- Paperback: 408 pages
- Publisher: Faber & Faber
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0571214533
- ISBN-13: 978-0571214532
- Product Dimensions: 21.2 x 13.4 x 3.6 cm
- Shipping Weight: 458 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
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Most helpful customer reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
One wonders why Findley wrote this book.,
By Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Spadework: A Novel (Hardcover)
From a writer whose publicity bills him as "Canada's greatest living writer," this book is both a surprise and a disappointment. Telling the story of a group of participants in Ontario's Stratford Festival, the book includes many subplots, all dealing with some issue of love--love from the past, young love, new love, love of children, homosexual love, thwarted love, love of self, love of career--and the extent to which the characters are willing to sacrifice for it. While some of the dialogue, such as that in an early birthday party scene, pops and crackles, as one would expect in the writing of a playwright, other aspects of the book creak and groan, weighed down by irrelevant details and a shocking number of cliches. Ten pages into the book, Jane comments that she is the luckiest girl in the world. "I've got everything I wanted," she says. One is not surprised, then, when fate decides to teach her a lesson in the ensuing 400 pages. The personal conflicts which evolve are too shallow to allow for the illumination of great themes, and the characters are one-dimensional, prone to observations one has read many times in many other novels. Upon seeing the Bell telephone man, Jane decides, "He was the most beautiful man she had ever seen. But his beauty was more than physical. There was something...indefinable." Her psychiatrist has a print of Paul Klee's "Scholar 1933" on the wall, "his inner eye, his daily reminder...that life was full of endless mystery and that nothing was known." An outdoor love scene takes place against a background with "not a single cloud. And yet...There was thunder." And it is difficult to take seriously a reference to "the voice of a man she barely knew, but a man she also knew she loved." For those who enjoy sentimental stories and can do not mind cliches, this novel provides a look at life in a theater company and a great many love stories, which end, literally, with "the sound of water flowing over the dam."
5.0 out of 5 stars
Canadian Goodness,
By Ez (Melbourne, Australia) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Spadework (Hardcover)
Griffin Kincaid gets involved with another man, while his wife Jane becomes obsessed with the telephone repairman. Loved this book, especially the scenes with Milos Saworski. (A+)
4.0 out of 5 stars
Easy, readable novel from Findley,
By "cathst" (Toronto, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Spadework : A Novel (Paperback)
The Kincaid family lives a superficially contented, easy life revolving around the theatre in Stratford until one day their gardener slices their phone cable, some vital calls are missed, and their lives begin to unravel. A very readable, suspenseful novel, a bit different from what I'm used to from Findley. I'm a big Findley fan, but this is not my absolute favourite of his... and Findley himself called it his "slightest book," although I'm not sure I'd go that far. It still goes to say that this is a really great book with believable characters and a complicated plot with common but complex themes. It may even make you question your own character and what events it would take to make you break away from what you think is most important in your life. Note also that anyone who's ever been to Stratford, Ontario, will recognize a lot of landmarks and even people in this story!
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