Therapy

Rating:
Summary: Lodge is Good Enough, Smart Enough,and,DoggoneIt, I Like Him
Review: David Lodge's novels are proof that contemporary mainstream fiction doesn't have to be depressing, sterile, or plotless. It doesn't have to leave you wondering why the author bothered. Heck, it can even have a happy ending and still be worth reading.

Therapy has it all. The sometimes self-deluding but always likeable Tubby is an intelligent and interesting main character, and Lodge keeps the reader turning the pages to see what will happen to Tubby next. (That last may sound like cliched praise, but it is nevertheless high praise: there are plenty of writers who CAN'T keep the reader's interest.) Lodge uses several writing styles in this book and he's so good he can make everything from philosophical musing to rather broad comedy work. He can go from the hilarious police statement by Brett Sutton to the near-poignancy of a remembered first love and make it all come together in one delightful whole. Bonuses: along the way we get a glimpse of the making of British sitcoms, a somewhat satirical portrait of our societal compulsion to therapy, a funny mid-life crisis, several surprises, and as much information about Kierkegaard as most readers will ever want to know. And, yes, there's even an upbeat ending.

Do something good for yourself already: forget the latest self-help book and its "twelve steps to recovery from all that ails you" pablum and read a David Lodge novel. If not this one, another one. (Read one and you'll want to read the others anyway.) Lodge will do more for your heart and mind than any amount of twaddle about inner childishness.

Rating:
Summary: Lodge is Good Enough, Smart Enough,and,DoggoneIt, I Like Him
Review: David Lodge's novels are proof that contemporary mainstream fiction doesn't have to be depressing, sterile, or plotless. It doesn't have to leave you wondering why the author bothered. Heck, it can even have a happy ending and still be worth reading.

Therapy has it all. The sometimes self-deluding but always likeable Tubby is an intelligent and interesting main character, and Lodge keeps the reader turning the pages to see what will happen to Tubby next. (That last may sound like cliched praise, but it is nevertheless high praise: there are plenty of writers who CAN'T keep the reader's interest.) Lodge uses several writing styles in this book and he's so good he can make everything from philosophical musing to rather broad comedy work. He can go from the hilarious police statement by Brett Sutton to the near-poignancy of a remembered first love and make it all come together in one delightful whole. Bonuses: along the way we get a glimpse of the making of British sitcoms, a somewhat satirical portrait of our societal compulsion to therapy, a funny mid-life crisis, several surprises, and as much information about Kierkegaard as most readers will ever want to know. And, yes, there's even an upbeat ending.

Do something good for yourself already: forget the latest self-help book and its "twelve steps to recovery from all that ails you" pablum and read a David Lodge novel. If not this one, another one. (Read one and you'll want to read the others anyway.) Lodge will do more for your heart and mind than any amount of twaddle about inner childishness.

Rating:
Summary: It makes you feel smart just by cherishing it
Review: Definitely,one of the few books that enables the reader to capture fine,smart ideas while proving delicate emotions.

Rating:
Summary: A book review of "Therapy" by David Lodge
Review: I would like to review of "Therapy" by David Lodge, a post-modernist writer, who is also Honorary Professor of Modern English Literature at Birmingham and a famous literary critic. "Therapy" is the first book I have read by this author and it made a deep impression on me for Lodge's excellent writing skills. My attention was immediately captured and held throughout the novel. The book is a brilliant, hilarious, first-person introspection, an exceptionally moving story that leaves the reader laughing and thinking at the same time. The main character is Tubby Passmore, a successful TV sitcom screenwriter whose creeping mid-life crisis has turned him into a therapy-addict. With the help of Kierkegaard's philosophy, which promoted the centrality of individual choice, he tries to get rid of his latent ANGST. All the other characters are so amazingly well developed that I had a clear picture of them in my mind. I think that the meeting with the pious Maureen, Tubby's first girlfriend, and the final, clarifying exchange of views with the self-assured Sally, his athletic ex-wife, are the most resolutive, turning point of his life, because they give Tubby the opportunity to reflect on his past years, on his mistakes, and push him to understand himself better and to find the key to his problems. In conformity with post-modernist techniques, Lodge uses here different styles, in which he gradually reflects the change in point of view. The language is however very simple and colloquial, although hilariously amusing. I would suggest this book to anybody who is looking for an intelligent, involving and, at the same time, funny book, because "Therapy" is a well written comic story with a strong moral teaching which captures the spirit of human subconscious.

