Race and Class in the Deep South , 26 Nov 2008
It is perhaps appropriate that this was the first book I read after the election of America's first black President. My real reason for re-reading it, however, was for the purposes of comparison with Faulkner's "Intruder in the Dust", which deals with a similar theme. Indeed, I recently came across an allegation that Harper Lee's novel was essentially a plagiarism of Faulkner's.

The book is set in Maycomb County, Alabama, during the depression era of the 1930s. It is a first-person narrative told through the eyes of Jean Louise Finch who, for some reason, goes by the nickname Scout. Although she is only a child at the time of the events described, the narrative voice is that of the adult Jean Louise looking back at her childhood from some point in the future. The action of "Intruder in the Dust" is set over a few days and tells the story of one single incident, the murder of Vinson Gowrie; "To Kill a Mockingbird" is set over a period of about two years and essentially tells the story of Jean Louise's childhood between the ages of six and eight, although it concentrates on one crucial incident. The main characters, apart from Jean Louise herself, are her brother Jem and their friend Dill (another unexplained nickname; his real name is Charles).

Jean Louise and Jem are the children of Atticus Finch, a widowed lawyer. The book's central incident is the trial of a black man, Tom Robinson, for the alleged rape of a white woman, Mayella Ewell; Atticus is Robinson's defence attorney. Like Faulkner, Lee uses a classic thriller plot- the fight to prove the innocence of a man wrongly accused- to explore racism in America's Deep South. Although Robinson is clearly innocent of the charge, the all-white jury nevertheless vote to convict him, largely because to admit that a white woman, even one as sluttish as Mayella, was capable of making false accusations would force them to abandon their cherished ideas about the purity of Southern womanhood.

Harper Lee's concerns are wider than just the race issue. The book also has a lot to say about attitudes to social class among the white community, contrasting affluent middle-class families like the Finches with the likes of the Ewells, who can quite literally be classified as poor white trash. The family live in a shack next to the town's rubbish dump, where Mayella's father Bob earns his living as a scavenger. A favourite saying of the liberal, tolerant Atticus, who believes that most people, when you get to know them, are essentially kind, is that you should never judge a man until you have stood in his shoes and walked around in them. (At times the tone seemed quite preachy, as though Harper Lee were writing an extended sermon on tolerance).

Atticus applies this principle of non-judgementalism not only to racial issues but also to various acquaintances whom his children dislike or disapprove of for one reason or another. He applies it to Boo Radley, a simple-minded and reclusive, but inwardly kindly, neighbour, to the cantankerous old Mrs Dubose and to the Cunninghams, another poor white family but one who have retained a greater dignity and self-respect than the Ewells. The title of the book refers to a saying of Atticus that it is a sin to kill a mockingbird because they never do any harm, but it is a phrase which also refers to his philosophy of life. At various times several characters in the book- Robinson, Boo Radley, the children- can be seen as "mockingbirds", harmless creatures in need of protection.

One problem with the book is that Lee never really explores the tension between Atticus's liberal philosophy of life, and the problem of human evil as exemplified in the book by Bob Ewell, who is neither misjudged nor misunderstood but just plain wicked. Not only does he give perjured evidence in the hope of getting an innocent man sent to the gallows, and encourages his daughter to do the same, he also makes a vicious and cowardly attack on Atticus's children. Trying to stand in such a man's shoes would not, I feel, be a very productive exercise.

My other criticism of the book would be that it explores the question of racism from an exclusively white perspective, albeit a liberal one. For a number of reasons I think that "To Kill a Mockingbird" is a better book than "Intruder in the Dust", the most important being that Harper Lee's prose style is much more fluent and readable than Faulkner's often impenetrable sentences. Nevertheless, Faulkner creates, in Lucas Beauchamp, a black character who is much more well-rounded than any of those in Lee's book. Tom Robinson is little more than a plot device; the most prominent black character is Calpurnia, the Finch family's maid, who is that common literary stereotype, the faithful black servant. The book would have been better if Lee had given us a black perspective on the events she describes.

Those criticisms apart, I found this an excellent book, with a number vividly drawn characters, especially the spirited, loveable young Jean Louise and her father, who was memorably played by Gregory Peck in the brilliant film adaptation. Despite the limitations of his world view Atticus is an admirable character, who shows, in his defence of Robinson, not only great moral courage but also great physical courage as well. The immense improvement which has taken place in race relations in America since 1960 is owed, in part, to men like Atticus Finch, and also to women like Harper Lee who were prepared to confront the endemic racist attitudes of their society.


Timeless, 17 Nov 2008
This is my favourite novel of all time. I have read it so many times, I know it off by heart and also have the film.
The character of Scout is wise beyond her years and exposes the cruel, harsh, but contrastingly and most importantly, compassionate tendancies of the 1930s adult world. She reveals to us the true mockingbird (Tom Robinson) of the story and how someone that does nothing but selfless and honest work can be treated in such a way by others that it elicits sympathy from any third party- e.g us as readers. The setting is also vividly described- you can imagine yourself sitting on the dusty porch with Atticus, watching the sun set and see Jem and Scout with Dill. The innocence of Scout, in its totality, is what allows the reader to follow the story to the very end and appreciate it as many generations before have done so.

There are possibly very few who would regret reading this novel. It is timeless and engrossing.

A little slow, but fantastic!!, 30 Oct 2008
When I first picked up this novel, hearing that it was a classic, i thought it would too dreary for me as I was used to the quickly paced modern fiction. I was very wrong.

Even though the story is slow, you come to realise just how drenched the town is in prejudice. Harper Lee gets across the themes and characters very well.

A great read. Deserved to be called a classic.

To kill a mockingbird?, 14 Oct 2008
An absolute 'MUST READ' - a real challenge to your consciousness and your thoughts about right and wrong - what a characterful and honest book - just couldn't put it down.

tolerance , 15 Sep 2008
It's been ages since I've read this book so I'm not going to say much but this book should be read. Teachers have started not to study this book in schools because it has the word nigger in it (well in this country they have started to stop). It's more important now to read it them ever, this book promotes tolerance rather than racism. It's not the quickest book to read but it's a great book, I'm never going to give this book away.

Race and Class in the Deep South , 26 Nov 2008
It is perhaps appropriate that this was the first book I read after the election of America's first black President. My real reason for re-reading it, however, was for the purposes of comparison with Faulkner's "Intruder in the Dust", which deals with a similar theme. Indeed, I recently came across an allegation that Harper Lee's novel was essentially a plagiarism of Faulkner's.

The book is set in Maycomb County, Alabama, during the depression era of the 1930s. It is a first-person narrative told through the eyes of Jean Louise Finch who, for some reason, goes by the nickname Scout. Although she is only a child at the time of the events described, the narrative voice is that of the adult Jean Louise looking back at her childhood from some point in the future. The action of "Intruder in the Dust" is set over a few days and tells the story of one single incident, the murder of Vinson Gowrie; "To Kill a Mockingbird" is set over a period of about two years and essentially tells the story of Jean Louise's childhood between the ages of six and eight, although it concentrates on one crucial incident. The main characters, apart from Jean Louise herself, are her brother Jem and their friend Dill (another unexplained nickname; his real name is Charles).

Jean Louise and Jem are the children of Atticus Finch, a widowed lawyer. The book's central incident is the trial of a black man, Tom Robinson, for the alleged rape of a white woman, Mayella Ewell; Atticus is Robinson's defence attorney. Like Faulkner, Lee uses a classic thriller plot- the fight to prove the innocence of a man wrongly accused- to explore racism in America's Deep South. Although Robinson is clearly innocent of the charge, the all-white jury nevertheless vote to convict him, largely because to admit that a white woman, even one as sluttish as Mayella, was capable of making false accusations would force them to abandon their cherished ideas about the purity of Southern womanhood.

Harper Lee's concerns are wider than just the race issue. The book also has a lot to say about attitudes to social class among the white community, contrasting affluent middle-class families like the Finches with the likes of the Ewells, who can quite literally be classified as poor white trash. The family live in a shack next to the town's rubbish dump, where Mayella's father Bob earns his living as a scavenger. A favourite saying of the liberal, tolerant Atticus, who believes that most people, when you get to know them, are essentially kind, is that you should never judge a man until you have stood in his shoes and walked around in them. (At times the tone seemed quite preachy, as though Harper Lee were writing an extended sermon on tolerance).

