- Hardcover: 304 pages
- Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) (September 2001)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0618049347
- ISBN-13: 978-0618049349
- Product Dimensions: 21.9 x 14.8 x 2.7 cm
- Shipping Weight: 490 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #2,383,581 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
This first novel by the Scottish author of the well-received novella collection Several Deceptions is an unusual mixture of genres: part thriller, part social comedy and part, as the cunningly punning title suggests, a study of how a variety of different people make unexpected connections in a great city. The story revolves around an elderly Greek banker, Mr. Eugenides, living alone in an odd corner of the city, who is the only living link to what may be a considerable treasure, in artifacts and real estate, linked to a Greek-founded London church destroyed in the WWII blitz. An unscrupulous, snobby young lawyer learns of it and becomes involved with some cold-blooded Greek plotters in a scheme to confuse the old man and wrest the treasures from him. Meanwhile, Eugenides is befriended by Sebastian, a dashing, gay scholar of Greek antiquities who shares his love for classical poets. The plot lines converge when Jeanene Malone, a forthright young Australian student of Sebastian's, working part-time as a pharmacist, becomes suspicious of a prescription she is asked to fill by the crooked Greeks. Throw in Jeanene's Indian lawyer lover; Alicia, a cheerful crusader for open spaces who hopes to salvage the church site as a community garden; her ever-hungry dog Alice; Sebastian's rather square lover, Giles; and a climactic motorcycle chase through Gloucestershire, and you have a fair idea of the range of character and incident that crowds Stevenson's ebullient creation. It is rather overstuffed, in fact, but written with such tenderness, wit and brio, and deep affection for London and its people, that it is irresistible. National advertising.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Stevenson, whose novella collection Several Deceptions was favorably compared to the works of A.S. Byatt and Iris Murdoch, has written a tantalizing mystery. At its center is the discovery of an outrageously valuable piece of ruined property in the center of London, most recently owned by a Greek church. This forgotten real estate contains treasure both territorial and intellectual, and the elderly and reclusive caretaker is soon discovered and cultivated simultaneously by an endearing gay classicist, Sebastian, and the morally bankrupt team of grasping lawyer Edward and enigmatic and remorseless Lamprini, foes with quite different aims. The circle of intrigue inevitably comes to encompass a small clutch of young Londoners and foreigners, their eyes on the prize with quite a variety of goals in mind. From the first pages, in which the threads of disparate lives quite reasonably begin to weave around the treasure in a soundly classic plot, to the climax, a semi-comic chase uniting everyone including Alice the dog, the story satisfies. An evocative and witty romp through modern London, for all libraries. Margee Smith, Grace A. Dow Memorial Lib., Midland, MI
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items. |
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most helpful customer reviews
1.0 out of 5 stars
Disappointingly pretentious,
By "atheb" (London, England) - See all my reviews
This review is from: London Bridges (Paperback)
With a potentially interesting range of characters and a complex plot, I had high hopes for this book, but it let me down badly. The characters are little better than two-dimensional stereotypes, and most of them basically unlikeable stereotypes at that. There are pages and pages of useless dialogue about unrelentingly pretentious topics that are totally irrelevant to the plot. Such as it is. During the supposedly dramatic finale I fell asleep several times due to the long-winded and poorly-paced description of events. I got no sense of danger or excitement and amazingly, considering how bad the rest of the book was, the end was an anti-climax. The only thing that would have saved it would have been if one of the obnoxious heroes had been killed. No book has annoyed me so much for years. Not since the equally terrible My Legendary Girlfriend. My advice is only read this if you enjoy the company of excessively smug intellectuals. And one more thing: her knowledge of London geography is patchy at best. Do not use it as a travel guide.
3.0 out of 5 stars
gmarfin@msn.com,
By
This review is from: London Bridges (Hardcover)
London has long been an international city and, in London Bridges, Jane Stevenson is keen to show just how networked it, and its inhabitants are. Geographically London spans the globe in this short novel and, on a temporal plane, London reaches through history. At the heart of the novel is, Eugenides, a Greek lawyer, an aging gentleman of the old school, with ties to an ancient Greek Monastery. He has in his possession rare manuscripts, and within his power of attorney, access to priceless relics over which he is charged to supervise at the request of his monastic clients. With all these qualifications, he is a natural target for con-artists. In no time, they find him, and the effort to swindle commences. Stevenson's London is magnetic: a visiting Australian student, a London lawyer of Indian descent, Greek monks and Greek crooks, a British scholar of ancient Greece, Brits residing in France: all, and others besides, play key roles in Stevenson's novel. There are times in London Bridges when I felt that Stevenson was losing control -- when the novel's complex plot had kidnapped the writer. "Meanwhile, on Saturday of that week, Hattie rang Sebastian." "Edward, meanwhile, had entered a stage of abject, bowel-liquidising terror..." "Meanwhile in Islington, Hattie Luck was getting ready to go to a party." "Jeanne, meanwhile, had troubles of her own." Meanwhile the reader is tossed around like the hapless tourist in a Puerta Vallarta cab. One advantage of the plot, with its "meanwhile-back-at-the-ranch" tempo, is that it does move the novel along. As does the prose, for Ms. Stevenson does not squander words. Ms. Stevenson's novel shows us a London at once vast and knowable. She merits a wide readership, especially among those of us who call other cities home, but who retain connections to that most international of capitals.
2.0 out of 5 stars
Suprisingly amateurish,
By A Customer
This review is from: London Bridges (Paperback)
I was surprised at just how poorly written this humorless little book is. Ms. Stevenson is an established author and a professor, so it pains me to say that London Bridges has the distinct whiff of Creative Writing 101. Perhaps she is trying to prove a point about the state of British publishing by passing off one of her students' fumbling attempts as a real book. The plot could be very interesting, but is completely undermined by laughable dialogue and cartoonish characters. Though I am glad I only checked it out from the library, the 25 cent late fee was perhaps too much to pay for this slush pile dreck.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Want to see more reviews on this item?
|
Most recent customer reviews |
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
