- Paperback: 321 pages
- Publisher: Picador USA (March 2011)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0312681135
- ISBN-13: 978-0312681135
- Product Dimensions: 20.1 x 13.1 x 2.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 295 g
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Product Details |
Product Description
Review
“A witty, irreverent, and elegiac new novel.” —The New York Times Book Review
“A novel where the humor is melancholic, the melancholy mischievous, and the talent startling.” —Milan Kundera
“A wittily observant young author . . . Audacious.” —Joyce Carol Oates, The New York Review of Books
“In The Escape, you can practically see Bellow’s Augie March, Roth’s Mickey Sabbath and Martin Amis’s John Self applauding, ghost-like, from the margins . . . The novel fizzes with intelligence, verbal skill and humour.” —Simon Baker, The Observer (London)
“The Escape is one of the best British novels I’ve read this year for one reason: Thirlwell’s prose. At once effervescent and elegant, his narrative voice lifts the novel’s lecherous comedy beyond the sublunary lovers’ antics into a more rarefied sphere . . . The novel abounds, from start to finish, with graceful turns of phrase and slanting insights . . . What rescues The Escape is no deus ex machina, no twist in its plot . . . but instead the cadences and harmonies of a very fine composition.” —Sarah Churchwell, The Guardian
“Witty and engaging, erudite but fleet and sinuous; the questions he asks are lightly posed, his mock grandeur dispersing in a sea of ridiculous incident and comic undercutting . . . In this playful, eloquent novel, Adam Thirlwell demonstrates that knowing why one acts as one does is rarely the whole answer, or much more than the beginning of a question.” —Alex Clark, The Times Literary Supplement
“Effortlessly blends reflections on memory with, say, hanky-panky in bathtubs. The result—enough to shock even a dedicated philanderer—is an accessibly cerebral story of one man and his tragic libido.” —Scott Indrisek, Time Out (New York)
“In The Escape, you can practically see Bellow’s Augie March, Roth’s Mickey Sabbath and Martin Amis’s John Self applauding, ghost-like, from the margins . . . The novel fizzes with intelligence, verbal skill and humour.” —Simon Baker, The Observer (London)
“The Escape is one of the best British novels I’ve read this year for one reason: Thirlwell’s prose. At once effervescent and elegant, his narrative voice lifts the novel’s lecherous comedy beyond the sublunary lovers’ antics into a more rarefied sphere . . . The novel abounds, from start to finish, with graceful turns of phrase and slanting insights . . . What rescues The Escape is no deus ex machina, no twist in its plot . . . but instead the cadences and harmonies of a very fine composition.” —Sarah Churchwell, The Guardian
“Witty and engaging, erudite but fleet and sinuous; the questions he asks are lightly posed, his mock grandeur dispersing in a sea of ridiculous incident and comic undercutting . . . In this playful, eloquent novel, Adam Thirlwell demonstrates that knowing why one acts as one does is rarely the whole answer, or much more than the beginning of a question.” —Alex Clark, The Times Literary Supplement
Book Description
'The more I knew of Haffner,' writes Adam Thirlwell in The Escape, 'the more real he became, this was true. And, simultaneously, Haffner disappeared.'
In a forgotten spa town snug in the Alps, at the end of the twentieth century, Haffner is seeking a cure, more women, and a villa that belonged to his late wife. But really he is trying to escape: from his family, his lovers, his history, his entire Haffnerian condition. For Haffner is 78.
Haffner, in other words, is too old to be grown up.
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Customer Reviews
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
2.5 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Clever, melancholic farce but less than engaging, July 16 2010
By Ripple - Published on Amazon.com
Fans of Milan Kundera or Philip Roth will appreciate this clever, well written, melancholic farce of a story, but it's not a novel that engages the reader due to the lack of sympathetic characters.When we first meet seventy-eight year-old Raphael Haffner, he is hiding in a spa hotel closet watching a twenty-something year-old yoga instructor (who knows he's there) having sex with her boyfriend (who doesn't). Haffner is a British, Jewish former banker who is staying at the spa in Central Europe while on a mission to reclaim his dead wife's villa that in nearby that was confiscated by the Nazis in the war. Thirlwell's narrator, some fifty years younger than Haffner (ie the age of the author) describes the aging libertine Haffner as "lustful, selfish, vain - an entirely commonplace man". Charming.
But it's not really a plot-driven novel. Interspersed with trying to develop two affairs - one with the ever flexible yoga teacher, Zinka, and another with a middle aged, married resident of the spa - with varying amounts of success, are Haffner's recollections about his Jewish childhood in North London, fighting in Africa in the war, his banking career and various loves including his deceased wife, jazz and cricket amongst other things.
I confess to being in two minds about this book. There are bits I enjoyed and bits I found terribly frustrating. Haffner is not a likeable character by any means and, as even one of his friends notes "Haffner always thought there was so much more to Haffner than anyone else ever thought". This is a bit of a problem. Haffner is a symbol of the greed and selfishness of modern-day life, but the overall tone of the book is that of a melancholic farce. There's much reflection on a life either lived or wasted, about the beauty of defeat and about escaping from your past.
On the plus side, the writing is highly intelligent in places, and Thirlwell shows great skill in his use of words, and the sex scenes - often so excruciating to read in novels - are genuinely funny. Thirlwell's first book, `Politics', gained something of a reputation for its sexual content and clearly this is a subject still very much on the author's mind. I found myself admiring the writing more than enjoying the book though. Partly because of the endless repetition of Haffner's name, I felt that I was kept at a distance from the story rather than being engaged in it.
If the name `Haffner' has made you think of a similarly named individual (and yes, the joke is made explicit in the book) then this also hints further at the `cleverness' of the writing. In a postscript to the book, Thirlwell identifies 46 writers from whom the book contains "quotations, some of them slightly adapted". This list includes, amongst others Thomas Mann, Groucho Marx, Leo Tolstoy, William Shakespeare and George Eliot. Academically, this is clever but perhaps it accounts for the slightly cold feeling I got from reading the book. In terms of style though, there are hints of several writers who I do like, including Milan Kundera, John Updike's Rabbit and Philip Roth's Portnoy, none of whom feature on Thirlwell's list. Thirlwell's writing isn't derivative as such, but the overriding sense was that he puts me in mind of some great authors without reaching that level himself ....yet.
At one point, the narrator muses "but no, just right now, I'm not quite in the mood for Haffner, and his confusions", and I'm afraid I sort of knew what he meant.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars
The Escape, Jun 13 2010
By J. Michael - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Escape (Hardcover)
Save your time and money. After reading one-third of the book I still had no idea what was going on nor did I care. Fortunately I was able to return the book and received a refund.
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