Atticus applies this principle of non-judgementalism not only to racial issues but also to various acquaintances whom his children dislike or disapprove of for one reason or another. He applies it to Boo Radley, a simple-minded and reclusive, but inwardly kindly, neighbour, to the cantankerous old Mrs Dubose and to the Cunninghams, another poor white family but one who have retained a greater dignity and self-respect than the Ewells. The title of the book refers to a saying of Atticus that it is a sin to kill a mockingbird because they never do any harm, but it is a phrase which also refers to his philosophy of life. At various times several characters in the book- Robinson, Boo Radley, the children- can be seen as "mockingbirds", harmless creatures in need of protection.

One problem with the book is that Lee never really explores the tension between Atticus's liberal philosophy of life, and the problem of human evil as exemplified in the book by Bob Ewell, who is neither misjudged nor misunderstood but just plain wicked. Not only does he give perjured evidence in the hope of getting an innocent man sent to the gallows, and encourages his daughter to do the same, he also makes a vicious and cowardly attack on Atticus's children. Trying to stand in such a man's shoes would not, I feel, be a very productive exercise.

My other criticism of the book would be that it explores the question of racism from an exclusively white perspective, albeit a liberal one. For a number of reasons I think that "To Kill a Mockingbird" is a better book than "Intruder in the Dust", the most important being that Harper Lee's prose style is much more fluent and readable than Faulkner's often impenetrable sentences. Nevertheless, Faulkner creates, in Lucas Beauchamp, a black character who is much more well-rounded than any of those in Lee's book. Tom Robinson is little more than a plot device; the most prominent black character is Calpurnia, the Finch family's maid, who is that common literary stereotype, the faithful black servant. The book would have been better if Lee had given us a black perspective on the events she describes.

Those criticisms apart, I found this an excellent book, with a number vividly drawn characters, especially the spirited, loveable young Jean Louise and her father, who was memorably played by Gregory Peck in the brilliant film adaptation. Despite the limitations of his world view Atticus is an admirable character, who shows, in his defence of Robinson, not only great moral courage but also great physical courage as well. The immense improvement which has taken place in race relations in America since 1960 is owed, in part, to men like Atticus Finch, and also to women like Harper Lee who were prepared to confront the endemic racist attitudes of their society.


Timeless, 17 Nov 2008
This is my favourite novel of all time. I have read it so many times, I know it off by heart and also have the film.
The character of Scout is wise beyond her years and exposes the cruel, harsh, but contrastingly and most importantly, compassionate tendancies of the 1930s adult world. She reveals to us the true mockingbird (Tom Robinson) of the story and how someone that does nothing but selfless and honest work can be treated in such a way by others that it elicits sympathy from any third party- e.g us as readers. The setting is also vividly described- you can imagine yourself sitting on the dusty porch with Atticus, watching the sun set and see Jem and Scout with Dill. The innocence of Scout, in its totality, is what allows the reader to follow the story to the very end and appreciate it as many generations before have done so.

There are possibly very few who would regret reading this novel. It is timeless and engrossing.

A little slow, but fantastic!!, 30 Oct 2008
When I first picked up this novel, hearing that it was a classic, i thought it would too dreary for me as I was used to the quickly paced modern fiction. I was very wrong.

Even though the story is slow, you come to realise just how drenched the town is in prejudice. Harper Lee gets across the themes and characters very well.

A great read. Deserved to be called a classic.

To kill a mockingbird?, 14 Oct 2008
An absolute 'MUST READ' - a real challenge to your consciousness and your thoughts about right and wrong - what a characterful and honest book - just couldn't put it down.

tolerance , 15 Sep 2008
It's been ages since I've read this book so I'm not going to say much but this book should be read. Teachers have started not to study this book in schools because it has the word nigger in it (well in this country they have started to stop). It's more important now to read it them ever, this book promotes tolerance rather than racism. It's not the quickest book to read but it's a great book, I'm never going to give this book away.

"Deaf and the maiden, a dangerous combination", 21 Sep 2008
Although this novel ends with a birth and a death, for most of its pages, Deaf Sentence celebrates life, albeit one that is a little disadvantaged. Forced to retire because of his rapidly diminishing hearing, linguistics professor Desmond Bates is not exactly going through a mid-life crisis, but in the preceding months has reached a point in his life where he is subtly questioning everything. Desmond has had a fulfilling career teaching at a local northern University, and he's mostly happily married to his entrepreneurial wife Fred "Winifred" who runs a trendy design store called Décor. But even as Desmond settles into a middle-aged life, he worries about his increasingly spotty sexual performance. While Fred seems to be getting better with age, blooming into the flower of independence with a stunning new career and new look helped along by her best friend Jacci, Desmond has grown older and deafer, and subject to occasional erectile dysfunction that is exasperated by the advertisements for Viagra that daily always seem to appear in his email box.

It comes as no surprise then that Desmond, somewhat hampered by his hearing loss, falls into predictable daily routine, his communication with those around him becoming difficult at best as his family, friends and colleagues mostly stand by, confused and embarrassed most of the time and ultimately unable to relate to his misunderstandings in the conversation. With sex becoming an object of anxious rather than pleasurable anticipation, "although blindness is tragic, deafness may be comic, "Desmond receives a completely unexpected and completely disturbing call from a young and seductive student by the name of Alex Loom.

An intriguing person but a bit of an enigma. Alex is writing a thesis about suicide notes and wants Desmond to help her out. An unpredictable and frail girl with streaming blonde hair, Alex becomes ever more obsessed with obtaining Desmond's help and approval. Although Desmond makes clear moral distinctions, his life well-ordered and constricted by his marriage to Fred, he does have a darker side. The visits to Alex at her apartment, ostensibly to give her tips about her research, become ever more disturbing, with Desmond coming to the realization that she's either totally irresponsible or mentally unbalanced. Yet she seems to intuit somewhere in Desmond's psyche a fantasy lurking unsuspected and only waiting to be released.

Determined to maintain the status quo, Desmond also has his 89-year-old father, Harry once a big band musician, the responsibility for his dad's welfare lying heavily on him. He regularly travels down to London to visit Harry who lives in the old family home in the older suburb of Brickley. Living alone and dressing like a tramp, Harry lives closed up in his ramshackle house that always seems to be bathed in a sepulchral gloom. Stripped of all of his life enhancing interests, Harry's only one hobby is saving money while observing prices, and economizing on food, clothing and household bills.

While Desmond anguishes over what to do about Harry, Alex becomes his female nemesis and ultimately his arch manipulator. Indeed, Desmond curses the day that he let this unscrupulous young woman "twist him around the little finger of her flattery". To confess his dealings with her would make him look smaller in Fred's eyes even as he becomes convinced that an acknowledgement of Alex's attempted seductions would further weaken the status of his marriage. Alternating between the first and third person, Lodge's tale drifts from the serious to the humorous as Desmond tries to figure out how to get out of the dilemma of Alex. In the process this affable and kindly man ruminates and entertains the reader with his thoughts on ageing, marriage, seduction, isolation and the advantages and disadvantages of deafness. As the uncomfortable memories of Maisie, his first wife who died of cancer, whirls around him, Desmond cannot help but be a little bitter about his deafness. Even his new found new happiness with Fred has not assuaged his share of misfortunes and his sense of the discontent.

Filled with literary illusions and misunderstood irony, this novel ultimately comes across as a type of modern comedy of manners framed around the themes of life's fragility and the ease with which the marks we leave on the surface of the earth are erased. The chapters on linguistics, while obligatory for comprehending the many facets of Desmond`s character can be a bit difficult to digest, but the narrative generally moves along with sparkling dialogue that is full of guileful observations on life. Most notable for displaying for the minute and humorous details of British family life, the novels chief pleasure lies in the familiar - a chaotic Christmas dinner with the entire family present, a new years holiday at a sexy leisure resort, a chaotic dinner in a loud Italian restaurant that is filled with irritating background noise, and ruminations on Desmond's future years of tranquility with Fred, still after all that transpires, the decisive love of his life. Mike Leonard September 08.

A very enjoyable book, 27 Aug 2008
I loved this book. It's like the very best situation comedy: the laugh-out-loud humour inter-cut with painful situations and a sense of tension as to what will befall the characters as the story unfolds. I think you need to be a bit older in years to appreciate this book as its comedy partly depends on the infirmities of aging and the funny as well as sad trials and tribulations of having very elderly parents with failing powers. The book will appeal, I think, even more to those of us with poor hearing, especially also using hearing aids, as we are all too familiar with the embarrassments and disadvantages of our disability.

