Andrew M. Woodward

The new Hemingway?

Revisado: 06-24-10

Terrific story and an even better movie and the baddie is a truly marvellous depiction of pure evil, but I've seen Mr McCarthy touted as the great stylist and I can't go for that. If style means using the conjunctive more than any other writer in recorded history (he walked down and did x and shot y and got in his car....and and and ...I got lost listening for a full stop) then yes but Hemingway did this long ago and far better

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The drinking detective

Revisado: 06-12-10

Marlowe is a wonderful creation. I do wonder how, given his heroic 24/7 drinking and seeming ability to survive on a diet of eggs, he ever managed to detect anything more significant than his sock drawer, and the plot is wonderfully incoherent, but it's a superb reading that brings Marlowe's cynicism and humanity into terrific relief. Huge fun.

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Padding

Revisado: 06-12-10

I really wondered when this was ever going to start. The answer is about two thirds of the way through. Endless horribly padded chapters about the two armies, their strategies, the build up to the battle, the commanders, and Lord knows what else before you finally get to the battle. Of course we need some context, but frankly you could lose most of the first half of the book and be no less informed.

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Accents

Revisado: 06-12-10

GMF is one of my all time favourites, but I am not sure about the reader. GMF was Anglo-Scottish so why have a very upper class English drawl for the reading? Especially as he has to do the Cumbrian voices, which are so much of the magic of the book. I'm not sure if they are authentic,not being a Cumbrian but frequently they end up sounding like North country Daleks, which I suspect is not quite right!

But get past this, and the book itself is a wonder - Frasers unsentimental vivid ability to put you in the events with him is extraordinary, as is his ability to evoke characters and make the reader empathise with his pride in his comrades. And then there are the desperately moving or very funny set pieces - the scenes where the section share out the kit of a comrade killed in action, the looting of the air drop, and best of all GMF's speculating about what the section would have done if they'd been given the option of dropping the bomb or not, which truly raises the hairs on the back of your neck. And most of all the dialogue.

It pains me as a Flashman fan to say this, but this is the best GMF ever did.

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Good story but the reading...

Revisado: 06-12-10

Great story, but someone else should have read it. Goodness she is OTT.

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Unbeatable

Revisado: 06-12-10

If there has ever been a better reader than Martin Jarvis I haven't found one and if there was ever a better suited book for him than Copperfield I haven't heard it. The great characters come leaping out of the I-Pod and once you've heard him do Micawber, Uriah Heep, Aunt Betsy, Murdstone, Traddles et al you can never imagine them any other way. Dickens used to do public readings of his books - if Jarvis had been around he'd have paid him to do it for him. Glorious stuff.

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