Riddley Walker

Rating:
Summary: from one picture of st. eustace. a whole culture was born
Review: i have a copy of this book which is now falling to pieces. two days was my quickest read. in it hoban creates a whole new post apocaliptic culture and mythology. through his tale of ridleys walk around kent and his journey to manhood, hoban re-creates mankinds desire for an arms race. the search for the one big one through the one liddle one with chardcoal and saltpetre. through puppetshow and majik he takes us to a place and time of horror and hope. the culture and language he creates. is of, by many, unimagined and unimaginable, but he describes it with such truth and actuality, that it is very believable. the red jumpered chardcoal burner blows himself up in the end and his hesd lands on a pole. the message of this book is very clear and very strong but it does take some working out. read it many times.....

Rating:
Summary: Like new edition.. See also HEAD OF ORPHEUS website.
Review: I'm very pleased with the new edition and I'd like to remind your readers that RW is not the only book I've written. Put Yahoo search engine on THE HEAD OF ORPHEUS website. Writing RW was a trip for me that took five and a half years. My thjoughts on that experience appear in the Afterword of the Indiana University Press edition.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant, awesome and timeless
Review: "Riddley Walker" is one of a small handful of novels that I return to with fresh joy over and over again. As a writer myself, I have enough knowledge of the craft to understand--possibly even to explain--what makes most fiction writing good, bad, weak, strong. With "Riddley Walker," however, Russell Hoban has created something so nearly perfect, so precisely what 20th century literature has tried to be, that I can't even imagine how he accomplished it. I just open the book every two or three years, jump in, and drown once again in its deep and darkly brilliant depths.

Rating:
Summary: Riddley's voice will haunt your dreams, awake or asleep.
Review: I've given this book to everyone who cares for literature that can take off the top of your head. You have to read sixty pages, then start over once the voice is in your ears. I read it aloud to my wife. Hard truth, hard magic, and hard mystery. A deep and breathless run through the dark with a strange but trustworthy friend. For an equally powerful, yet inverse experience of Hoban in the light, read Pilgerman.

Rating:
Summary: A beautifully rendered, deeply thought-provoking work.
Review: Hoban's inventiveness is unmatched in this tale of a world slightly recognizable. Having read and re-read the book many times, I still find new meanings and metaphors within its mixture of dread and hope. I don't think I'll ever "get" all of Hoban's symbols, but like Samual Delaney's "Dhalgren", I will return to this book throughout my life to marvel at its profoundly stirring messages and amazing style. This book is a must-read for anyone who would ponder the point of a culture, and wonder what our society's unseen aims are.

Rating:
Summary: A tale told by an idiot
Review: I read this book thirteen years ago,after it's recommendation by a high-school eng. teacher. I have re-read it half a dozen times since than, each time I like it more. Hoban creates a future world of such hoplessness, it virges on beleviability. There seems little interest in "Post-Ap." explanations, theories or political observations which are usually the hallmark of this setting. All of this is ingnored, in favour of telling a story. Madness, violence, pidgin english, puppet-shows, all evoke a stylish back-drop, but don't wallow in self importance and deter from enjoying this really good book. I am not sure where Hoban meant to takethe reader, sometimes "Riddely Walker" can seem contradictory . If nothing else it is a story of what should happen. Some time when a man might find himself a hapless hero, in a place where being a hero means nothing

Rating:
Summary: A magical, intriguing book
Review: Unlike many readers, I first discovered Russell Hoban's adult novels and only later, when my daughter became old enough, did I read his books for children. Ridley Walker was my first Hoban novel and still remains my favorite. Looking at his earlier children's books, though, it is easy to trace the curve of his style. One's first impression of Ridley Walker is one of awe that he can carry off the language as well as he does. This is not "A Clockwork Orange" with a few new words and phrases, but an entirely new pidgin with a consistent syntactic structure and an wonderfully twisted take on the (future) derivation of the English language. And you must discover the language for yourself, there's no cheating by looking it up at the back of the book. Next I was taken in by the seamless melding of religion, geography, history, folk lore, and science that form the many circles within circles of the plot line. Hoban's intellectual powers are obvious in the way he can take disparate real locations and events and forge a connection or relationship where none exists. Finally though, it is the beauty and the magic of the world he has created, the clarity and the fearlessness of his vision, and the metaphysical flights of fancy that puts this novel at the top of my list of must-read books. Little Shinin Man roading out..

Rating:
Summary: The poetic language of the post-apocalypse future!
Review: Sharna pax and get the pole when the Ardship of Cambry comes out of his hole! It's Riddley, roading out....

Rating:
Summary: A must read
Review: I discovered Russell Hoban with one of his early novels "A Mouse and his Child" and have been hooked on him ever since. My children are familiar with his "Francis" children books. Riddley Walker has always facinated me with its own language style and mysteries. On first reading, there were many concepts I did not clearly understand and I figured the idea of it and its beauty is that it is whatever you want to read into the "tiny atoms of it". I always imagined that EUSA stood for Europe/USA - I wonder if I am alone in this? I have always had trouble with the direct meaning of "Folleree" and "Folleroo" and would like to hear your thoughts. Riddley Walker is the first book where I read the word "blip" which has become part of everyday langauage. What a great pleasure it would be to have Russell Hoban over for dinner!!!

Rating:
Summary: riddley walker
Review: To those who have difficulty reading this book, may I suggest reading it aloud? The language is English, written the way it sounds. The places named are mostly in Essex. It may be worth looking at a map. Riddley looks back at us the way some of us look back at Atlantis; without a clue. The story of Eusa setting the world on fire should make us all take a careful look at the present administration in Washington. This book reads like an eye-witness account of a post- apocalyptic future. So far beyond Russell Hoban's other works, its hard to believe it is by the same author. You will never look at a bottle of Jagermeister in the same way again. This book is what Canticle For Leibowitz might have been. Riddley Walker is perhaps the finest work of fiction I have ever read, and I have read more than one. Read this book and decide for yourself. Read this book.