Not quite up to the usual Lodge standard, 12 Aug 2008
A David Lodge novel is something to look forward to and I wish I could have enjoyed this one more than I did. Admittedly there are some hilarious misunderstandings, the ones on page 108 caused by the narrator's deafness, made me laugh out loud. However the plot requires more tension and the potential interactions between Professor Bates and the psychotic PhD student Alex never quite take off because they meet rather infrequently. The pathos of his father's troubles tend to dominate the book latterly and together with the trip to Auschwitz, leave one feeling rather gloomy. There is a novel amongst all the diary entries but perhaps this is not the best one that Lodge could have written.

One rather curious feature is the occasional change from first to third person narration, to no great effect. One felt as if Lodge just fancied a change!

Second rate novel by a first-rate writer, 30 Jul 2008
I look forward to a David Lodge novel like a look forward to spring, only they come along less often, so they are more cherished. This one, however, only engaged me periodically. To me, it felt like a short story grafted on an autobiographical novel, and the combination just didn't seem to work after about the halfway point.

Desmond Bates, retired professor of linguistics at an unnamed northern university, is suffering from deafness, which caused his early retirement and places a strain on his second marriage to posh Winifred. The other strain in his life is his elderly, and decidedly unposh, father, who is similarly deaf, as well as cheap and unwilling to consider moving into any kind of assisted living.

The novel begins with a moving and interesting story of how Desmond confronts a noisy party, at which an attractive girl he later finds out is named Alex and a graduate student at his old university, talks to him while he can't hear a word she says. He finds himself saying yes to things he hasn't heard, only later to discover he has agreed to talk to her about her thesis. Lodge himself suffers from deafness and he writes about it in ways that ring true to my own experience and that of family members with hearing loss.

There is some rich background that might have been better brought closer to the surface here in Desmond's relationship to his daughter, Anne, and son, Richard, children of his first marriage to Maisie, who had died of cancer. Anne barely appears at all (she is pregnant through 90% of the novel), yet names her first child Desmond. Rick is barely mentioned til the end, yet has an important role in the last quarter of the book. There's a contrast between the match Desmond made with Maisie and that which he makes with Fred that is simply not resolved, yet at times is the most important part of the book.

After the excellent opening, the Alex story seems grafted on. Alex turns out to be trouble for Desmond, but even more so for his colleague Butterworth (whose wife is referred to once as "Mrs. Butterworth", which I don't know if that is as funny in England as it is in America). Once it appears clear that she is trouble for Butterworth, she ceases to be much of a threat to Desmond, and the story basically peters out. At the point late in the book where Desmond mentions to her he is going to Poland, and he begins a retrospective of the time in Poland with some dire foreshadowing, one believes that Alex may have followed him there to embarrass him in some way, but the opportunity passes.

The bulk of the novel, and certainly the climax, deal with Desmond's relationship with his dying father. Many of the scenes are handled with care and compassion (Lodge states in an afterword that this was quite autobiographical), but the only conflict is relatively trite and contrived: the father who won't leave home, is paranoid about people stealing from him, can't get along with his son's posh in-laws, etc. Only the idea that the two men, father and son, sharing the same affliction sometimes leads to some comedy, particularly when they have conversations in public at full volume so as to hear one another, seems fresh and alive.

Lodge's late friendly rival, Malcolm Bradbury, left behind some fragments of novels and stories that he never finished, which were published without change and make interesting reading. This book, for all its good points, feels much like Lodge struggling not to leave such fragments behind. It's not clear to me that this was the right choice.


Comic not tragic, 09 Jun 2008
Desmond Bates has been going deaf for the last 20 years. He took early retirement from his position as Professor of Linguistics because he couldn't hear what his students were saying. Now, he faces the frustrations & indignities of deafness every day. His wife, Winifred (Fred), is sympathetic but sometimes irritated. When Desmond meets post graduate student, Alex Loom, he agrees - without realizing it - to a meeting about her thesis on the linguistics of suicide notes. He hasn't heard a word she said at a noisy gallery opening & doesn't realize he's agreed to anything at all. This leads him into a confusing relationship with the manipulative Alex, who wants Desmond to supervise her thesis. Desmond is also worried about his elderly father (also going deaf), living alone in London. This is the most poignant and humorous part of the book. Harry lives in the family home, in increasing squalor, hiding money under the floorboards, and refusing to spend any money on making his life more comfortable. David Lodge has written a beautifully observed novel which illuminates the world of people with hearing loss. Desmond's theory that blindness is tragic while deafness is merely comic is illustrated by the facts of his everyday life - struggles with hearing aid batteries, lip reading classes, & the funny yet frustrating misunderstandings in everyday conversation. Lodge shows the reader the isolation of the deaf in this absorbing novel.

Race and Class in the Deep South , 26 Nov 2008
It is perhaps appropriate that this was the first book I read after the election of America's first black President. My real reason for re-reading it, however, was for the purposes of comparison with Faulkner's "Intruder in the Dust", which deals with a similar theme. Indeed, I recently came across an allegation that Harper Lee's novel was essentially a plagiarism of Faulkner's.

The book is set in Maycomb County, Alabama, during the depression era of the 1930s. It is a first-person narrative told through the eyes of Jean Louise Finch who, for some reason, goes by the nickname Scout. Although she is only a child at the time of the events described, the narrative voice is that of the adult Jean Louise looking back at her childhood from some point in the future. The action of "Intruder in the Dust" is set over a few days and tells the story of one single incident, the murder of Vinson Gowrie; "To Kill a Mockingbird" is set over a period of about two years and essentially tells the story of Jean Louise's childhood between the ages of six and eight, although it concentrates on one crucial incident. The main characters, apart from Jean Louise herself, are her brother Jem and their friend Dill (another unexplained nickname; his real name is Charles).

Jean Louise and Jem are the children of Atticus Finch, a widowed lawyer. The book's central incident is the trial of a black man, Tom Robinson, for the alleged rape of a white woman, Mayella Ewell; Atticus is Robinson's defence attorney. Like Faulkner, Lee uses a classic thriller plot- the fight to prove the innocence of a man wrongly accused- to explore racism in America's Deep South. Although Robinson is clearly innocent of the charge, the all-white jury nevertheless vote to convict him, largely because to admit that a white woman, even one as sluttish as Mayella, was capable of making false accusations would force them to abandon their cherished ideas about the purity of Southern womanhood.

Harper Lee's concerns are wider than just the race issue. The book also has a lot to say about attitudes to social class among the white community, contrasting affluent middle-class families like the Finches with the likes of the Ewells, who can quite literally be classified as poor white trash. The family live in a shack next to the town's rubbish dump, where Mayella's father Bob earns his living as a scavenger. A favourite saying of the liberal, tolerant Atticus, who believes that most people, when you get to know them, are essentially kind, is that you should never judge a man until you have stood in his shoes and walked around in them. (At times the tone seemed quite preachy, as though Harper Lee were writing an extended sermon on tolerance).

Atticus applies this principle of non-judgementalism not only to racial issues but also to various acquaintances whom his children dislike or disapprove of for one reason or another. He applies it to Boo Radley, a simple-minded and reclusive, but inwardly kindly, neighbour, to the cantankerous old Mrs Dubose and to the Cunninghams, another poor white family but one who have retained a greater dignity and self-respect than the Ewells. The title of the book refers to a saying of Atticus that it is a sin to kill a mockingbird because they never do any harm, but it is a phrase which also refers to his philosophy of life. At various times several characters in the book- Robinson, Boo Radley, the children- can be seen as "mockingbirds", harmless creatures in need of protection.

One problem with the book is that Lee never really explores the tension between Atticus's liberal philosophy of life, and the problem of human evil as exemplified in the book by Bob Ewell, who is neither misjudged nor misunderstood but just plain wicked. Not only does he give perjured evidence in the hope of getting an innocent man sent to the gallows, and encourages his daughter to do the same, he also makes a vicious and cowardly attack on Atticus's children. Trying to stand in such a man's shoes would not, I feel, be a very productive exercise.

My other criticism of the book would be that it explores the question of racism from an exclusively white perspective, albeit a liberal one. For a number of reasons I think that "To Kill a Mockingbird" is a better book than "Intruder in the Dust", the most important being that Harper Lee's prose style is much more fluent and readable than Faulkner's often impenetrable sentences. Nevertheless, Faulkner creates, in Lucas Beauchamp, a black character who is much more well-rounded than any of those in Lee's book. Tom Robinson is little more than a plot device; the most prominent black character is Calpurnia, the Finch family's maid, who is that common literary stereotype, the faithful black servant. The book would have been better if Lee had given us a black perspective on the events she describes.