Rating:
Summary: A book review of "Therapy" by David Lodge
Review: I would like to review of "Therapy" by David Lodge, a post-modernist writer, who is also Honorary Professor of Modern English Literature at Birmingham and a famous literary critic. "Therapy" is the first book I have read by this author and it made a deep impression on me for Lodge's excellent writing skills. My attention was immediately captured and held throughout the novel. The book is a brilliant, hilarious, first-person introspection, an exceptionally moving story that leaves the reader laughing and thinking at the same time. The main character is Tubby Passmore, a successful TV sitcom screenwriter whose creeping mid-life crisis has turned him into a therapy-addict. With the help of Kierkegaard's philosophy, which promoted the centrality of individual choice, he tries to get rid of his latent ANGST. All the other characters are so amazingly well developed that I had a clear picture of them in my mind. I think that the meeting with the pious Maureen, Tubby's first girlfriend, and the final, clarifying exchange of views with the self-assured Sally, his athletic ex-wife, are the most resolutive, turning point of his life, because they give Tubby the opportunity to reflect on his past years, on his mistakes, and push him to understand himself better and to find the key to his problems. In conformity with post-modernist techniques, Lodge uses here different styles, in which he gradually reflects the change in point of view. The language is however very simple and colloquial, although hilariously amusing. I would suggest this book to anybody who is looking for an intelligent, involving and, at the same time, funny book, because "Therapy" is a well written comic story with a strong moral teaching which captures the spirit of human subconscious.

Rating:
Summary: Not bad, but he's done better
Review: Lodge's latest novel isn't bad, but I have the feeling that it doesn't quite make it -as SMALL WORLD had indeed done. THERAPY is narrated in first person, the protagonist being "Tubby" Passmore, a sitcom writer whose life (beginning with his marriage) starts to shatter (consistently) at the beginning of the novel. It is a mid-life crisis, and Lodge makes a considerable effort at humour with that material, with uneven results. I had the impression that all this had been done before, with much more being said. The anti-hero narrated in first person, his/her life falling apart, heading towards a real, irreversible mess, but at the same time sort of making a joke of himself (herself), laughing off pathetically as he/she approaches precipice, on the verge of a major collapse... This resource has been used widely to depict either middle-age crisis, adolescent ones, or late-life conundrums. As such it is hardly an original approach, but it can be an effective one. The names that instantly spring to my mind to my mind are those of filmmaker Woody Allen (or, for that matter, any stand-up comedian), and writers as diverse as J.D.Salinger, Charles Bukowski or Jay McInerney. THERAPY, however, doesn't quite stand up to these standards. I found myself laughing off my seat with Woody Allen in Hannah and her sisters, I found very funny Holden Caulfield and Henry Chinaski and Allison Poole (main characters in novels of the authors aforementioned). The problem with Lawrence "Tubby" Passmore is that, exceptions aside (and there are some good ones, though few), what you get is not sheer humour but David Lodge's (in my opinion) too obvious attempt and effort at it. Besides that point -not an insignificant one-, it should be said that the book is very well written (but what else could be expected from a pro?), and -importantly- that it has a SUPERB,classy ending -superb not only in its unexpectedness- and on which I shall not further comment... But put to choose, I find "Small World" exhilarating, intelligently funny in comparison -and in itself- and if you haven't read any of the two, I would go for that one. Therapy is not entirely flawed, but it was a slight disappointment.

Rating:
Summary: Standard Lodge
Review: Standard Lodge: insight, humour, alternative forms, incorporated lecture (Keirkegaard), and an adulterous resolution.

