Rating: 
Summary: Worth reading, undeservedly panned.
Review: After having read this book, I must take serious exception to the detractors that have given this book an undeserved thumbs down. It is frankly dirty pool to compare it unfavorably to War and Peace, one of the great historical novels of all times. It is likewise unfair to criticize the author as being full of himself, or unable to write in a manner in which people speak; that is what may be termed style. It is also disingenuous to admire the typeface as the only redeeming quality of the book. How about criticizing Proust as being wordy? That the prose is self conscious adds, to my mind, a kind of period authenticity. Much of the writing of the time was similarly stilted. Look, for example at Paul Scott's Raj Quartet, Robert Musil's Man without Qualities, or Anthony Powell's Dance to the Music of Time, each of which compares favorably to this book, and none gets such an undesrved bashing. Upton Sinclair won a Pulitzer for the Lanny Budd novels with this self-conscious prose and none of the substance herein. Thackery and Trollope were every bit as convoluted. It seems that the critics should cut Mr. Thackara some slack; just sit down and enjoy the journey.The story traces four friends, two principally, through prewar and subsequently war-torn Europe, elaborately staged from drawing-room to battlefield. The prose is indeed ornate, but after all this was a time of demagogues and hyperbole. My sole criticism is that it is far from unexplored country. Like an old silver mine, all the nuggets have been carried away long ago. It is prettty derivative stuff. It is not a new idea that the reality of war makes disillusionment of ideals. Still, this is a story that needs to be told lest we forget. We watch Grand Illusion now, realizing that it is as compelling as it was more than a half a century ago, although the acting seems wooden and it is in black and white. We have not as a society had to face a loss of innocence for some time, and perhaps that is the best reason to read this period piece and be caught up in the hubris of a near forgotten past.
Rating: 
Summary: Sometimes interesting but never compelling.
Review: Although I agree with the other reviewers that the prose is awful, that was not my major problem with Mr. Thackara's novel. Instead, I found the behavior of almost all of his characters incomprehensible in one way or another. They have these strange reversals of positions that are not adequately accounted for; misunderstandings arise between them that would never occur if the characters were actually the people that they had initially been drawn to be; instead it seems Mr. Thackara justs molds them at will as necessary to suit his story. Hasty ex post rationales are then sometimes tacked on to explain their behavior.
In War and Peace, the echoes of which you can clearly trace in the characters and plot of Mr. Thackara's novel (and to which he himself pays homage to in the words of Baron von Sunda), all of the characters, e.g., Prince Andrei, Rostov, Natasha, Pierre, were real people whom I understood and felt for even when, especially when, they made tragic choices, labored in ignorance or doubt, or when, through great suffering, they were transformed. I did not buy The Book of Kings with the expection of encountering the art of Tolstoy but I did expect to meet human beings who I would care for and empathize with.
Beyond his gift with language, Tolstoy is a genuis because he could capture History, Fate, War, Tyrants and Slaughter as well as the blessed uniqueness of the indivudual.
Rating:
Summary: Sometimes interesting but never compelling.
Review: Although I agree with the other reviewers that the prose is awful, that was not my major problem with Mr. Thackara's novel. Instead, I found the behavior of almost all of his characters incomprehensible in one way or another. They have these strange reversals of positions that are not adequately accounted for; misunderstandings arise between them that would never occur if the characters were actually the people that they had initially been drawn to be; instead it seems Mr. Thackara justs molds them at will as necessary to suit his story. Hasty ex post rationales are then sometimes tacked on to explain their behavior.
In War and Peace, the echoes of which you can clearly trace in the characters and plot of Mr. Thackara's novel (and to which he himself pays homage to in the words of Baron von Sunda), all of the characters, e.g., Prince Andrei, Rostov, Natasha, Pierre, were real people whom I understood and felt for even when, especially when, they made tragic choices, labored in ignorance or doubt, or when, through great suffering, they were transformed. I did not buy The Book of Kings with the expection of encountering the art of Tolstoy but I did expect to meet human beings who I would care for and empathize with.
Beyond his gift with language, Tolstoy is a genuis because he could capture History, Fate, War, Tyrants and Slaughter as well as the blessed uniqueness of the indivudual.