Those criticisms apart, I found this an excellent book, with a number vividly drawn characters, especially the spirited, loveable young Jean Louise and her father, who was memorably played by Gregory Peck in the brilliant film adaptation. Despite the limitations of his world view Atticus is an admirable character, who shows, in his defence of Robinson, not only great moral courage but also great physical courage as well. The immense improvement which has taken place in race relations in America since 1960 is owed, in part, to men like Atticus Finch, and also to women like Harper Lee who were prepared to confront the endemic racist attitudes of their society.


Timeless, 17 Nov 2008
This is my favourite novel of all time. I have read it so many times, I know it off by heart and also have the film.
The character of Scout is wise beyond her years and exposes the cruel, harsh, but contrastingly and most importantly, compassionate tendancies of the 1930s adult world. She reveals to us the true mockingbird (Tom Robinson) of the story and how someone that does nothing but selfless and honest work can be treated in such a way by others that it elicits sympathy from any third party- e.g us as readers. The setting is also vividly described- you can imagine yourself sitting on the dusty porch with Atticus, watching the sun set and see Jem and Scout with Dill. The innocence of Scout, in its totality, is what allows the reader to follow the story to the very end and appreciate it as many generations before have done so.

There are possibly very few who would regret reading this novel. It is timeless and engrossing.

A little slow, but fantastic!!, 30 Oct 2008
When I first picked up this novel, hearing that it was a classic, i thought it would too dreary for me as I was used to the quickly paced modern fiction. I was very wrong.

Even though the story is slow, you come to realise just how drenched the town is in prejudice. Harper Lee gets across the themes and characters very well.

A great read. Deserved to be called a classic.

To kill a mockingbird?, 14 Oct 2008
An absolute 'MUST READ' - a real challenge to your consciousness and your thoughts about right and wrong - what a characterful and honest book - just couldn't put it down.

tolerance , 15 Sep 2008
It's been ages since I've read this book so I'm not going to say much but this book should be read. Teachers have started not to study this book in schools because it has the word nigger in it (well in this country they have started to stop). It's more important now to read it them ever, this book promotes tolerance rather than racism. It's not the quickest book to read but it's a great book, I'm never going to give this book away.

"Deaf and the maiden, a dangerous combination", 21 Sep 2008
Although this novel ends with a birth and a death, for most of its pages, Deaf Sentence celebrates life, albeit one that is a little disadvantaged. Forced to retire because of his rapidly diminishing hearing, linguistics professor Desmond Bates is not exactly going through a mid-life crisis, but in the preceding months has reached a point in his life where he is subtly questioning everything. Desmond has had a fulfilling career teaching at a local northern University, and he's mostly happily married to his entrepreneurial wife Fred "Winifred" who runs a trendy design store called Décor. But even as Desmond settles into a middle-aged life, he worries about his increasingly spotty sexual performance. While Fred seems to be getting better with age, blooming into the flower of independence with a stunning new career and new look helped along by her best friend Jacci, Desmond has grown older and deafer, and subject to occasional erectile dysfunction that is exasperated by the advertisements for Viagra that daily always seem to appear in his email box.

It comes as no surprise then that Desmond, somewhat hampered by his hearing loss, falls into predictable daily routine, his communication with those around him becoming difficult at best as his family, friends and colleagues mostly stand by, confused and embarrassed most of the time and ultimately unable to relate to his misunderstandings in the conversation. With sex becoming an object of anxious rather than pleasurable anticipation, "although blindness is tragic, deafness may be comic, "Desmond receives a completely unexpected and completely disturbing call from a young and seductive student by the name of Alex Loom.

An intriguing person but a bit of an enigma. Alex is writing a thesis about suicide notes and wants Desmond to help her out. An unpredictable and frail girl with streaming blonde hair, Alex becomes ever more obsessed with obtaining Desmond's help and approval. Although Desmond makes clear moral distinctions, his life well-ordered and constricted by his marriage to Fred, he does have a darker side. The visits to Alex at her apartment, ostensibly to give her tips about her research, become ever more disturbing, with Desmond coming to the realization that she's either totally irresponsible or mentally unbalanced. Yet she seems to intuit somewhere in Desmond's psyche a fantasy lurking unsuspected and only waiting to be released.

Determined to maintain the status quo, Desmond also has his 89-year-old father, Harry once a big band musician, the responsibility for his dad's welfare lying heavily on him. He regularly travels down to London to visit Harry who lives in the old family home in the older suburb of Brickley. Living alone and dressing like a tramp, Harry lives closed up in his ramshackle house that always seems to be bathed in a sepulchral gloom. Stripped of all of his life enhancing interests, Harry's only one hobby is saving money while observing prices, and economizing on food, clothing and household bills.

While Desmond anguishes over what to do about Harry, Alex becomes his female nemesis and ultimately his arch manipulator. Indeed, Desmond curses the day that he let this unscrupulous young woman "twist him around the little finger of her flattery". To confess his dealings with her would make him look smaller in Fred's eyes even as he becomes convinced that an acknowledgement of Alex's attempted seductions would further weaken the status of his marriage. Alternating between the first and third person, Lodge's tale drifts from the serious to the humorous as Desmond tries to figure out how to get out of the dilemma of Alex. In the process this affable and kindly man ruminates and entertains the reader with his thoughts on ageing, marriage, seduction, isolation and the advantages and disadvantages of deafness. As the uncomfortable memories of Maisie, his first wife who died of cancer, whirls around him, Desmond cannot help but be a little bitter about his deafness. Even his new found new happiness with Fred has not assuaged his share of misfortunes and his sense of the discontent.

Filled with literary illusions and misunderstood irony, this novel ultimately comes across as a type of modern comedy of manners framed around the themes of life's fragility and the ease with which the marks we leave on the surface of the earth are erased. The chapters on linguistics, while obligatory for comprehending the many facets of Desmond`s character can be a bit difficult to digest, but the narrative generally moves along with sparkling dialogue that is full of guileful observations on life. Most notable for displaying for the minute and humorous details of British family life, the novels chief pleasure lies in the familiar - a chaotic Christmas dinner with the entire family present, a new years holiday at a sexy leisure resort, a chaotic dinner in a loud Italian restaurant that is filled with irritating background noise, and ruminations on Desmond's future years of tranquility with Fred, still after all that transpires, the decisive love of his life. Mike Leonard September 08.

A very enjoyable book, 27 Aug 2008
I loved this book. It's like the very best situation comedy: the laugh-out-loud humour inter-cut with painful situations and a sense of tension as to what will befall the characters as the story unfolds. I think you need to be a bit older in years to appreciate this book as its comedy partly depends on the infirmities of aging and the funny as well as sad trials and tribulations of having very elderly parents with failing powers. The book will appeal, I think, even more to those of us with poor hearing, especially also using hearing aids, as we are all too familiar with the embarrassments and disadvantages of our disability.

Not quite up to the usual Lodge standard, 12 Aug 2008
A David Lodge novel is something to look forward to and I wish I could have enjoyed this one more than I did. Admittedly there are some hilarious misunderstandings, the ones on page 108 caused by the narrator's deafness, made me laugh out loud. However the plot requires more tension and the potential interactions between Professor Bates and the psychotic PhD student Alex never quite take off because they meet rather infrequently. The pathos of his father's troubles tend to dominate the book latterly and together with the trip to Auschwitz, leave one feeling rather gloomy. There is a novel amongst all the diary entries but perhaps this is not the best one that Lodge could have written.

One rather curious feature is the occasional change from first to third person narration, to no great effect. One felt as if Lodge just fancied a change!

Second rate novel by a first-rate writer, 30 Jul 2008
I look forward to a David Lodge novel like a look forward to spring, only they come along less often, so they are more cherished. This one, however, only engaged me periodically. To me, it felt like a short story grafted on an autobiographical novel, and the combination just didn't seem to work after about the halfway point.

Desmond Bates, retired professor of linguistics at an unnamed northern university, is suffering from deafness, which caused his early retirement and places a strain on his second marriage to posh Winifred. The other strain in his life is his elderly, and decidedly unposh, father, who is similarly deaf, as well as cheap and unwilling to consider moving into any kind of assisted living.

