Customer Reviews

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand: A Novel

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I really enjoyed this book. It's an easy read and is a good story about 2 older people finding each other despite coming from different cultures and overcoming prejudices from their families. The predicaments made me laugh and cry and the characters are interesting.

What a delightful book! Very competent language, beautiful metaphors, and a very wise text.
The authoress lives in the USA but she grew up in England and the book is permeated by the English spirit and atmosphere. From page one you know that you are in England. People, mentality, and the countryside, of course!
The book is a stand for honesty. No political correctness, no lies, no adjustment and concealment of what had been, and what people really feel in the contemporary world. I would recommend this book to every reader who is able to appreciate such qualities.
I think we will see more books in the same vein in the future, as the reaction of readers' sensibility to the development of contemporary world. I would like to stress that this is one of the best among recently published books. Just by the way-but it doesn't seem important- it is Simonson's first published book.

This is a wonderful story of two people from two different cultures who discover that their love for each other can over come the prejudices of the town people and even family members. It is a book to curl up with and thoroughly enjoy.

The book kept me entranced. The characters were interesting, nuanced, complex. It would have been easy to turn them into caricatures: the stuffy old major, the silly old maid, the village bigots, the brash Americans, the Pakistani shopkeeper....but this did not happen. The humor was equally deft and did not rely on episodes of embarrassment that I tend to find cringe-worthy rather than funny.

I look forward to this writer's next book.

Wonderful, warm and funny story about loss, love and bigotry. Personally I would compare to "Water for Elephants" for a story you pickup and don't want to put down. Lent it to a friend who loved it too.

I was all ready to give this book four stars, based on the charm factor, as well as the clever language and dialogue, however, in the end I am forced to drop down to three stars because I fear the entire thing is entirely too twee (to coin the British term).

Ms. Simonson was raised in the part of England in which this book is set -- the southern part -- but has not lived there in over 20 years (see resides now in Brooklyn, NY). I suspect the hazy lens of memory is responsible for the quainter-than-quaint villages, the stiff-upper-lip main character and surrounding eccentrics who read more like stock players in a pantomime than real people. Although I have certainly met my fair share of absurdly class-conscious and racist Brits, I have yet to meet anyone who, for example, insists on being called by his military rank. Not even my relatives-of-great-antiquity would go that far. Sadly, some of it bordered on cartoon.

With that criticism stated, the pleasure of the book lies in Ms. Simonson's ability to capture a sardonic turn of phrase. Her asides and dialogue often had me snorting with laughter. Major Pettigrew is the sort of person I wish did exist, even if I couldn't believe in him as a character. Perhaps that was Ms. Simson's longing as well, and perhaps there's nothing really wrong with creating the sorts of characters with whom you wish you could have tea.

Major Pettigrew's romance with Mrs. Ali, the Pakistani shopkeeper was endearing, and I particularly like the Major's relationship with his son, and with Amina, a young woman involved with Mrs. Ali's nephew. That young woman, in fact, may be the most satisfyingly written character in the book -- certainly the most unexpected. The ending felt melodramatic, but everything does wrap up nicely.

If you're looking for a thought-provoking read about the quality of human relationships, this probably isn't it; if you want a fun afternoon's read, however, you could do much worse.

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand is a delightful book. The characters are engaging. The author is skilled at depicting quite different social and cultural contexts.

After having read all of Jan Karon's stories set in Mitford, it was a wonderful to meet Major Pettigrew, his son, Roger, and Mrs. Ali and her family. This is one of those books where the reader feels that they know the characters intimately by the end. The language is charming, the countryside is beautifully described and the village life has a variety of characters, problems, and interests. This book imparts pure delight like a light, soft, warm breeze. A perfect book for bedtime reading. Put on your flannels, snuggle under the covers and enter the lives of the people in Edgecombe St. Mary.

This book is throughly delightful, in every way. It's now my "go to" book recommendation, for people I try and tempt to read fiction. It's funny, moving, intelligent and satisfying, in a way modern fiction seldom achieves.

I found this book had a hard time deciding what type of story it wanted to be. It is a love story, a story about racism, a story about the contempt of youth towards elders, a story about crazy Aunties, and then at the end it is a gun shooting action story.

Major Pettigrew is a real life character with lots of faults and lots of pluses which is refreshing and his love interest Mrs. Ali is almost as real, but a bit more stereotypical of an Indian women who is not Indian in the way Caucasians like to think.

Overall a fun light read about old people finding love again in their lives. I do like the underlying theme of racism and how it is presented in the book, that is how racism is often not overt, but is there in all the little underlying ways we treat people...made me think.