Who's Who in Hell

Rating:
Summary: Good moments that go nowhere
Review: I agree with the person who says that this should have been a short story collection. There are some great moments, interesting characters, amusing vignettes, but they just fade out and lead to nothing. Stick to Nick Hornby!

Rating:
Summary: Am I in hell?
Review: One promising premise after another with no resolution. That would be one definition of literary hell. It is the hell of reading this book. The protagonist's career as an untrained psychotherapist, his accidental amble into journalism, his promising beginning of a book, his visit to and falling in love with Kansas . . . One thread after another leads nowhere and adds up to little. This might have made a better collection of short stories. It certainly is not a novel.

Rating:
Summary: Am I in hell?
Review: One promising premise after another with no resolution. That would be one definition of literary hell. It is the hell of reading this book. The protagonist's career as an untrained psychotherapist, his accidental amble into journalism, his promising beginning of a book, his visit to and falling in love with Kansas . . . One thread after another leads nowhere and adds up to little. This might have made a better collection of short stories. It certainly is not a novel.

Rating:
Summary: Heaven and Hell
Review: Sorry about the corny title, but I had to think of something.
I was given this book on my birthday and pretty much read it straight away. I was really intrigued by the title and the premise. I must say it took me a while to get into it, but after a while I could not stop reading Who's Who, until I finished it in one go.
I really wanted the actual compiling of Daniel's book to extend further into the novel, but that's not what it is really about. The relationship between Daniel and Laura is really the crux of the story. At times I was getting (annoyed) with it, but by the end I was hooked. Obviously I will not say what happens, needless to say I had no idea and could not stop telling people about it afterwards.
I have read a lot of books recently, very glutinous, but this one stood out becuase of the range of emotions that it produces. The final scene is amazing, I wish I could publish it here, but that would wreck the ending to a bloody brilliant novel.

Rating:
Summary: Too many plots
Review: The protagonist is a twenty-something guy from Manchester, slightly depressed and cynical, with an unhappy childhood, living in London. We follow five years of his life, during which he gets married and has a child. That's the unifying story but there are several distimct plots going on.
The first concerns his career as a psychotherapist and a newspaper writer. This is a satirical story with echoes (perhaps deliberate) of Waugh's "Scoop." One problem here for me was that I'd recently been reading Scoop. Although Chalmers's jokes are often quite good, Evelyn Waugh's seventy-year old jokes are funnier.
The second concerns his love affair with the adventurous, much more self-assured, promiscuous American girl, Laura. This is poignant and tragic.
Laura's relationships with her Babbitt-like parents and her lonely, misunderstood, unsuccessful brother is a third plot.
Interspersed with these are multiple anecdotes and farcical incidents concerning a large number of other characters. Flashbacks and changes of narrative point of view add to the confusion and prevent this from being a page-turner.
It contains lots of excellent writing and sharp observation but the cook has failed to blend the ingredients.

Rating:
Summary: Gripping
Review: This book was absolutely gripping. Although slow to start the rest more than made up for it. This is one deep piece of work. This is a book that you will want to savor--and take time to absorb. I advise that it be read slow; I think it sinks in better not to be read in one sitting. The characters really touched me, their realities--and the details within were absolutely startling at times...I give Mr. Robert Chalmers an A+.