Most helpful customer reviews
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4.0 out of 5 stars
A Life of Integrity, April 6 2005
Alfred Jones, the dull main character of The Bomb Party, leads a dreary existence in Vevey, Switzerland translating letters at a chocolate factory. His life is marked by losses: the loss of his left hand as well as his parents in the London blitz, the loss of his wife in childbirth - the loss of expectation of anything yet to come. His is a life of limitation coloured in grey by the occasional prostitute.When he meets the young and beautiful daughter of the powerful Dr Fischer, his world suddenly expands - not by numbers or any increase in wealth, but by love. Anna-Luise finds in him a husband as well as a father in a happy twosome clouded only by the demonic disinterest of her father. Nevertheless, Alfred Jones becomes a part of Dr Fischer's world and his experiment with the greed of the rich when he, contrary to his wife's wishes, partakes in Dr Fischer's infamous parties. If you read The Bomb Party as a failed "accurate depiction of a certain class of society" as the Amazon reviewer Kevin Kane seems to have done, you miss the point. Dr Fischer's guests are only minor characters, flat characters who are functions in the plot, not the focus of our attention. At one point they are even described as Pavlovian dogs which suggests to me that Dr Fischer's experiment ("to test the greed of the rich") was meant to fail: they would be greedy by nature, but the extent to which their greed takes them has been set up by the master engineer, Dr Fischer. The focus of the novel is the contrast or confrontation of Alfred Jones and Dr Fischer which ends in the survival of one and the downfall of the other. The operative words are "the poor man's pride", arrogance and the difference between contempt and hatred. A question seems to be whether contempt is contagious, a disease which spreads to infect your entire conception of the world as opposed to hate understood as provoked and focused. However, Alfred Jones is never caught up by the splitting of hairs of Dr Fischer and his victim Steiner, nor by the circumlocution of the toadies. However drab, dreary and resigned Alfred Jones is, he is present in his own life. It is true that the novel is not a comedy, but it is a comment on human nature which very indirectly celebrates a life of integrity.
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2.0 out of 5 stars
Want a big heap of cynicism, bitterness and jade? No thanks!, Jul 19 2004
I have to say I really didn't like it. I found the author's portrayal of the rich to be unrealistic of most wealthy people. The idea that already rich people would risk their lives for a further amount of money that would be insignificant to their well-being seems absurd to me.I thought it was a cynical view of people. Very dark, bleak, disturbed. Sure, some people are like that, but why write a book about them? Kind of a downer, you know? You just pity people like that, as Steiner did of Dr. Fischer. But it was well-written, had some thought-provoking lines, intelligent. I just was uninspired by the overall feeling toward life about the book. Like that most people are petty mediocrities with no integrity, or slowly dying in misery. I just don't know how anyone could feel good about reading this book. If it's supposed to be an accurate depiction of certain class of society, I don't believe it to be representative of most people, but even if it were, why not choose something exciting and positive to write about? To give people a vision for something better? Well, I had to have this reaction, otherwise I think I'd feel sort of jaded about life and its possibilities. Nonetheless, it was an enthralling read, I read it in one-sitting, aided by a little nap at one point. ;-) Please don't be upset that I found the book a little disappointing, because it was good enough that I couldn't put it down, it was definitely suspenseful and well-written, good character development, etc. I just didn't like the negativity of the view of life that it seemed to portray.
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