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From Library Journal
Bernard Walsh is planning a quiet visit to his sick aunt in Hawaii. A cynical ex-priest in search of a well-needed vacation, he is unprepared for this zany package tour from Hell populated with all the "types": dueling newlyweds, boring salesmen, video happy seniors, romance starved spinsters, and a sexy native girl on a collision course with fate (or at least Walsh's father). Lodge combines an interesting mix of viewpoints and writing styles, switching among characters and including such diverse approaches as diaries and postcards. Essential for anyone who loves to travel or wishes they could, this is highly recommended for vacation reading collections. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 12/91.
-Suzanne C. Garrison-Terry, Dowling Coll. Lib., Oakdale, N.Y.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
-Suzanne C. Garrison-Terry, Dowling Coll. Lib., Oakdale, N.Y.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Kirkus Reviews
Lodge combines his past fictional interests in Catholicism (The British Museum is Falling Down, etc.) and social satire (Nice Work, etc.) to produce this always engaging and clever tale of innocents abroad. The unlikely naif is Bernard Walsh, a rather dour, middle- aged, part-time instructor in theology from a minor college in Lodge's fictional town of Rummidge. What we don't know at first is that he's also a former priest, the son of Irish-born immigrants to South London who have never become reconciled with their son's descent into apostasy--his now ``wasted life.'' When the family's first black sheep summons Bernard to her deathbed in Hawaii, he agrees to attempt a reunion between her and her brother--Bernard's cantankerous father--whom she hasn't spoken to in 40 years. Getting old Jack Walsh to travel halfway around the world is just the start of Bernard's problems. Once they arrive in ``paradise,'' events conspire to postpone the meeting in which brother and sister will confront some long-suppressed family secrets. Bernard's personal journey--his loss of virginity, and his leap forward in self- confidence--is all the more enjoyable because Lodge sets it against a larger profile of the fellow Brits who come to Hawaii on Bernard's charter. There's Russ Harvey, a yuppie honeymooner, and his Ice Maiden wife, whose vacation is spoiled from the start by a revelation at the wedding reception; there are a couple of elderly second honeymooners who record everything on video; there are the two spinster teachers in search of ``Someone Nice.'' And, of course, no Lodge novel would be complete without a pompous academic--in this case, an anthropology prof who specializes in tourism, which he is ``deconstructing'' on a grant from the British Association of Travel Agents. American litigiousness and health policy come in for some well-deserved mockery along the merry way. Narrative tricks aside, Lodge's Catholicism and his gimlet eye make him the true heir of Evelyn Waugh. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
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'What do they see in it, eh? What do they see in it?' Leslie Pearson, Senior Representative (Airport Reception) of Travelwise Tours plc, surveys the passengers swarming in the Departures Concourse of Heathrow's Terminal Four with an expression of mingled pity and contempt. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
'What do they see in it, eh? What do they see in it?' Leslie Pearson, Senior Representative (Airport Reception) of Travelwise Tours plc, surveys the passengers swarming in the Departures Concourse of Heathrow's Terminal Four with an expression of mingled pity and contempt. Read the first page
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fantastic; Lodge at his best and that's saying a lot!,
By A Customer
This review is from: Paradise News (Paperback)
David Lodge is one of the most gifted writers around and Paradise News is one of his best books.Bernard is an ex-priest who who left the priesthood after realizing that he was and always had been an atheist. His decision to leave the priesthood (which he entered as an adolescent) leaves him with no real meaning in his life until his aunt calls him to her deathbed. With his father, Bernard travels half-way around the world (from England to Hawaii) in an attempt to reconcile his father and his aunt. In doing so, he discovers who he is and what he has been searching for. The themes in this book (pedophilia/sex abuse, unresolved sexuality among young priests etc.) are especially timely right now but even without these themes the book has an incredible pull and power.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Reconciliation and Renewal in Paradise,
By WifeofBath3 (Hattiesburg, Mississippi United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Paradise News (Paperback)
In Paradise News, David Lodge does something unusual. His main character is a forty-something virgin, sexually inhibited and celibate by force of habit. Perhaps more uncommon, Bernard is an honest man. He's even a somewhat boring, ordinary man, not particularly neurotic or troubled, and yet still cabable of growth over the course of the novel. More extraordinary still, Lodge gives us a sensible love story and sensible sex. How often do we see that? It makes a refreshing change. But for those who don't think an honest man with moral concerns getting a sensible--if much overdue--introduction to sex and falling in love in a sensible way doesn't sound interesting, think again. Lodge is always worth reading. He entertains (funny situations; the wish fulfillment story of how Bernard's aunt ends the book better off than she started it) and he provokes thought (among other things, vacationing as the modern-day pilgrimage, a pursuit of paradise). The only strikes against this book are that it starts off a bit slow, focusing at first on characters you know will be minor. It picks up speed quickly enough, but the minor characters are perhaps not all they could be--a small concern really, when they are better than many writers would have managed. And the incest theme lacks punch. It may be a sad commentary on the cynicism and jaded sensibilities of my generation when one of us can say, "Ho hum, incest again", but that's the way it is. The incest serves its purpose in the novel, but that whole subplot just wasn't as interesting as the larger story of Bernard's renewal. And as that IS intersting, Paradise News is well worth reading.
5.0 out of 5 stars
A gentle, witty novel about change,
By
This review is from: Paradise News (Paperback)
Most of Lodge's books deal with academia, generally centering around a rather seedy little University in the mythical working-class village of Rummidge. While the story begins near the school, where the story's principle protagonist is employed part time, the plot quickly moves to the opposite end of the world, both geographically and culturally: Hawaii.Charles Armstrong has arrived with his aged father to visit his long estranged aunt, who married and American and shortly after the war. She's dying of cancer, and wants to see her brother one last time, in part to unburden herself of something terrible that happened between them when they were children. Charles knows nothing of this when he begins his trip, and assumes he'll be there for a week or two to help his aunt settle up. But things are never that simple in a Lodge book. Charles and his father have booked their passage via a discount tour group full of the sorts of broadly drawn caricatures that Lodge does so well. There's an Australian couple coming to meet their son's "special friend" that they assume is his finace', a professor specializing in the anthropology of travel (who is mistaken for a travel writer and given the full VIP treatment), and a family that must be every travel agent's nightmare, to mention a few. As always, Lodge manages to weave all these stories together and bring them all to a satisfying conclusion that is both surprising and pleasant for all- or at least most- concerned.
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