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Ancestral Vices
 
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Ancestral Vices (Paperback)

by Tom Sharpe (Author)
4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Paperback: 240 pages
  • Publisher: Pan Books; New edition edition (11 Jun 1982)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0330266357
  • ISBN-13: 978-0330266352
  • Product Dimensions: 17 x 10.9 x 1.5 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 735,108 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category:

    #45 in  Books > Fiction > Authors, A-Z > S > Sharpe, Tom

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Product Description

Review
'Tom Sharpe is in top form... outrageously funny... Left-wing academics, right-wing capitalists, true-blue country gentry, workers, peasants, police and lawyers - all take custard pies full in the face in this boisterous knockabout farce' The Listener 'A novelist who has broken out of the pack, established a wholly distinctive style... such a keen eye for the ridiculous and marvellous ability to puncture it' Scotsman 'An immense gift for social satire... the action is unflagging' Daily Telegraph 'There's almost no on funnier' Observer --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Daily Telegraph
‘An immense gift for social satire… the action is unflagging’ --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Customer Reviews

6 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.8 out of 5 stars (6 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
12 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Typical Sharpe... no bad thing!, 30 Aug 2003
By Andy Millward (Broxbourne, Herts, UK) - See all my reviews
(TOP 50 REVIEWER)      
This review is from: Ancestral Vices (Paperback)
I remember reading Ancestral Vices for the first time, on a train. And did I laugh? I howled, I wept, I was a helpless, quivering jelly for minutes at a time. The other passengers probably assumed I was having a fit or seizure.

In terms of plotline and characterisation, it is typical of Sharpe: the English class system is torn apart like tissue paper in a vicious social satire; the male characters are unsympathetic pedantics and deviants; women are often hideous gorgons. Yet there are two qualities that also come out in a Sharpe novel - a quaint love of the fault-ridden society with its appalling mores, iniquities and moral dilemmas, and a darker subtext presenting the evils of meddling with that society.

Like few other writers I know, Tom Sharpe has an unerring eye for the ridiculous, and a rapier wit to exploit a farce to its most extreme potential. Some people might call it juvenile, schoolboy humour (including Sharpe himself), but that undersells his skill as a writer.

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5 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars I couldn't put this one down, 25 Jul 2000
Yet again, Tom sharpe impressed me with his ability to make me laugh at a turn of a page.

Ancestral vices I thought was slightly more unique than the other Sharpe books, but still as clever and unpredictable as ever.

No one escapes in this book, whether it be politicians, lecturers or the housewife, they are all victims of Toms unmistakable style.

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2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A fantastic read, 24 Oct 2003
By A Customer
This review is from: Ancestral Vices (Paperback)
A great book, nice to see it back for another edition. Shame it's in a larger format, won't fit in my pocket now!
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars worth ten stars
he did tail off in his later books,but this for me is the high point.no clues to the plot,just get it and enjoy. Read more
Published 24 months ago by D. abbott

5.0 out of 5 stars Tom Sharpe - A Genius
One of the very few authors with the talent to make you laugh out loud, book after book. I guarantee that once you have read one of his novels, you will be frantically searching... Read more
Published on 7 Oct 2006 by Tom Browne

5.0 out of 5 stars Top DRAWER
The king of satire.

There is no funnier writer today.

Please tell me if there is as I have read all his collection

A joy.
Published on 12 Aug 2006 by Dk Roche

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