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Timoleon Vieta Come Home
 
 

Timoleon Vieta Come Home (Paperback)

by Dan Rhodes (Author)
2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (45 customer reviews)
RRP: £9.99
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Timoleon Vieta Come Home + Don't Tell Me the Truth About Love + Gold
Price For All Three: £18.45

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Product details

  • Paperback: 192 pages
  • Publisher: Canongate Books Ltd (3 April 2003)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 184195389X
  • ISBN-13: 978-1841953892
  • Product Dimensions: 21 x 13.6 x 2.2 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (45 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 683,769 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category:

    #12 in  Books > Fiction > Authors, A-Z > R > Rhodes, Dan

Product Description

The Guardian

'The best new writer in Britain.'


The Observer Life Magazine

One of '5 Best Debuts for 2003'

Inside This Book (Learn More)
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Timoleon Vieta Come Home
64% buy the item featured on this page:
Timoleon Vieta Come Home 2.9 out of 5 stars (45)
£8.99
Gold
10% buy
Gold 4.1 out of 5 stars (18)
£4.98
Don't Tell Me the Truth About Love
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Don't Tell Me the Truth About Love 4.7 out of 5 stars (6)
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Anthropology: And a Hundred Other Stories
8% buy
Anthropology: And a Hundred Other Stories 4.2 out of 5 stars (17)

 

Customer Reviews

45 Reviews
5 star:
 (13)
4 star:
 (6)
3 star:
 (5)
2 star:
 (7)
1 star:
 (14)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
2.9 out of 5 stars (45 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
20 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Beautifully written, but, but..., 13 April 2003
By -meaulnes- (UK) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   
Sometimes a writer, a band or a sports star comes along with a unique gift, wowing a grateful audience with their sheer exhilerating newness. They seem to be able to do, or see things that no one else seemed to be able to do or see before. We all greedily gobble up their books or records, or watch their performances with awe, always expecting more and more... but then comes the disappointment.

I feel this way about Dan Rhodes. After reading the short story collection "Don't tell me the truth about love", I was excited about this new author. Here was an author who could conjure a whole, fairy-tale universe with a few phrases. Here was an author who looked unflinchingly at the dark side of love, who could lovingly portray bitterness, aching rejection and the cruel randomness of it all, while entertaining us and making us laugh at the same time. When I heard that he had written a novel I couldn't wait to read it, and see how these strange new worlds would look on the expansive format of the novel.

Well, there's good news and bad news. "Timoleon Vieta" is just as entertaining, funny and beautifully written as Rhodes' two previous books. But it's the same kind of thing! And here's the rub. I'm probably just been ungrateful, because there is a lot of greatness in "Timoleon Vieta". The main character Cockroft, the ageing, slightly bitter, homosexual composer, is a great comic creation. The mysterious character The Bosnian, who invades Cockroft's cosy life in rural Italy, is fantastic at first, until we find out more about him, and he becomes slightly one-dimensional. The way The Bosnian takes seriously Cockroft's flippant comment about how to pay the rent in lieu of money is at once hilarious and disgusting.

"Timoleon Vieta" is, like "Anthropology" and "Don't tell me the truth about love" before it, about the dark side of love. In this story, the simple love of the dog Timoleon Vieta for his master, Cockroft, is usurped by the lonely old man's desire to please the handsome, mysterious Bosnian. The Bosnian hates the dog, and he persuades Cockroft, in a moment of drunken madness, to drive somewhere far away and abandon Timoleon Vieta. After this act of befuddled, desperate selfishness by Cockroft, the story concerns Timoleon Vieta's attempts to get home to his beloved master, and Rhodes beautifully tells the tales of the people encountered by the dog as he makes his way home.

At this point, the novel stops resembling a novel, and encroaches back onto territory Rhodes has visited before - the short story. The people the dog encounters all have a tale of twisted love to tell. Rhodes cleverly weaves all the narratives together, much in the way David Mitchell did with his debut novel "Ghostwritten". So as well as the story of Cockroft and his dog, we get extra twisted fairy tales, such as the one about the strange, predestined love affair between a goody two-shoes deaf girl and the town juvenile delinquent, or the one about the young Cambodian girl's love for her childhood friend. It's clever, and the stories are great, but I couldn't help feeling a little disappointed, because I was expecting a novel, but "Timoleon Vieta" is more of a "sort of" novel.

But that's just selfish griping. I'm slightly disappointed, but I'd be crestfallen if Dan Rhodes wasn't writing. "Timoleon Vieta" is well-constructed, the different stories are woven together beautifully, it's wonderfully written and it makes you laugh out loud some times, but makes you feel achingly sad other times. Like Rhodes' previous offerings, the book looks at the darkness and sheer illogicality of love with a perceptive, sympathetic eye that makes it worth more than a million Tony Parsons novels. The main weakness of the book is the way The Bosnian's character is developed. The part in which The Bosnian's past is fully revealed is unconvincing, and it jars with the style and setting of the rest of the book.