The novel begins with a moving and interesting story of how Desmond confronts a noisy party, at which an attractive girl he later finds out is named Alex and a graduate student at his old university, talks to him while he can't hear a word she says. He finds himself saying yes to things he hasn't heard, only later to discover he has agreed to talk to her about her thesis. Lodge himself suffers from deafness and he writes about it in ways that ring true to my own experience and that of family members with hearing loss.

There is some rich background that might have been better brought closer to the surface here in Desmond's relationship to his daughter, Anne, and son, Richard, children of his first marriage to Maisie, who had died of cancer. Anne barely appears at all (she is pregnant through 90% of the novel), yet names her first child Desmond. Rick is barely mentioned til the end, yet has an important role in the last quarter of the book. There's a contrast between the match Desmond made with Maisie and that which he makes with Fred that is simply not resolved, yet at times is the most important part of the book.

After the excellent opening, the Alex story seems grafted on. Alex turns out to be trouble for Desmond, but even more so for his colleague Butterworth (whose wife is referred to once as "Mrs. Butterworth", which I don't know if that is as funny in England as it is in America). Once it appears clear that she is trouble for Butterworth, she ceases to be much of a threat to Desmond, and the story basically peters out. At the point late in the book where Desmond mentions to her he is going to Poland, and he begins a retrospective of the time in Poland with some dire foreshadowing, one believes that Alex may have followed him there to embarrass him in some way, but the opportunity passes.

The bulk of the novel, and certainly the climax, deal with Desmond's relationship with his dying father. Many of the scenes are handled with care and compassion (Lodge states in an afterword that this was quite autobiographical), but the only conflict is relatively trite and contrived: the father who won't leave home, is paranoid about people stealing from him, can't get along with his son's posh in-laws, etc. Only the idea that the two men, father and son, sharing the same affliction sometimes leads to some comedy, particularly when they have conversations in public at full volume so as to hear one another, seems fresh and alive.

Lodge's late friendly rival, Malcolm Bradbury, left behind some fragments of novels and stories that he never finished, which were published without change and make interesting reading. This book, for all its good points, feels much like Lodge struggling not to leave such fragments behind. It's not clear to me that this was the right choice.


Comic not tragic, 09 Jun 2008
Desmond Bates has been going deaf for the last 20 years. He took early retirement from his position as Professor of Linguistics because he couldn't hear what his students were saying. Now, he faces the frustrations & indignities of deafness every day. His wife, Winifred (Fred), is sympathetic but sometimes irritated. When Desmond meets post graduate student, Alex Loom, he agrees - without realizing it - to a meeting about her thesis on the linguistics of suicide notes. He hasn't heard a word she said at a noisy gallery opening & doesn't realize he's agreed to anything at all. This leads him into a confusing relationship with the manipulative Alex, who wants Desmond to supervise her thesis. Desmond is also worried about his elderly father (also going deaf), living alone in London. This is the most poignant and humorous part of the book. Harry lives in the family home, in increasing squalor, hiding money under the floorboards, and refusing to spend any money on making his life more comfortable. David Lodge has written a beautifully observed novel which illuminates the world of people with hearing loss. Desmond's theory that blindness is tragic while deafness is merely comic is illustrated by the facts of his everyday life - struggles with hearing aid batteries, lip reading classes, & the funny yet frustrating misunderstandings in everyday conversation. Lodge shows the reader the isolation of the deaf in this absorbing novel.

got it, 20 Nov 2008
just got it will start reading soon :)

i got into a few lines and its quite addictive, niceee :D



Pretty good, 28 Sep 2008
I bought this recently, having never read (but often heard about) Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos.

I'm only about a third of the way through, but it seems pretty good (although the author does seem to have swallowed a thesaurus - and a particularly gibbous and over-nourished one at that, most likely recovered from some Stygian Pit that the mortal mind was not meant to know of). Plus, he does have some rather - ahem - "old fashioned" attitudes to race and class that can seem rather jarring to a modern reader.

This particular edition also does, unfortunately, have a number of typos in the text, some of which ("Necroriomicon", "clay" instead of "day", and "Gthulhu") suggest to me that the publishers had the original text scanned and digitised, but imperfectly. (I'm keeping a note of them as I find them, and will inform the publishers when I've finished the book).

Still, all said, I don't regret getting the book, and if you don't mind those faults, I'd certainly recommend this to anyone interested in the genera.


Just as I remembered!!, 14 Sep 2008
Excellent, worth the wait!! I remember reading this as a child, it's just as good as I remembered. Real Classic stuff!!

I recommend it to anyone looking for some good old creepy stories.

JOIN THE DARKSIDE!!!!, 19 Jul 2008
What can i say that already hasn't been said.
This is truly awesome, a complete collection of lovecraft in a well bound casebound book with faux Leather cover, in black.
All your favorites are there. If you're a real lovecraft fan this is deffinately for you.
And for a very reasanoble price.
100% recommended, buy now & join us on a truly Dark venture into the world of the one & the only H.P.lovecraft


Beautifully produced edition, but -2 stars for horrible tacky price sticker on the back, 28 Jun 2008
Finally a beautifully produced and complete edition of H.P. Lovecraft's works, but whoever at Gollancz/Orion decided to spoil each book with a tacky price sticker - not even put on straight - that leaves a sticky residue when removed (and believe me, it's tenacious) should be punished by the elder gods, or at least someone senior at the publishers.

Race and Class in the Deep South , 26 Nov 2008
It is perhaps appropriate that this was the first book I read after the election of America's first black President. My real reason for re-reading it, however, was for the purposes of comparison with Faulkner's "Intruder in the Dust", which deals with a similar theme. Indeed, I recently came across an allegation that Harper Lee's novel was essentially a plagiarism of Faulkner's.

The book is set in Maycomb County, Alabama, during the depression era of the 1930s. It is a first-person narrative told through the eyes of Jean Louise Finch who, for some reason, goes by the nickname Scout. Although she is only a child at the time of the events described, the narrative voice is that of the adult Jean Louise looking back at her childhood from some point in the future. The action of "Intruder in the Dust" is set over a few days and tells the story of one single incident, the murder of Vinson Gowrie; "To Kill a Mockingbird" is set over a period of about two years and essentially tells the story of Jean Louise's childhood between the ages of six and eight, although it concentrates on one crucial incident. The main characters, apart from Jean Louise herself, are her brother Jem and their friend Dill (another unexplained nickname; his real name is Charles).

Jean Louise and Jem are the children of Atticus Finch, a widowed lawyer. The book's central incident is the trial of a black man, Tom Robinson, for the alleged rape of a white woman, Mayella Ewell; Atticus is Robinson's defence attorney. Like Faulkner, Lee uses a classic thriller plot- the fight to prove the innocence of a man wrongly accused- to explore racism in America's Deep South. Although Robinson is clearly innocent of the charge, the all-white jury nevertheless vote to convict him, largely because to admit that a white woman, even one as sluttish as Mayella, was capable of making false accusations would force them to abandon their cherished ideas about the purity of Southern womanhood.

Harper Lee's concerns are wider than just the race issue. The book also has a lot to say about attitudes to social class among the white community, contrasting affluent middle-class families like the Finches with the likes of the Ewells, who can quite literally be classified as poor white trash. The family live in a shack next to the town's rubbish dump, where Mayella's father Bob earns his living as a scavenger. A favourite saying of the liberal, tolerant Atticus, who believes that most people, when you get to know them, are essentially kind, is that you should never judge a man until you have stood in his shoes and walked around in them. (At times the tone seemed quite preachy, as though Harper Lee were writing an extended sermon on tolerance).

Atticus applies this principle of non-judgementalism not only to racial issues but also to various acquaintances whom his children dislike or disapprove of for one reason or another. He applies it to Boo Radley, a simple-minded and reclusive, but inwardly kindly, neighbour, to the cantankerous old Mrs Dubose and to the Cunninghams, another poor white family but one who have retained a greater dignity and self-respect than the Ewells. The title of the book refers to a saying of Atticus that it is a sin to kill a mockingbird because they never do any harm, but it is a phrase which also refers to his philosophy of life. At various times several characters in the book- Robinson, Boo Radley, the children- can be seen as "mockingbirds", harmless creatures in need of protection.

One problem with the book is that Lee never really explores the tension between Atticus's liberal philosophy of life, and the problem of human evil as exemplified in the book by Bob Ewell, who is neither misjudged nor misunderstood but just plain wicked. Not only does he give perjured evidence in the hope of getting an innocent man sent to the gallows, and encourages his daughter to do the same, he also makes a vicious and cowardly attack on Atticus's children. Trying to stand in such a man's shoes would not, I feel, be a very productive exercise.

