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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Probably the best book you'll read this century, 17 Jan 2000
By A Customer
A brilliant book - you find yourself thinking about certain scenes months after you've finished it. You miss the characters and want to know what they are doing now .... I especially loved Hen.Finn, the Auctioneer, observes: "Hen's yellow hair. My palette has no other name for it than yellow; my inside information says it isn't bleached, or poured out from a bottle marked Butterscotch or Strawberry Blonde. The only artificial treatment is the lemon juice she rubs in at the sink in the morning, when she still looks too young to be a mother". And when Finn first met her: "I can't say that's what sealed it. But I know that if a certain part of me, something I had always trusted with my most important decisions, had curled up and gone to sleep instead of standing on tiptoe for a better view, our relationship would have ended with her driving me back to my two-roomed flat and wishing me luck in finding a life." So many threads within the story - is this what travelling in Australia is really like ? what had actually happened to piano playing Margaret? possessions of the dead falling under the auctioneer's hammer, twentysomethings living under the roof of a Victorian mill, plastic brains, drugs, the Green Knight, handcuffs. It was marvellous, when I read it the second time, to discover bits that I hadn't noticed first time round because I had been in such a hurry to know how it was going to work out. Would Finn meet up with Anna ? would it be worth the wait ? were they all going to succumb to "Bliss" ? Surely Hen wasn't going to die ? It's a very clever book and the writing is sublime - it's definitely up there with "The Beach", "Quarantine" and "The Leopard". Absolute entelechy - hurry up and write another one, Charles Fernyhough.
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