Rating: 
Summary: Becomes blacker and more surreal as it goes
Review: I read this at one sitting. It is odd, quirky; it made me laugh out loud at times, then feel sheepish about even finding those things funny. It moves from the banal to the surreal, leaving you faced with possibilities to bizarre to contemplate. Kafka meets Alan Bleasdale.
Rating: 
Summary: A simple masterpiece
Review: I turned heads on the bus reading this book, so loud was my laughter. Mills has a superb ear for dialogue, his comic characters were fascinating, he highlights the absurd nature of repetitive work, and he has produced an intelligent book that did not glory in itself or lead you by the nose. Simple, stylish, brilliant. To those who knock the dialogue in this book, I say: you obviously haven't moved in the same circles as I have. These people exist!
Rating: 
Summary: How to write a Prize-Winning Novel
Review: I wish I'd thought of doing it! Take two classic yet under-appreciated novels, extract the most compelling aspects of each, sandwich them together, and voilá, a brand-new novel from a brand-new talent, bound to attract the attentions of the literary establishment, and if you happen to be a bus driver, the broader media too, guaranteeing a best seller.The Restraint of Beasts shares with Flann O'Brien's brilliant "The Third Policeman", early death, followed by a consequent surreal, repetitive circularity of events and lack of final resolution. Paul Auster's "The Music of Chance" features two men forced into building an apparently endless wall for a pair of eccentric millionaires, who excercise complete control over them. Sound familiar? Though the book is worth a read, and contains some amusing moments, O'Brien's and Auster's are much more rewarding.
Rating: 
Summary: Insipid book
Review: If you want a story that goes nowhere with glacier-like character development, this is it. The only thing that kept me slogging through this banal effort was the belief that something had to develop to justify publication. Incorrect. The basic cycle established in the first five or so pages became an endless loop for most of the book.
Rating:
Summary: Imagine the movie Fargo set in Scotland. . . .
Review: Imagine the movie Fargo set in Scotland and you're half-way to picturing this novel in your head. It's a dire, deadpan rendition of inept contract labor in the most taciturn, oblique place imaginable, the Scottish-English borderland where no one quite understands what's up, and the mishaps are . . . literally . . . staggering and staggeringly funny. The reader will gasp and guffaw in the same breath. I loved the device of the nameless, non-judgmental British narrator (foreman of the Number Three Gang of Scottish fence installers), who is more intelligent and capable than the louts but is ultimately thwarted just the same.
Rating:
Summary: overstated?
Review: innocuous at best, entertaining, a bit pointless, what more can I say ..
Rating: 
Summary: Booker Prize
Review: Just to let readers know that THE RESTRAINT OF BEASTS has been placed on the Booker Prize short list. The author, who is a bus driver (the Brixton-to-London-Central route), got the news while he was working. The dispatcher called it in. The story behind this novel is the stuff of dreams--from writing between shifts, to getting a quote from Thomas Pynchon, to getting on the Booker Short List. Best of all is that the book is a compact little masterpiece.
Rating:
Summary: Patronising garbage
Review: Let me nail my colours to the mast here and say immediately that I did not merely dislike this book -I utterly hated it.The praise with which the book was garlanded in England seems to me to arise from the fact that its author is from out of the usual literary loop-not a University educated litterateur but a bus driver-and that it treats of a group still not widely represented in mainstream literary fiction namely the white blue collar crowd.It does so in a manner that seems to me patronising and dismissive;please note I write as one who worked construction ,road repair and other assorted tasks,including,as with the characters in this novel,fence laying.The characterisation of such people struck me as grossly offensive and had minority racial and/or sexual groups been so depicted there would have been an uproar-and rightly so.
Leaving aside such considerations, the crassness and obviousness of the symbolism is itself good enough reason to snort with derision at the contents of this book.
Basic premise ; Tam and Ritchie,fence layers and gross caricatures of blue collar life(beer,cigarettes,blue denim)work for a small Scottish firm and are despatched with their English foreman to work in England.The change is from a family concern to one run on scientific principles of manangement with the resultant debasement of the work force.They are shown gradually losing their humanity and individualism being compelled to wear uniform and eventually being virtually incarcerated in a work camp after the daily grind.En route they accidently kill a client -Mr Mills seems to regard the deadpan description of such events as inherently hilarious.
Let me demur from this position please.
I do not disagree with the underlying theme that work debases more people than it elevates but many people have said this more crisply -Studs Terkel for one -but the heavy handed allegory and crude symbolism just struck me as jejeune and obvious and I simply object to the crude depiction of people who are at the bottom of the economic pecking order.
The characters are not individuals but symbols and might just as well have the word "victim "stamped on their foreheads.The Booker Prize nomination it gathered shows the naive and patronising nature of the literary establishment
The book does a grave diservice to people working hard in menial jobs for little reward
I am able to tolerate incompetence and slipshod writing if the book wears its heart in the right place or entertains , but not the contempt shown for its subjects in this tawdry and puny spirited tale
Rating:
Summary: Darkly Comic Debut
Review: Magnus Mills, bus driver and first time novelist, has created a darkly humorous portrait of blue-collar work in Britain with Restraint of Beasts. I can't share much wisdom that previous reviews haven't already imparted although I do have to agree with some who have said they didn't find this as hilarious as they were led to believe. I found it darkly amusing but not laugh out loud funny. What impressed me most about the novelist and his story was the fact that he took events to an extreme - not content to let his characters deal with one bad situation, Mills makes it worse. An appropriate subtitle for Restraint of Beasts could easily be "when bad things happen to bad people...and get worse all the time." Yet he's constructed his characters in such a way that you do feel for them. While the end is somewhat unsatisfying, Restraint of Beasts is an excellent first novel. Mills' All Quiet on the Orient Express is also recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Darkly Comic Debut
Review: Magnus Mills, bus driver and first time novelist, has created a darkly humorous portrait of blue-collar work in Britain with Restraint of Beasts. I can't share much wisdom that previous reviews haven't already imparted although I do have to agree with some who have said they didn't find this as hilarious as they were led to believe. I found it darkly amusing but not laugh out loud funny. What impressed me most about the novelist and his story was the fact that he took events to an extreme - not content to let his characters deal with one bad situation, Mills makes it worse. An appropriate subtitle for Restraint of Beasts could easily be "when bad things happen to bad people...and get worse all the time." Yet he's constructed his characters in such a way that you do feel for them. While the end is somewhat unsatisfying, Restraint of Beasts is an excellent first novel. Mills' All Quiet on the Orient Express is also recommended.
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