My other criticism of the book would be that it explores the question of racism from an exclusively white perspective, albeit a liberal one. For a number of reasons I think that "To Kill a Mockingbird" is a better book than "Intruder in the Dust", the most important being that Harper Lee's prose style is much more fluent and readable than Faulkner's often impenetrable sentences. Nevertheless, Faulkner creates, in Lucas Beauchamp, a black character who is much more well-rounded than any of those in Lee's book. Tom Robinson is little more than a plot device; the most prominent black character is Calpurnia, the Finch family's maid, who is that common literary stereotype, the faithful black servant. The book would have been better if Lee had given us a black perspective on the events she describes.

Those criticisms apart, I found this an excellent book, with a number vividly drawn characters, especially the spirited, loveable young Jean Louise and her father, who was memorably played by Gregory Peck in the brilliant film adaptation. Despite the limitations of his world view Atticus is an admirable character, who shows, in his defence of Robinson, not only great moral courage but also great physical courage as well. The immense improvement which has taken place in race relations in America since 1960 is owed, in part, to men like Atticus Finch, and also to women like Harper Lee who were prepared to confront the endemic racist attitudes of their society.


Timeless, 17 Nov 2008
This is my favourite novel of all time. I have read it so many times, I know it off by heart and also have the film.
The character of Scout is wise beyond her years and exposes the cruel, harsh, but contrastingly and most importantly, compassionate tendancies of the 1930s adult world. She reveals to us the true mockingbird (Tom Robinson) of the story and how someone that does nothing but selfless and honest work can be treated in such a way by others that it elicits sympathy from any third party- e.g us as readers. The setting is also vividly described- you can imagine yourself sitting on the dusty porch with Atticus, watching the sun set and see Jem and Scout with Dill. The innocence of Scout, in its totality, is what allows the reader to follow the story to the very end and appreciate it as many generations before have done so.

There are possibly very few who would regret reading this novel. It is timeless and engrossing.

A little slow, but fantastic!!, 30 Oct 2008
When I first picked up this novel, hearing that it was a classic, i thought it would too dreary for me as I was used to the quickly paced modern fiction. I was very wrong.

Even though the story is slow, you come to realise just how drenched the town is in prejudice. Harper Lee gets across the themes and characters very well.

A great read. Deserved to be called a classic.

To kill a mockingbird?, 14 Oct 2008
An absolute 'MUST READ' - a real challenge to your consciousness and your thoughts about right and wrong - what a characterful and honest book - just couldn't put it down.

tolerance , 15 Sep 2008
It's been ages since I've read this book so I'm not going to say much but this book should be read. Teachers have started not to study this book in schools because it has the word nigger in it (well in this country they have started to stop). It's more important now to read it them ever, this book promotes tolerance rather than racism. It's not the quickest book to read but it's a great book, I'm never going to give this book away.

"Deaf and the maiden, a dangerous combination", 21 Sep 2008
Although this novel ends with a birth and a death, for most of its pages, Deaf Sentence celebrates life, albeit one that is a little disadvantaged. Forced to retire because of his rapidly diminishing hearing, linguistics professor Desmond Bates is not exactly going through a mid-life crisis, but in the preceding months has reached a point in his life where he is subtly questioning everything. Desmond has had a fulfilling career teaching at a local northern University, and he's mostly happily married to his entrepreneurial wife Fred "Winifred" who runs a trendy design store called Décor. But even as Desmond settles into a middle-aged life, he worries about his increasingly spotty sexual performance. While Fred seems to be getting better with age, blooming into the flower of independence with a stunning new career and new look helped along by her best friend Jacci, Desmond has grown older and deafer, and subject to occasional erectile dysfunction that is exasperated by the advertisements for Viagra that daily always seem to appear in his email box.

It comes as no surprise then that Desmond, somewhat hampered by his hearing loss, falls into predictable daily routine, his communication with those around him becoming difficult at best as his family, friends and colleagues mostly stand by, confused and embarrassed most of the time and ultimately unable to relate to his misunderstandings in the conversation. With sex becoming an object of anxious rather than pleasurable anticipation, "although blindness is tragic, deafness may be comic, "Desmond receives a completely unexpected and completely disturbing call from a young and seductive student by the name of Alex Loom.

An intriguing person but a bit of an enigma. Alex is writing a thesis about suicide notes and wants Desmond to help her out. An unpredictable and frail girl with streaming blonde hair, Alex becomes ever more obsessed with obtaining Desmond's help and approval. Although Desmond makes clear moral distinctions, his life well-ordered and constricted by his marriage to Fred, he does have a darker side. The visits to Alex at her apartment, ostensibly to give her tips about her research, become ever more disturbing, with Desmond coming to the realization that she's either totally irresponsible or mentally unbalanced. Yet she seems to intuit somewhere in Desmond's psyche a fantasy lurking unsuspected and only waiting to be released.

Determined to maintain the status quo, Desmond also has his 89-year-old father, Harry once a big band musician, the responsibility for his dad's welfare lying heavily on him. He regularly travels down to London to visit Harry who lives in the old family home in the older suburb of Brickley. Living alone and dressing like a tramp, Harry lives closed up in his ramshackle house that always seems to be bathed in a sepulchral gloom. Stripped of all of his life enhancing interests, Harry's only one hobby is saving money while observing prices, and economizing on food, clothing and household bills.

While Desmond anguishes over what to do about Harry, Alex becomes his female nemesis and ultimately his arch manipulator. Indeed, Desmond curses the day that he let this unscrupulous young woman "twist him around the little finger of her flattery". To confess his dealings with her would make him look smaller in Fred's eyes even as he becomes convinced that an acknowledgement of Alex's attempted seductions would further weaken the status of his marriage. Alternating between the first and third person, Lodge's tale drifts from the serious to the humorous as Desmond tries to figure out how to get out of the dilemma of Alex. In the process this affable and kindly man ruminates and entertains the reader with his thoughts on ageing, marriage, seduction, isolation and the advantages and disadvantages of deafness. As the uncomfortable memories of Maisie, his first wife who died of cancer, whirls around him, Desmond cannot help but be a little bitter about his deafness. Even his new found new happiness with Fred has not assuaged his share of misfortunes and his sense of the discontent.

Filled with literary illusions and misunderstood irony, this novel ultimately comes across as a type of modern comedy of manners framed around the themes of life's fragility and the ease with which the marks we leave on the surface of the earth are erased. The chapters on linguistics, while obligatory for comprehending the many facets of Desmond`s character can be a bit difficult to digest, but the narrative generally moves along with sparkling dialogue that is full of guileful observations on life. Most notable for displaying for the minute and humorous details of British family life, the novels chief pleasure lies in the familiar - a chaotic Christmas dinner with the entire family present, a new years holiday at a sexy leisure resort, a chaotic dinner in a loud Italian restaurant that is filled with irritating background noise, and ruminations on Desmond's future years of tranquility with Fred, still after all that transpires, the decisive love of his life. Mike Leonard September 08.

A very enjoyable book, 27 Aug 2008
I loved this book. It's like the very best situation comedy: the laugh-out-loud humour inter-cut with painful situations and a sense of tension as to what will befall the characters as the story unfolds. I think you need to be a bit older in years to appreciate this book as its comedy partly depends on the infirmities of aging and the funny as well as sad trials and tribulations of having very elderly parents with failing powers. The book will appeal, I think, even more to those of us with poor hearing, especially also using hearing aids, as we are all too familiar with the embarrassments and disadvantages of our disability.

Not quite up to the usual Lodge standard, 12 Aug 2008
A David Lodge novel is something to look forward to and I wish I could have enjoyed this one more than I did. Admittedly there are some hilarious misunderstandings, the ones on page 108 caused by the narrator's deafness, made me laugh out loud. However the plot requires more tension and the potential interactions between Professor Bates and the psychotic PhD student Alex never quite take off because they meet rather infrequently. The pathos of his father's troubles tend to dominate the book latterly and together with the trip to Auschwitz, leave one feeling rather gloomy. There is a novel amongst all the diary entries but perhaps this is not the best one that Lodge could have written.

One rather curious feature is the occasional change from first to third person narration, to no great effect. One felt as if Lodge just fancied a change!

Second rate novel by a first-rate writer, 30 Jul 2008
I look forward to a David Lodge novel like a look forward to spring, only they come along less often, so they are more cherished. This one, however, only engaged me periodically. To me, it felt like a short story grafted on an autobiographical novel, and the combination just didn't seem to work after about the halfway point.

