The Angry Island: Hunting the English [Hardcover]

The previous reviewer should have read the book. Mr. Gill's descriptions of British War memorials are almost unfailingly admiring--and constitute some of the best writing in the book. Angry Island is both acerbic, precise and hilariously funny social commentary--and a heartfelt cry for reason. Hyperbolic, cruel--and yet true enough. It's the sympathy and humanism peeking out from inside Gill's silk-lined jacket that makes him such a great essayist, another splendidly failed idealist--like Orwell or Hunter Thompson.

Mr Gill's polemical little treatise is simply awful. It is one of the most venomous, hate-filled, bile-soaked bundles of papers created ever since Mr A. Hitler put down the paintbrush and took up the genocide-advocacy business.

It is also one of the most delightful, lyrical books I've ever been fortunate enough to read.

I exaggerate, of course, and this is exactly what Mr Gill does as he sets about deliberately trying to demolish every shibboleth, to pull the tail of every sacred cow, to dispel every assumption there ever was about the English.

His central theme is that far from being restrained, witty, animal-loving gentlemen, the single defining characteristic of the English is their anger. He does so in 16 vitriolic chapters smashing preconceptions on everything from humor and drinking, to gardening and sports. It's perhaps with deliberate irony that a book that takes the English to task for their madness should do so in such froth-flecked terms.

Indeed, it would be easy to be distracted by the book's many annoyances. Take, for example, Mr Gill's pedantic insistence on identifying himself as a Scot, despite having lived his life since age 1 in England. Not only does this strike me as ungrateful, but the whole "Scotland is a country" riff comes off as childish, like two siblings drawing an invisible dividing line down a shared bedroom.

Yet getting angry with Mr Gill would not only prove him so smugly right, but it would also deprive you of the joy of his prose. Whatever I think of the man or his views, he knows how to write, how to make words sing. In Mr Gill's prose, stairs are "clumsy" with flowers, class snobbery is as "smart as a wet patch" on the front of your pants, airports are "the maternity units of queues".

However over-the-top his views, there is much here that is intelligently observed. Take, for example, the English war against the Zulus, in which England doled out an unprecedented number of Victoria Crosses. The really brave ones, notes Mr Gill, were the Zulus, who took on the British armed with no more than a knife on a stick and a leather coffee table. His enumeration of all the ways "sorry" can mean something else, if not its complete opposite, is spot-on.

Finally, the book is undoubtedly funny. As he admits in the chapter on Humor, English jokes are often at their funniest when aimed, not shared, and his own book is Exhibit A. This attack on the English class system is as hilarious as it is unprintable. His description of the English delight in their own misfortune--a kind of self-reflexive schadenfreude--will tickle anyone who has spent time among the English.

Disjointed, bombastic, frequently wide of the mark, Yes. But also witty, intelligent and poetic. Ah, the man may talk like the devil, but he writes like an angel.

Make no bones about it....A.A. Gill does not consider himself to be British even though he has lived amongst them all of his life. He's a Scot and from the beginning this difference as well as other nations' comparisons are wryly and often harshly drawn out. This is a wonder of a book and probably the first book I've read that isn't propelled by nouns and verbs. "The Angry Island" is all about adjectives, spiced up with a lot of invective. From page one, I couldn't put it down for a minute.

The author covers a wide range of topics about which to consider the Brits...their history, humour, class, voice, sport, drink and so on. At almost every turn, Gill pummels away. There is a rogues gallery of portraits of English kings and queens, described by Gill in various ways of contempt. The narrative gets really juicy as he relates the British "soul" (or lack, thereof) and his ability to write memorable phrases is outstanding. When, for instance, he speaks of the quintessential British fondness for gardening, he asks why we don't ever see people in those gardens. (Gardens do, apparently, make great final resting places for the dead) A typical Gill comment is this one, regarding why Brits are always queueing up. He says, "the English queue because they have to. If they didn't, they'd kill each other". And in a terrific chapter about nostalgia, Gill reminds us that the word itself, didn't exist before 1900. It didn't have to. But then again, the Empire was about to fall apart, hence the current nostalgia. Everything was better in your parent's generation, of course, than it is today.

"The Angry Island" is not just one tirade after another. Gill compliments the British on their memorials, especially those commemorating the "Great War." And in a personal chapter, while reporting that the English love their drink to the point of besottedness, he reveals his own alcoholism. It's a poignant moment in an otherwise stormy book.

The author does have a knack for the use of adjectives and they abound in "The Angry Island", making the read all the more enjoyable. But it's his ability to peel back the layers of this overly-composed nation to get at what is really either wrong or funny (or both!) about the seemingly most uptight people in the world. To this end, I highly recommend "The Angry Island". It may not make one understand the British any better, but then again, it just may.

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