This is well worth a try for any fan of good, interesting fiction who has loved and lost, loved and not been loved back, loved and dumped, loved and been dumped, or just fancied the girl down the road. It's quite a strange little book, but then we're strange little people...!

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14 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Fabulous read!!, 12 Aug 2006
This book has certainly sparked some mixed reviews! Personally I loved it! I am an animal lover; I would rather give to an animal charity than a human charity any day and I often find myself more moved by the plight of animals than by that of humans. Despite the fact that I love animals, I still enjoyed this book and don't condemn it just for its gruesome ending. I don't see how just because one is an animal lover the end would make them condemn the whole book.

Yes, the ending is disturbing (but you really do see it coming from early on and so have plenty of time to brace yourself) and I did find the last few pages difficult to read. I read them whilst chanting in my head "it's not real, it's not real, it's not real"!

There are some wonderfully tragi-comic moments in the book. I found the humour very dark and dry and the general style often slightly reminiscent of "Perfume" by Patrick Suskind. There are also a few genuinely comic moments without the element of tragedy infused in them.

All in all, a great book; very entertaining but maybe avoid if you're inclined to be a tad over-sensitive..
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10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Maybe my favourite book...., 12 May 2006
Having read the frankly, quite ridiculous reviews of this book on here, I thought I'd add my own thoughts. This is a disturbing tale, yes, now, disturbing tales aren't automatically bad literature, and there isn't a law against literature affecting you in a negative way. This is an imaginative, fascinating and brutal tale that captivated me from start to finish. It's not a wholesome tale, no, but why on earth should it be? There's a dog on the front of the book, if thats enough to make someone buy the book, well, they're a moron to be frank. Animal lovers can read this book, because guess what, it's not a true story. If you are that disturbed by a pretend dog meeting a brutal end to his life, maybe you should also kick up a stink about the millions and millions of films and books where human beings meet pretend brutal ends.

I would recommend this book to anyone with an open mind and a sense of humour.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

1.0 out of 5 stars Threw It In The Bin
This book had such hype surrounding it I couldn't wait to get it. It was hard going anyway but I in no way expected the graphic and extremely upsetting ending... Read more
Published 3 months ago by Ms. L. C. Kelly

3.0 out of 5 stars Thank God I read the last chapter
I was enjoying this book immensely and on page 123, I liked the dog so much that I thought I should check his ending. After reading the last chapter I didn't read on. Read more
Published 3 months ago by penfold

5.0 out of 5 stars one of the best books of all time
There are so many books one reads, but hardly ever remembers a couple of month later.
This book is an exeption. Read more
Published 10 months ago by universe1763

1.0 out of 5 stars I hated this book
Not wanting to rant against this I'll keep it short. It was hard to empathise with most of the characters in this book and the style was emotionless and bland. Read more
Published 17 months ago by Rebecca

2.0 out of 5 stars **** DO NOT BUY THIS FOR AN ANIMAL LOVER, THEY WILL ONLY HATE YOU FOR IT !!! ****
Without wishing to state the obvious, whether you find this book funny depends on your sense of humour.

There are too many sadnesses, amongst too much darkness. Read more
Published on 4 Nov 2007 by Henderson Bell

1.0 out of 5 stars Absolute Rubbish
I was convinced by a friend to get this book and this book was absolutely disappinting. It had no plot, no substance, and nothing to offer. It was a waste of time.
Published on 31 Oct 2007 by caboodle

2.0 out of 5 stars Unengaging plot development culminating in the ultimate let down ending...
I was initially quite interested in the story which has an enigmatic charm to it. When Timoleon Vieta is left to fend for himself in Rome (around a third of the way through), the... Read more
Published on 20 Jul 2007 by Mr. S. S. Turner

3.0 out of 5 stars Left Me Unmoved Either Way
I have to admit I only read this because I was stuck in a corner of Thailand without reading material, and this was the best-looking thing on the shelf where I was staying... Read more
Published on 17 Aug 2005 by A. Ross

4.0 out of 5 stars Great story teller
The fact that the people awarding this book one star never even finished the book doesn't suprise me. Read more
Published on 25 Jun 2005 by fringemeister

1.0 out of 5 stars Hysterically funny???
I bought this book thinking it was funny and a good read. I didn`t laugh once. I cried and I felt sick. This book put me in a horrible mood. Read more
Published on 11 May 2005 by Ingvild

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