Rating: 
Summary: Philip Hensher's review in the Observer England
Review: Everyone has a book inside them... Sadly James Thackara's is terrible. Philip Hensher despairs of The Book of Kings Philip Hensher Sunday September 10, 2000 The Book of Kings James Thackara Duckworth £19.99, pp773 Reviewing someone's first novel, it is customary to be polite about it, to find things to praise in it. So let me say straight away that James Thackara's The Book Of Kings is printed on very nice paper; the typeface is clear and readable, and Samantha Nundy's photograph of the author is in focus. And, given that it's 773 pages long, the author has shown a commendable degree of application and spent a great deal of time on the project. That, as it turns out, is the literary-London story of the book; that he's been writing it for years and years, and was writing the Story of the Twentieth Century. This, we were promised, was going to be the great novel of the European experience, covering continents in its magisterial stride. Now, at last, here it is and we can judge for ourselves. And it's terrible. Startlingly badly written, with no apparent understanding of what drives people or how people relate or talk to each other, it is a book of gigantic, hopeless awfulness. You read it to a constant, internal muttering of 'Oh - God - Thackara - please, don't - no - oh, God, just listen to this rubbish'. It's so awful, it's not even funny. There is not one decent sentence in the book, nothing but falsity and a useless sincerity. It may be the very worst novel I have ever read. The scene is Paris in 1932. Thunder clouds are gathering over Europe, but what care our four gay students? They will go and drink and eat and be merry at Polidor's! Ah, Polidor's, where you can buy, er, fish from the jolly old patronne - ' "La-Bas, mes beaux garçons, mes anges; sit down, eat a good dinner!" she shouted, with the discernment of old women for young men.' Meanwhile, things are getting grim in Germany - 'My dear Son,' someone's dear old mum writes. 'Times are hard even in our little village. My old head is full of our new dictator.' Soon, the time will come for our four students to part. David Sunda, Johannes Godard, Duncan Penn and Justin Lothaire; each comes from a different part of the world. History will treat some of them roughly, of that you may be sure! And some will survive the coming catastrophe, and some, mes braves, will triumph over the savage wavelets of History. (Thackara's style, distressingly, is rather contagious.) And the result is the usual stuff, the tragedy of Germany, the tragedy of Europe, former friends sundered by the movements of History and a book as thick as your wrist. What sets Thackara apart from other writers in this territory is quite a simple fact. He can't write. After a while, the incredulous reader starts to play a game with this book. The game is to open the book at random and try and find a tolerable sentence. Save your effort - you will never win. Thackara is always ahead of you, with his uncanny knack for the not-quite-right word and the yer-what turn of phrase. 'You could not see his parents' intricate cultivation, nor that the ball was in the Palazzo Farnese, just after the war.' 'Justin's friend was not in the courtyard, but the fountain was.' 'The Hanoverian battery commander, Egbert, was as delighted as a music conductor to show off for his guests behind the embankment wall.' 'Yet presently David was descending behind his parents' guests round the great staircase into the bright halls of white-tied gentlemen and crop haired ladies in clinging lace, with their cigarette stems and sashes.' These examples are taken entirely at random. It is all at least as bad as this, and some of it is worse to an unspeakable degree. Terrible as Thackara's prose is, it becomes quite unremarkable when set next to his idea of dialogue. It is the purest Hollywood mini-series idea of how foreigners talk to each other, a sort of language never spoken by man or woman. 'David... what about kindness and children, what about right and wrong? Also love. What about love?' 'Isn't the power and its refinement here?' 'The struggle there, Eli, is for the soil of my fathers.' 'All this will seem insignificant afterward. You and I must concentrate on Karin's beautiful wedding... you look so handsome and well-rested.' You keep suspecting that the characters aren't listening to each other and are prepared to say anything at all. The truth is that it's Thackara who is just incapable of listening. Every single character talks in exactly the same idiotically macaronic way, and five hundred pages into it, you are still trying to remember which humourless pundit is which. The women sound like the men. The men sound like nothing on earth. And not one of them has a single thing to say other than how the Tragedy of History is progressing. The awful thing is that Thackara really wants to say something. He is utterly sincere and will probably be admired by people who believe that sincerity, rather than art, is the basis of a great novel. He is probably a nice man. He obviously cares deeply about these great historical movements and has done a great deal of research - my God, he has researched and researched and researched. But on the evidence of The Book of Kings, he could not write 'Bum' on a wall Doggybag writes: http://www.barganews.com/diary/thakara.html have a look at the above link and don't forget to click on the last 3 words of this text, there is a suprise ending to this story !
