Rating: 
Summary: boyd's best
Review: I spent a year of my life working the 2AM shift flipping burgers, and Boyd brought that world back to me. I don't know anyone who has ever written so well about sleep, nosleep, and the inner world of the solitary working stiff
Rating:
Summary: boyd's best
Review: I spent a year of my life working the 2AM shift flipping burgers, and Boyd brought that world back to me. I don't know anyone who has ever written so well about sleep, nosleep, and the inner world of the solitary working stiff
Rating:
Summary: Way-out, weird wonderful work
Review: It is a cold winter's day in London that is about to get much colder for claims adjuster Lorimer Black, who must feel that he is visiting the Twilight Zone. He goes to see his client, Mr. Dupree, only to find him hanging from the ceiling, an apparent suicide. After calling and dealing with Officer Rappaport of the police, all Lorimer can think of is what a way to start a day. Not to long after that, an over-insured hotel burns down and his boss wants Lorimer to investigate. Frauds and scams seems to be the message of the day. However, life subsequently turns truly rotten for Lorimer. His car is vandalized and his father abruptly drops dead. Before he can even begin to mourn, he is fired. What's a man to do, when you suffer from a sleep disorder? Hopefully you get a dream-laden, good night's sleep. If ARMADILLO sounds weird and a bit off centered, don't lose any sleep because that is what the novel is all about. In the capable hands of William Boyd that strangeness works, providing the reader with an ironic but extra dark look into London whose pendulum fails to swing back and forth. Lorimer is a wonderful character, whose world is falling apart in spite of his efforts to simply fit in with his peers. Readers who enjoy a dark intrigue need to try Mr. Boyd's latest novel because it is a winner. Harriet Klausner
Rating: 
Summary: Over-hyped
Review: It is very unusual that I don't enjoy a recommended book from Amazon.com, however I had difficulty finishing this one. I found myself reading ahead just to get through it. The characters were well developed, but I could just not get interested in them. The story was bland and ultimately unsatisfying.
Rating:
Summary: A real return to form
Review: It was marvellous to be able to pick-up this new novel by one of my favourite authors and realise that he had found a rich vein of inspiration. Although at times the novel and some of its characters reminded me of recent Martin Amis, Boyd managed to avoid the excesses of that author. The London setting was real, the bars were real and the people were spinechillingly real. The character of Lorimer Black was pure genius and one so wanted him to escape unsacthed. The marvellously brutish Hogg was still a character one could warm too but not get too close. And one could write about Flavia forever. The plot twists and turns into a complex maze that make you read this book into the early hours. A gem.
Rating:
Summary: MY OUTSTANDING READ FOR THE YEAR 2001
Review: Lorimer Black is a loss adjuster working in the City of London. Unwittingly he becomes a pawn in a darker world and a side of business life, where corruption, greed and snobbery prevail. From the outset this book had a hold on me. It was fascinating immediately, and very funny. I recognised the characters in people I know and laughed outloud so many times that I became a real pain to those within earshot. I very rarely find literature funny, only Spike Milligan in fact. The writing is crisp and flows beautifully. The bad type of British male: slobby, uncouth, aggressive and misogynist was supremely portrayed in Torquil Helvoir - Jayne. I have seen these guys so many times in real life. William Boyd makes the point that despite his name and connections Torquil is no different to other pig ignorant individuals who happen to be below him in the class order. William Boyd has a fine reporter's eye and can build characters that are believable and a wonder to behold. There are a number of important themes in this book but the main one is the struggle to be someone other than ourselves. A British trait I am afraid, a response to the class bias where we are judged as soon as we open our mouths, in our accents, the way we speak and dress. Like so many others in Britain poor Lorimer fell for it hook, line and sinker. There is a great play in names: Milo Blocj becomes Lorimer Black, David Watts the clapped out rock star had also changed his name. Pretence and more pretence. The book says that underneath it all we are all the same insecure and fragile individuals. Eventually the unreality catches up and drags us down. We wear armour that eventually proves to be too heavy, to be discarded so that real life can enter. Hence the armadillo - the little armed man. The layers are slowly stripped away. And the final piece - the helmet is cut away. Despite Lorimer's adherence to style and clambering up the English greasy pole of class snobbery, in the end he reverts back to himself - Milo the European ethnic. That's when he starts to live life and find true happiness. It is a great book and one of my best reads for the year 2001. I can't wait to read some more William Boyd.