Lodge is consistent. His style reminds me a bit of Hornby (maybe I've got that backwards), the honesty I suppose. I relate particularly to his persona's reminiscences about his first girlfriend - how blithely horrible you can be. I don't think he needed to tie things up with a common technique of his (sex: cf. Out of the Shelter; Nice Work, Paradise News): it seems to be important to him to show how he's overcome his teenage Catholic morals, and he falls back on restoration bedroom farce perhaps cheaply.
 
Again he's wise to stick to areas he knows about - scenes from Television, Publishing - and from a Catholic Youth Group. He also ties in all this stuff about Keirkegaard - someone who hardly lends himself to a popular novel. He has to work hard to make it fit, but does so. I like his line about Keirkegaard being like flying through clouds: occasionally they clear and you have a moment of intense and profound clarity ... and then suddenly you're plunged back into utter obscurity.

Rating:
Summary: Choosing oneself
Review: This is an excellent novel by a master of the comic serious, David Lodge. The story is covered in the back cover and other reviews, but I would add that the meaning of this novel and its structure are among the most innovative and genuinely engaging I have seen. Many postmodern novels, a term at which no doubt David Lodge would wince, are structured to allow the reader to impose his own understanding of the facts through intricate structures; but rarely are they deeply engaging. The average comic novel, though entertaining, has little to say. This work has both an elusive structure and engaging comic touches. It also has something important to say. It has the potential to become a work read 50 to 100 years from now despite the topical references to mid 1990's Britain. I won't spoil it for you because all will be revealed. Suffice it to say that our protagonist chooses to live in the present rejecting the despair of the unrecoverable past and the hopeless future.

Rating:
Summary: Depressingly good
Review: This is the humorous(!) story of a man's progress through utter depression to reconciliation with his primitive self. TV writer Tubby Passmore's rich life is falling apart, and we follow him through various trendy therapies right to the bottom. The specific prick to action is painful spasms of Mr. Passmore's knee as he tries to write his way out of a sitcom impasse. By the middle of this book he is so far gone in obsessive self-absorption that we can see his ultimate flailings only through the eyes of astonished onlookers: his wife, his Platonic lover, a script assistant, etc. A new obsession with Kierkegaard's "Existentialism" becomes a core concept in Passmore's therapeutic journal of dreaded indecision and regret. That this story of a midlife Englishman's depression is hilarious yet touching is testament to the author's skill. Wonderfully, precisely written, droll to a T, it is funny on the surface in a way comprehensible to an American (compared to Anthony Powell's humour, say). By the conclusion Passmore appears to be his old cheeky self (who was already missing as this story began), an uptempo recovery from complacency and scary mid-life crises that parallels a Continental journey from sceptical Denmark to credulous Spain.

A cute stylistic trick is to have Passmore "look up" the meaning of any unusual key word the author introduces. We learn something that way (although not ordinary Briticisms like wanker, clanger, kefuffle, yonks, phutted and pong, gazump and gobsmacked). It's curious how many out-of-print versions are listed for this book. My copy... has an unusual leathery-soft cover and rough yellowing pages; reminds me of fragile post-war Penquin books, tattered British "pulps."

Rating:
Summary: Another fine book by the gentle humorist
Review: This is yet another book of Lodge's that I've read, for me his latest. And, again, I find his humor gently heartfelt, his guy-perspective identifiably familiar to me, and his craftsmanship assured. This is a more somber effort, about a man in mid-life neurosis, an artist at the end of his commercial rope, his lovable marriage at a sudden end. While it sustains a humor that derives from an understanding and ultimately lighthearted attitude towards the modern urban environment, and the distresses of the middle-age male, it also delves the intellectual and emotional depths that approach the shadowy landscape of despair.

And Lodge does some showing off, in taking ont he voices of the women characters only to reveal the "author's" voice. And his style moves from Neil Simon-like one-liners to a more somber and perceptively introspective mode, as part of Passmore's journey towards a renewed maturity.

Lodge does seem to flail a bit to find a resolution to these new depths and tone of his work, between the nostalgia of a first-love renewed and a still-loved but lost wife. He does not surrender to gross sentimentality. But the book does paint itself into a corner, in which only sentimentality of some sort is possible.

Lodge is a most likeable writer. And one who respectfully confronts the male world with a smile.