Desmond Bates, retired professor of linguistics at an unnamed northern university, is suffering from deafness, which caused his early retirement and places a strain on his second marriage to posh Winifred. The other strain in his life is his elderly, and decidedly unposh, father, who is similarly deaf, as well as cheap and unwilling to consider moving into any kind of assisted living.

The novel begins with a moving and interesting story of how Desmond confronts a noisy party, at which an attractive girl he later finds out is named Alex and a graduate student at his old university, talks to him while he can't hear a word she says. He finds himself saying yes to things he hasn't heard, only later to discover he has agreed to talk to her about her thesis. Lodge himself suffers from deafness and he writes about it in ways that ring true to my own experience and that of family members with hearing loss.

There is some rich background that might have been better brought closer to the surface here in Desmond's relationship to his daughter, Anne, and son, Richard, children of his first marriage to Maisie, who had died of cancer. Anne barely appears at all (she is pregnant through 90% of the novel), yet names her first child Desmond. Rick is barely mentioned til the end, yet has an important role in the last quarter of the book. There's a contrast between the match Desmond made with Maisie and that which he makes with Fred that is simply not resolved, yet at times is the most important part of the book.

After the excellent opening, the Alex story seems grafted on. Alex turns out to be trouble for Desmond, but even more so for his colleague Butterworth (whose wife is referred to once as "Mrs. Butterworth", which I don't know if that is as funny in England as it is in America). Once it appears clear that she is trouble for Butterworth, she ceases to be much of a threat to Desmond, and the story basically peters out. At the point late in the book where Desmond mentions to her he is going to Poland, and he begins a retrospective of the time in Poland with some dire foreshadowing, one believes that Alex may have followed him there to embarrass him in some way, but the opportunity passes.

The bulk of the novel, and certainly the climax, deal with Desmond's relationship with his dying father. Many of the scenes are handled with care and compassion (Lodge states in an afterword that this was quite autobiographical), but the only conflict is relatively trite and contrived: the father who won't leave home, is paranoid about people stealing from him, can't get along with his son's posh in-laws, etc. Only the idea that the two men, father and son, sharing the same affliction sometimes leads to some comedy, particularly when they have conversations in public at full volume so as to hear one another, seems fresh and alive.

Lodge's late friendly rival, Malcolm Bradbury, left behind some fragments of novels and stories that he never finished, which were published without change and make interesting reading. This book, for all its good points, feels much like Lodge struggling not to leave such fragments behind. It's not clear to me that this was the right choice.


Comic not tragic, 09 Jun 2008
Desmond Bates has been going deaf for the last 20 years. He took early retirement from his position as Professor of Linguistics because he couldn't hear what his students were saying. Now, he faces the frustrations & indignities of deafness every day. His wife, Winifred (Fred), is sympathetic but sometimes irritated. When Desmond meets post graduate student, Alex Loom, he agrees - without realizing it - to a meeting about her thesis on the linguistics of suicide notes. He hasn't heard a word she said at a noisy gallery opening & doesn't realize he's agreed to anything at all. This leads him into a confusing relationship with the manipulative Alex, who wants Desmond to supervise her thesis. Desmond is also worried about his elderly father (also going deaf), living alone in London. This is the most poignant and humorous part of the book. Harry lives in the family home, in increasing squalor, hiding money under the floorboards, and refusing to spend any money on making his life more comfortable. David Lodge has written a beautifully observed novel which illuminates the world of people with hearing loss. Desmond's theory that blindness is tragic while deafness is merely comic is illustrated by the facts of his everyday life - struggles with hearing aid batteries, lip reading classes, & the funny yet frustrating misunderstandings in everyday conversation. Lodge shows the reader the isolation of the deaf in this absorbing novel.

got it, 20 Nov 2008
just got it will start reading soon :)

i got into a few lines and its quite addictive, niceee :D



Pretty good, 28 Sep 2008
I bought this recently, having never read (but often heard about) Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos.

I'm only about a third of the way through, but it seems pretty good (although the author does seem to have swallowed a thesaurus - and a particularly gibbous and over-nourished one at that, most likely recovered from some Stygian Pit that the mortal mind was not meant to know of). Plus, he does have some rather - ahem - "old fashioned" attitudes to race and class that can seem rather jarring to a modern reader.

This particular edition also does, unfortunately, have a number of typos in the text, some of which ("Necroriomicon", "clay" instead of "day", and "Gthulhu") suggest to me that the publishers had the original text scanned and digitised, but imperfectly. (I'm keeping a note of them as I find them, and will inform the publishers when I've finished the book).

Still, all said, I don't regret getting the book, and if you don't mind those faults, I'd certainly recommend this to anyone interested in the genera.


Just as I remembered!!, 14 Sep 2008
Excellent, worth the wait!! I remember reading this as a child, it's just as good as I remembered. Real Classic stuff!!

I recommend it to anyone looking for some good old creepy stories.

JOIN THE DARKSIDE!!!!, 19 Jul 2008
What can i say that already hasn't been said.
This is truly awesome, a complete collection of lovecraft in a well bound casebound book with faux Leather cover, in black.
All your favorites are there. If you're a real lovecraft fan this is deffinately for you.
And for a very reasanoble price.
100% recommended, buy now & join us on a truly Dark venture into the world of the one & the only H.P.lovecraft


Beautifully produced edition, but -2 stars for horrible tacky price sticker on the back, 28 Jun 2008
Finally a beautifully produced and complete edition of H.P. Lovecraft's works, but whoever at Gollancz/Orion decided to spoil each book with a tacky price sticker - not even put on straight - that leaves a sticky residue when removed (and believe me, it's tenacious) should be punished by the elder gods, or at least someone senior at the publishers.

Overhyped book-Two Caravans, 10 Nov 2008
Two CaravansI absolutely hated everything about this book. I cannot believe that it is described as 'hilarious' I don't think I raised a smile reading any part of this book. The structural layout is awful; it switches every few paragraphs between the perspectives of its dreary characters.This had the result of msking me fail to identify with any of he characters. The most one can say is that it raises the awareness of the plight of Eastern European workers coming to the UK to work believing that it is a land with streets paved with gold and then being exploited. However, there are many films, books etc which evoke this in a much more effective and interesting way. Lewycka may refer to 'War and Peace' and 'The Canterbury Tales' in her novel but Tolstoy or Chaucer' she is not.

Very enjoyable, 07 Nov 2008
I thoroughly enjoyed this book, perhaps even slightly more than "A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian". Highly recommended.

Not Tractors part 2, 29 Oct 2008
The second book from the Tractor Lady. Different book, darker themes - illegal workers, girls sold into prostitution, gangs. The characters are from many countries - Ukraine, Poland and further afield - and their connection is working together picking strawberries. Their living area is made up of 2 caravans, one for the women, one for the men. Irina is the latest member of the team, a young girl from the Ukraine, who has unfortunately aroused the interest of the unsavoury Vulk. A very human book, touching on a world, which we see everyday, but ignore. Light relief is there in there in the shape of Dog.

I attended the 2008 Cape Town Book Fair, where the author was interviewed by a local journalist. She came across as an interesting and articulate woman. She drew parallels between the U.K. and South Africa, both seen as lands of milk and honey in their respective continents.

Highly recommended- a fantastic read!, 19 Oct 2008
Having also read the previous novel Ukranian Tractors I thought this was by far the better of the two books. Unlike some of the other reviewers I did find parts of the book very funny indeed. In addition I also found it very moving in places. Stylistically the jumping about between the characters is slightly confusing in the early part of the book but this feeling does not persist and as the book progressed I found I quite enjoyed this style of writing. I found this a very rewarding read and very much look forward to Marina Lewycka's next book.

Great start ruined by a very disappointing second half, 24 Sep 2008
I really enjoyed the first half of this book and found it unputdownable but the second half monumentally lost it's way. Parts of the second half were so depressing I almost had to give up reading the book.

Characters who were intriguing that I had engaged with suddenly disappeared never to be heard from again, the plot became tenuous and unbelievable. New characters were introduced who were never properly explained before disappearing just as quickly. Incidents that appear to be about to be developed into plot twists also tail off into nothing.

The ending is also unsatisfying and confusing - this really is one of those books you throw at the wall because the ending is so frustrating - especially if like me you've stayed up very late to finish it!

Interestingly I noticed in the acknowledgements that the author thanks friends for helping her through a 'difficult time'. Without them she says the book would not have been finished and that does make me wonder if this affected the second half of her book.

