscape with Ruins - that is the poignant link between the young American soldier and the four charred corpses he finds at the same time. As the narratives interweave, the story of the painting reveals the hidden story of Herr Hoffer and his three associates - and in doing so uncovers other, darker mysteries. In this thrilling re-creation of the last months of the Second World War, Adam Thorpe has written a narrative tour de force which vividly illuminates both the frailty of humanity and its indomitable spirit. Through his beautifully drawn characters, Thorpe allows us to see - just as they begin to see - the possibilities of art and love: perspective, in the face of war.
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What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

The Rules of Perspective
61% buy the item featured on this page:
The Rules of Perspective 4.0 out of 5 stars (2)
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Customer Reviews

2 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.0 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars A Really Heavy Bomber, 4 Sep 2006
By S. Murphy (Worcester) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: The Rules of Perspective (Paperback)
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 Trilogy and Howards end (yes, that good). This novel is still excellent fiction and full of lucid, exquisite passages and nail biting, precise plotting.

However.

there is a breathlessness about the plotting which drags you along as if you are reading a Tom Clancy novel, and the musings of Curator and reluctant Reich member Heinrich Hoffer are so rich and satisfying, that a longer work with a much slower pace seems in order. Thorpe splits his narrative between three voices, that of Hoffer (with whom I was most comfortable: he is by far the best written), Neal Parry, an american serviceman, and a mysterious, whispering disjointed narrative voice.

The novel would have been much stronger with just Herr Hoffer's voice and The middle class, middle aged Thorpe does not quite get into the mind of the twenty-something GI, not as well as he gets into Her Hoffer's baggy borgeois trousers.

This is a novel of themes, but the themes confuse. It is supposed to be about the healing powers of a single work of art but ends up being about two works of art. The musings and philosophy are excellent but sadly, sadly give way to stilted action hero and 'extreme peril' which was almost like reading a film screenplay.

Adam thorpe is in my opinion the best writer in English writing today. Ulverton, Pieces of Light and No telling are three supreme masterpieces which will be read in 100 years, but this novel needs to calm down, thin out the plots and put down its gun. PS, the disembodied voice. A bit obvious. You can't cover every aspect of WW2 in 300 pages unless you write an epic, which this is not.
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7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Powerful & Fresh, 31 Jul 2007
By A. Weston "Adrian Weston" (Brighton, UK) - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   
This review is from: The Rules of Perspective (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
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