Heligoland (Paperback)

by Shena Mackay (Author)

3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)

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Product Details

Paperback: 224 pages
Publisher: Vintage Books; New edition edition (Jan 15 2004)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0099273594
ISBN-13: 978-0099273592
Product Dimensions: 19.6 x 12.2 x 1.4 cm
Shipping Weight: 159 g

Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)

Amazon.ca Sales Rank: #331,873 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Review

"There aren't many novelists whose latest offering would make me abandon everything, but Shena Mackay is one." -- Mail on Sunday

"She writes like an angel wielding a scalpel, dissecting her characters with sublime, sharp-edged prose." -- Guardian

From the Hardcover edition.

Product Description

The Nautilus, a strange building shaped like the chambered shell of the same name, was built in South London in the early 1930s. Designed on Modernist and Utopian principles, it was a haven for a floating community of cosmopolitan refugees, intellectuals and artists. Now, at the end of the century, only two of the original inhabitants still occupy their chambers -- Celeste Zylberstein, joint architect with her late husband of the Nautilus, and Francis Campion, an elderly poet. Gus Crabb, a dealer in bric-à-brac, is the only other resident until, to the Nautilus, like a hermit crab seeking a home, comes Rowena Snow. Of Indian/Scottish parentage, orphaned, without family or friends, Rowena is in search of her own Utopia -- or the Heligoland of her childhood imagination.

Heligoland is Shena Mackay at her very best. Rowena, damaged but courageous, is a brilliant creation, and her path to a sort of contentment is both funny and moving. The other characters are at once utterly strange and entirely believable, and Shena Mackay's eye for the oddities of ordinary life is as sharp as ever. Her writing -- sentence by sentence -- is sublime, surprising, inimitable.

From the Hardcover edition.

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3.0 out of 5 stars Too dry and writer-ly....for book critics only !, Feb 13 2004

By A Customer

Shena Mackay's latest novel "Heligoland" has been shortlisted for several prestigious UK book awards including the Orange Prize. That comes as no surprise as Mackay's pedigree is quite impeccable and "Heligoland" is just the sort of novel that's aimed at book critics to win heaps of prizes but will be challenged to sell ten copies to the great reading public inside (let alone outside) the Great Britain. Put simply, it is too writer-ly, obscure, quirky and parochial in its orientation and for that reason won't be a natural candidate for any reader's recommended reading list.

Mackay's story about a bunch of socially inept, period outcasts, antiquated relics and leftovers from the last world war, squatting and living uncomfortably together in a clamber-shell shaped building in South London called the Nautilus doesn't offer a very promising premise for an interesting story. It wouldn't be so bad to have the plot randomly overrun by a wide cast of tedious, colourless and instantly forgettable minor characters if we had solid central characters to serve as anchor for the story. The truth is that neither Rowena Snow - the novel's heroine - Celeste Zylberstein, Francis Campion, nor Gus Crabb make compelling characters. They're drab and boring and they don't leave any impression and that's the crux of the problem.

Mackay's prose is flawless, beautifully crafted and vividly imagined in fine descriptive language but it is also economical to a fault. Dialogue is used so sparingly there's a distinct lack of immediacy to the plot, causing the scenes to run into each other. Besides, Mackay makes no concession to the foreign reader, so you're likely to be lost (like me) in the face of constant references to landmarks, places and objects that will have no meaning to anyone living outside of the locale. It's not until you reach the final 30 pages or so that things start to happen, some measure of coherence is established and you begin to see the point of it all. By then, it's too late and you're just relieved you've made it to the end. And it's a short book.

Book prize nominee or not, I really didn't enjoy "Heligoland". The critics seem to love it. They have made their case but I cannot honestly imagine it having much of an appeal to the general reading public.

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