Rating:
Summary: Writing reviews is more fun than I thought...
Review: So what did I think? Well, clearly there were more clever references and connections than I picked-up. It was certainly a page-turner. And in every way, it clearly spoke for a particular class, a particular generation, a particular attitude... The whole book was William Boyd's lucid dream. It spoke for the middle-class good boys in school who were intimidated and overawed by us streetwise, fearless naughty boys. All the girls in his lucid book fancied him, not us. The hip characters, the rock star and the movie starlet found his studied unremarkableness irrisistably attractive. The big players, the wide-boys and the upper-class king-pins all learned that his understated and nondescript wu-style was far more powerful than theirs. This is a case of, as most movies and books are these days; Revenge of The Nerd. Even in physical battle, a huge and muscular bully armed with a club was no match for Nerd Kung Fu with his lethal briefcase that mummy and daddy had always insisted he carry to and from school... And even in the face of so many foreigners swamping our land; heroic Willie Boyd could befriend them all. Like Doctor Dolittle he could talk to the animals! In an ostentatious display of PC Power, city-boy-Boyd sniggeringly plants a foreigner at every corner to jump out and dismay his out-of-town relatives and acquaintances who are not sure what to think of all this... In the end we realise that his connection with Ghana, his foreignness that once didn't compute in England's pleasant playgrounds, is today suddenly an asset. Which is a transition, I sense, many in Britain have recently made. Foreign power. Freak power. A bit like Marcus Garvey's liberating thought; Black is Beautiful. Before that, to call a "Coloured" black was considered an insult... Not a drop of English blood, me... I'm not English. I'm German/Jewish, yeah! Fugee and proud. Today it's hip. No need now to kow & whisper, we're FREEE! "I'm coming out. I want the world to see-hee, what is really me-hee. Yeh, I'm coming out." Ha-ha-ha...
Rating: 
Summary: give it sixty pages and you'll be hooked
Review: there are so many threads to this highly entertaining and ultimately compelling blackish comedy that you may well find yourself wondering what on earth is going on after forty or so pages. i urge you to persevere. the threads soon begin to intertwine and what quickly emerges is an affectionately written and brightly amusing thriller-of-sorts with unexpected twists aplenty and enough memorable scenes to make a pretty good movie (in fact i think they're making it into a movie right now - i vote that rufus sewell should play lorimer).
Rating:
Summary: Another Winner From Boyd
Review: This quintessentially English dark comic novel explores the life of star insurance adjuster Lorimer Black, who has constructed an entire confident persona as a shell to disguise his real self. Among the things he keeps private is his insomnia, his "colorful" immigrant background (his real name is Milomre Blocj) and family, and his expensive antique armor collection. Of course, with Boyd at the helm, there are a number of themes being brought out at once: social satire (people keep assuming he's the son of a Scottish aristocrat), identity (he hides beyond the facade that's gotten him ahead), home (he's secretly bought a small home in suburbs), family (he hasn't quite come to grips with his family), obsession (he falls for a mysterious model and tracks her down). This is all laid against a backdrop of professional entanglements that threaten his job and even his life. Be forewarned, it takes about 40 or 50 pages before things start to get clear, but it's worth it. As usual, Boyd's prose crackles with wit as the notion of identity in the modern Western world is held up for examination. Don't be put off by the big themes though, this is a real page-turner. Not everyone will be satisfied with the ending, which leaves a number of loose ends and on an ambiguous note of hope.
Rating: 
Summary: Brilliant but flawed, Boyd has done better.
Review: While "Armadillo" is a must read for fans of Boyd, newcomers to this brilliant contemporary author should read "A Good Man in Africa", "The New Confessions", "Brazzaville Beach", and "The Blue Afternoon" before tackling Armadillo. While Armadillo has the same sublime character development as these earlier works, the plot creates dissonances which are never resolved, and the novel seems to be truncated rather than concluded, as if Boyd intends to give us a second volume but doesn't bother to tell us. Read the book and enjoy the richness of the characters, but keep in mind that Boyd has done a better job merging character and plot in most of his other works.
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