Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Enjoyable and thought-provoking, 3 Aug 2005
Not often does one come across a novel that is original both in content and style. Peter Hobbs' debut novel is one of those rare cases. Hobbs manages to draw the reader into the world of the narrator, Charles Wenmoth, within a couple of pages, and remains faithful to his approach thereafter: Using simple prose interspersed with powerful images and similes, and a rhythm dictated by Wenmoth's thoughts and state of mind. The reader begins to see the world through Wenmoth's eyes and is utterly gripped by his determination and shocked by his occasional lack of sensibility, especially in matters of the heart. Where lesser novels or TV soap operas need explicit action scences or a soppy soundtrack, Hobbs manages to create extreme suspense and atmosphere by slowing down the narrative pace, sometimes almost to a standstill - only to speed it up again by throwing in a one-page chapter or a summarizing paragraph here and there. And always sticking to Arthur Schopenhauer's advice: Use ordinary words to say extraordinary things. Or, sometimes more appropriately in Hobbs' case: Use ordinary words to say ordinary things in an extraordinary way. A thoroughly enjoyable and thought-provoking book.
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12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"Except ye see sights and wonders ye will not believe", 11 Jul 2006
Set in 1875, The Short Day Dying is reminiscent of a mellifluous tone poem, a spiritual ode to one man's hard driven life has he struggles to come to terms with his faith and the glorious natural beauty of the world around him. Narrated in the first person, author Peter Hobbs stunningly emerges us into the world of Charles Wenmoth, a poor and solitary Methodist lay-priest who spends his days preaching to townsfolk and attending to the sick, whilst working as a blacksmith at the local forge.
Life for Charles is tough; he's a lonely and somewhat tortured soul, who throughout the course of the novel is forced to question his faith. A simple man "unfit for beauty and grace," he admits he has an untutored mind and often he struggles in his sermons to get to the truth of things. It is only when he is wondering through the bucolic beauty of the Cornwall countryside that he manages to feel rejuvenated and at peace.
When Thomas visits Harriet French, a young local woman who is dying, her deep illness acts as a catalyst and he begins to question much of what he sees around him. There's much anger here - anger at his people who have turned away from faith and who now have so little love for "the Lord," abandoning their search for the "pearl of great price," determined to satisfy themselves with worldly ambitions.
There's also anger at the men who once came and opened up the land with mines and quarries, extracting its wealth. For this is an area of England where villages that were once prosperous with farming have now decayed, becoming cracked and grimy; the mining does not seem to have bought riches to these communities. Over the years, families that Charles has loved, preached to and cared for, have fallen on hard times.
The mortal sins of drink have also struck the land, causing a terrible curse, with people destroying themselves, and there are those who have invited it to the family's table as though it were food to live from. A reunion with James, a childhood friend, causes Charles to reflect and remember, but his memories cannot bring back happiness and every delight he has in them seems but a form of sadness and loss. It's "where the past is a small domain, it's boundaries are thin and close."
Throughout the course of the novel, Charles's faith is constantly tested. He's beleaguered by regret and melancholy, and often feels quite downcast - there's "a darkness to his soul and he wonders what spirit or sadness possesses him" - and he even becomes conscious that God himself and the holy savior are perhaps testing him. It is only through his relationship with the land that he realizes "heaven resides at our feet as well as over our heads."
The text ignites as the author contrasts the struggles of Charles as seeks to offer the ailing Harriet spiritual solace, whilst enduring the aloofness of her younger brother and her lonely mother. He also must contend with the constant antipathy of his landlady who seems to resent his obvious poverty. Only with patience does he manage to keep his faith a hard stone, "a small thing but powerful and not easily crushed."
Told almost in a stream-of-consciousness style with very little punctuation, A Short Day Dying takes us into the very heart of one man's journey towards redemption. Hobb's theme is one of healing, no matter the damage and empathy for a world that often seems careless of human feelings and their place in the universal scheme of things. Totally encapsulated in a world of faith and belief, we see "how God and the world are one, the land a proper representation of his order." Mike Leonard July 06.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A tender exploration of one man's plight, 3 Jun 2006
This tenderly written debut novel sensitively deals with one man's discovery of love and crisis of faith.
It's a thoughtful, intelligent novel which almost deliberately calls into question the brutal cynicism of so much modern literature. The novel touches on many important philosophical and theological questions: the nature of suffering and of love, the relationship between nature and God, faith, reason and doubt.
In many ways it's beautifully done. Hobbs's imagery is subtle, and there's a refreshing simplicity to the narrative. But one niggle: written in the first person, and with a sense of the narrator's Cornish roots coming over in the cadences of the sentences, there are a number of quirks in the writing - particularly the absence of much helpful punctuation. I assume that this is attempting to replicate Hobbs's narrator's own style of writing - in which case, surely spelling and capitalization too ought to be suitably archaic and irregular? Yet even in this, there seems to be a purpose - sentences become ambiguous, particularly at some of the novel's most crucial important moments.
Apparently, Hobbs has a collection of short stories due for publication shortly; if this novel is anything to go by, we'll be in for a treat.
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