Commentaires client les plus utiles
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5.0étoiles sur 5
Breakdown, Déc 26 2001
Of all the thousands of books I have read, this is my favourite. My own literary efforts were arrested by my certain inability to attain Tim Parks' mastery of the English language. The most beautiful prose I have ever read is contained within these pages. The style is deeply contemplative and finely detailed - reminiscent, at times, of Proust's Recherche Du Temps Perdu. The story meanders through the obsessive musings of the narrator as he allows himself to be led reluctantly on a bizarre and seemingly pointless expedition. Like Hemingway, Tim Parks possesses a distinctly expatriate view of life in continental Europe. His wry commentary on the idiosyncracies of the European Union is strikingly apt even today, as anyone who has had the dubious pleasure of living within its borders will swiftly realise.Europa is a story of and for the introspective among us - those prone to incessant reflection and, inevitably, regret.
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2.0étoiles sur 5
A painstaking, plodding read, Mars 27 2001
I wanted to like this book, I really did. The seductive cover, high praise on the jacket, and the fact that this novel was "shortlisted" for the famed British Booker Prize whet my appetite. But I must say, having just put it down, that the book was one agonizing read.The premise for the novel is hopeful - a 45 year old visiting professor at the University of Milan, against his better judgment, joins a motorcoach full of academics and students on a trip to the European Parliament, to protest perceived discrimination by Italian laws restricting their employment. Apparently many of these visiting professors took their jobs as a temporary measure, on a break from writing books or furthering their academic careers elsewhere, and then realized they wanted to keep teaching despite agreeing to term limits. In any event, Marlow agrees to accompany the motley crew despite having no real passion for the cause. There is some unspoken belief that the trip will result in decadence and romance among the students and their older lectors, whose jobs they are all presumably fighting to retain. In fact the whole idea was hatched by a Welsh Indian named Vikram, who chases anything in a skirt, with a wink to our narrator. The reader is reminded a little of the "key party" of The Ice Storm as the riders of the bus begin to nervously sort out their roommates for the hotel. We soon learn that Jerry is plagued with guilt, and that he is obsessed with one of the younger members of the entourage, referred to throughout the book namelessly as "she," with whom Jerry previously carried on an extended torrid affair that ended very badly. Jerry feels guilty for striking the girl, and is likewise guilty about walking out on his wife and teenage daughter after confessing of his affair. At the climax of the novel, as the group makes their pitch at Parliament, Jerry's daughter turns 18 back home without him. Europa is told in the first person, and Jerry's account of the trip is endlessly interrupted by long, looping narrative histories of his affair, of his prior philosophical discussions with his girlfriend, and of his chauvinistic rambling with other male professors discussing conquests of their "totties" (apparently a British term for loose women). The action is never in the here and now, as the reader is taken on one digression after another. For example, a simple question posed to Jerry, when his fellow bus rider asks him what he is reading, leads to pages of self-analytical nonsense that leaves the reader numb. Parks never stays with the action long enough to engage the reader's attention, even when the plot seems to be moving toward an engrossing idea or event. I know it's stream of consciousness, and perhaps we all think like Jerry narrates, but I still like a little bit of plot and narrative structure to my novels. There were a few memorable parts to be sure. Jerry's devastating skewering of the film Dead Poet's Society (which the party watched on monitors on the coach) forever changed the way I view that movie. And the bittersweet tale of a past dinner party involving Jerry, his wife and daughter, and a clearly disturbed Vikram and his young son left a lasting impression. Unfortunately, these lucid moments came all too infrequently in a book dominated by rambling, middle-aged angst. This would have made a better novella than a full length novel.
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5.0étoiles sur 5
Wonderful book by a remarkable writer., Mars 10 2001
I read this rather lenghty book in two consecutive days, immersed in Park's looping, breathtaking, inner monologue, stream of conscience writing. This novel is about an obsessive love afair, a troubled, alienated, at times self-loathing academic with his heart not in the academic game show at all, a tale about the "other" as another reviewer succintly put it, about the complexities of life and the self, and more. A tour de force for this remarkable but underrated writer, with a writing style unlike anything you 've read recently, managing to be literary without being tedius and artificial(see m. amis, pynchon, barth et al.for that), and a striking, powerful ending. Park's musings on life and philosophy, european history and themes are never out of place or turgid, and they make very good reading material, adding a texture to the words.Caught up in an unsatisfying marriage, a dead-end lifeless job, a failed yet once passionate and potentialy life-changing love affair, conflicting feelings and instability, Jerry the protagonist somehow agrees to take a trip to the European parliament to express his disagreement with the wage cuts on his job, which he does not particularly like, with a few fellow academics and a number of female students at his Italian university, and, of course, the french woman who is the cause (or is she just the pretext) for his recent worries. Riding on a bus through Europe and at the same time travelling intensely in his thoughts and memories, Jerry Marlow finds himself thinking more and living less in the present. While all too human interaction takes place, he stays a shadowy figure for the most part of the book for any outsiders to his consciousness. Memory mingles with outer reality, obsession takes hold of him, until they finally arrive to their destination (to his destination possibly) where the last act is played. The mental images from the various settings of the book come back to me very vividly as I write these lines. This is a really good book and I am not going to spoil it any more for you with my mediocre analysis. I hope I made clear that this is not your average type of novel. Do read it.
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