Rating: 
Summary: The Economist raves, "...in every way a big book."
Review: From The Economist review: "THE BOOK OF KINGS is in every way a big book. It is also a great work...Mr. Thackara has Tolstoy's talent for painting the grand with small strokes...If your taste is for the lean and the spare, this is not the novel for you. But there are many, like this reviewer, who will turn to the last page only to start reading the book once more".
Rating: 
Summary: "5 stars with a bias"
Review: I can honestly say that this is the best book I've ever read. The bias I have in my opinion is that I read it while I was temporarily living in Germany. I read the book, and then went and visited the places I had just read about. The way James Thackara used real historical events and people, and then wrote his story around it was brilliant. You won't be able to put this one down.
Rating:
Summary: Boring
Review: I spent $25.00 on a book whose author is not only impressed with his own intelligence, but who cannot even make it interesting. Big in scope, and at times, very well written, it is very hard to wade through a story where the reader is supposed to understand French, know the city of Paris as if they had been there numerous times, and try and understand page after page just what the author is actually trying to say by speaking through boring and troubled characters. A big waste of money and an even bigger waste of time.
Rating:
Summary: Tough read - you can brag about finishing it.
Review: I was tempted several times in the first 200-300 pages to put this book away. Although I generally enjoy historical fiction, the author goes into painstaking detail of the political and social climate of pre-WW2 Europe. The characters discuss fascism, socialism, communism and every other "ism" fashionable at the time. After the philosophical groundwork has been laid, the book picks up. Although it then takes place primarily during the war, it is not your standard WW2 book. The book remains focused on the main characters. Each of them had envisioned a bright future and the war has changed everything. How they act, what they become and the choices they make are all shaped by their backgrounds and beliefs. The story becomes very readable and the events described are as interesting as they are detailed. This is not an easy book to read, and I had to re-read paragraphs many times. It does offer a great insight into the political and social climate of the times. If James Thackara isn't an English professor somewhere he should be. Finishing the book also made me feel like I deserved some easy fiction...I read the Lion's Game by DeMille after this book and it read like it had been written by a 13 year old.
Rating:
Summary: Tough read - you can brag about finishing it.
Review: I was tempted several times in the first 200-300 pages to put this book away. Although I generally enjoy historical fiction, the author goes into painstaking detail of the political and social climate of pre-WW2 Europe. The characters discuss fascism, socialism, communism and every other "ism" fashionable at the time. After the philosophical groundwork has been laid, the book picks up. Although it then takes place primarily during the war, it is not your standard WW2 book. The book remains focused on the main characters. Each of them had envisioned a bright future and the war has changed everything. How they act, what they become and the choices they make are all shaped by their backgrounds and beliefs. The story becomes very readable and the events described are as interesting as they are detailed. This is not an easy book to read, and I had to re-read paragraphs many times. It does offer a great insight into the political and social climate of the times. If James Thackara isn't an English professor somewhere he should be. Finishing the book also made me feel like I deserved some easy fiction...I read the Lion's Game by DeMille after this book and it read like it had been written by a 13 year old.
Rating:
Summary: "5 stars with a bias"
Review: If ever a book was in dire need of a strong editor, this is it! Without any editorial experience I could easily slash a good half of this book. But it is the other half that kept me at it. I purchased the book because of the promise of the story within. And the underlying story is wonderful. But Thackara really needs to get over himself! A lot of the writing is utter conceit, literary posturing to be expected from a high school literature teacher/frustrated novelist, not from someone who actually got these 800 pages published. Too bad. It could easily have been a really great book.
|