I wouldn't reccommend this book but I'm looking forwards to Lewycka's next offering hoping she regains her sparkle.

Race and Class in the Deep South , 26 Nov 2008
It is perhaps appropriate that this was the first book I read after the election of America's first black President. My real reason for re-reading it, however, was for the purposes of comparison with Faulkner's "Intruder in the Dust", which deals with a similar theme. Indeed, I recently came across an allegation that Harper Lee's novel was essentially a plagiarism of Faulkner's.

The book is set in Maycomb County, Alabama, during the depression era of the 1930s. It is a first-person narrative told through the eyes of Jean Louise Finch who, for some reason, goes by the nickname Scout. Although she is only a child at the time of the events described, the narrative voice is that of the adult Jean Louise looking back at her childhood from some point in the future. The action of "Intruder in the Dust" is set over a few days and tells the story of one single incident, the murder of Vinson Gowrie; "To Kill a Mockingbird" is set over a period of about two years and essentially tells the story of Jean Louise's childhood between the ages of six and eight, although it concentrates on one crucial incident. The main characters, apart from Jean Louise herself, are her brother Jem and their friend Dill (another unexplained nickname; his real name is Charles).

Jean Louise and Jem are the children of Atticus Finch, a widowed lawyer. The book's central incident is the trial of a black man, Tom Robinson, for the alleged rape of a white woman, Mayella Ewell; Atticus is Robinson's defence attorney. Like Faulkner, Lee uses a classic thriller plot- the fight to prove the innocence of a man wrongly accused- to explore racism in America's Deep South. Although Robinson is clearly innocent of the charge, the all-white jury nevertheless vote to convict him, largely because to admit that a white woman, even one as sluttish as Mayella, was capable of making false accusations would force them to abandon their cherished ideas about the purity of Southern womanhood.

Harper Lee's concerns are wider than just the race issue. The book also has a lot to say about attitudes to social class among the white community, contrasting affluent middle-class families like the Finches with the likes of the Ewells, who can quite literally be classified as poor white trash. The family live in a shack next to the town's rubbish dump, where Mayella's father Bob earns his living as a scavenger. A favourite saying of the liberal, tolerant Atticus, who believes that most people, when you get to know them, are essentially kind, is that you should never judge a man until you have stood in his shoes and walked around in them. (At times the tone seemed quite preachy, as though Harper Lee were writing an extended sermon on tolerance).

Atticus applies this principle of non-judgementalism not only to racial issues but also to various acquaintances whom his children dislike or disapprove of for one reason or another. He applies it to Boo Radley, a simple-minded and reclusive, but inwardly kindly, neighbour, to the cantankerous old Mrs Dubose and to the Cunninghams, another poor white family but one who have retained a greater dignity and self-respect than the Ewells. The title of the book refers to a saying of Atticus that it is a sin to kill a mockingbird because they never do any harm, but it is a phrase which also refers to his philosophy of life. At various times several characters in the book- Robinson, Boo Radley, the children- can be seen as "mockingbirds", harmless creatures in need of protection.

One problem with the book is that Lee never really explores the tension between Atticus's liberal philosophy of life, and the problem of human evil as exemplified in the book by Bob Ewell, who is neither misjudged nor misunderstood but just plain wicked. Not only does he give perjured evidence in the hope of getting an innocent man sent to the gallows, and encourages his daughter to do the same, he also makes a vicious and cowardly attack on Atticus's children. Trying to stand in such a man's shoes would not, I feel, be a very productive exercise.

My other criticism of the book would be that it explores the question of racism from an exclusively white perspective, albeit a liberal one. For a number of reasons I think that "To Kill a Mockingbird" is a better book than "Intruder in the Dust", the most important being that Harper Lee's prose style is much more fluent and readable than Faulkner's often impenetrable sentences. Nevertheless, Faulkner creates, in Lucas Beauchamp, a black character who is much more well-rounded than any of those in Lee's book. Tom Robinson is little more than a plot device; the most prominent black character is Calpurnia, the Finch family's maid, who is that common literary stereotype, the faithful black servant. The book would have been better if Lee had given us a black perspective on the events she describes.

Those criticisms apart, I found this an excellent book, with a number vividly drawn characters, especially the spirited, loveable young Jean Louise and her father, who was memorably played by Gregory Peck in the brilliant film adaptation. Despite the limitations of his world view Atticus is an admirable character, who shows, in his defence of Robinson, not only great moral courage but also great physical courage as well. The immense improvement which has taken place in race relations in America since 1960 is owed, in part, to men like Atticus Finch, and also to women like Harper Lee who were prepared to confront the endemic racist attitudes of their society.


Timeless, 17 Nov 2008
This is my favourite novel of all time. I have read it so many times, I know it off by heart and also have the film.
The character of Scout is wise beyond her years and exposes the cruel, harsh, but contrastingly and most importantly, compassionate tendancies of the 1930s adult world. She reveals to us the true mockingbird (Tom Robinson) of the story and how someone that does nothing but selfless and honest work can be treated in such a way by others that it elicits sympathy from any third party- e.g us as readers. The setting is also vividly described- you can imagine yourself sitting on the dusty porch with Atticus, watching the sun set and see Jem and Scout with Dill. The innocence of Scout, in its totality, is what allows the reader to follow the story to the very end and appreciate it as many generations before have done so.

There are possibly very few who would regret reading this novel. It is timeless and engrossing.

A little slow, but fantastic!!, 30 Oct 2008
When I first picked up this novel, hearing that it was a classic, i thought it would too dreary for me as I was used to the quickly paced modern fiction. I was very wrong.

Even though the story is slow, you come to realise just how drenched the town is in prejudice. Harper Lee gets across the themes and characters very well.

A great read. Deserved to be called a classic.

To kill a mockingbird?, 14 Oct 2008
An absolute 'MUST READ' - a real challenge to your consciousness and your thoughts about right and wrong - what a characterful and honest book - just couldn't put it down.

tolerance , 15 Sep 2008
It's been ages since I've read this book so I'm not going to say much but this book should be read. Teachers have started not to study this book in schools because it has the word nigger in it (well in this country they have started to stop). It's more important now to read it them ever, this book promotes tolerance rather than racism. It's not the quickest book to read but it's a great book, I'm never going to give this book away.

"Deaf and the maiden, a dangerous combination", 21 Sep 2008
Although this novel ends with a birth and a death, for most of its pages, Deaf Sentence celebrates life, albeit one that is a little disadvantaged. Forced to retire because of his rapidly diminishing hearing, linguistics professor Desmond Bates is not exactly going through a mid-life crisis, but in the preceding months has reached a point in his life where he is subtly questioning everything. Desmond has had a fulfilling career teaching at a local northern University, and he's mostly happily married to his entrepreneurial wife Fred "Winifred" who runs a trendy design store called Décor. But even as Desmond settles into a middle-aged life, he worries about his increasingly spotty sexual performance. While Fred seems to be getting better with age, blooming into the flower of independence with a stunning new career and new look helped along by her best friend Jacci, Desmond has grown older and deafer, and subject to occasional erectile dysfunction that is exasperated by the advertisements for Viagra that daily always seem to appear in his email box.

It comes as no surprise then that Desmond, somewhat hampered by his hearing loss, falls into predictable daily routine, his communication with those around him becoming difficult at best as his family, friends and colleagues mostly stand by, confused and embarrassed most of the time and ultimately unable to relate to his misunderstandings in the conversation. With sex becoming an object of anxious rather than pleasurable anticipation, "although blindness is tragic, deafness may be comic, "Desmond receives a completely unexpected and completely disturbing call from a young and seductive student by the name of Alex Loom.

An intriguing person but a bit of an enigma. Alex is writing a thesis about suicide notes and wants Desmond to help her out. An unpredictable and frail girl with streaming blonde hair, Alex becomes ever more obsessed with obtaining Desmond's help and approval. Although Desmond makes clear moral distinctions, his life well-ordered and constricted by his marriage to Fred, he does have a darker side. The visits to Alex at her apartment, ostensibly to give her tips about her research, become ever more disturbing, with Desmond coming to the realization that she's either totally irresponsible or mentally unbalanced. Yet she seems to intuit somewhere in Desmond's psyche a fantasy lurking unsuspected and only waiting to be released.

Determined to maintain the status quo, Desmond also has his 89-year-old father, Harry once a big band musician, the responsibility for his dad's welfare lying heavily on him. He regularly travels down to London to visit Harry who lives in the old family home in the older suburb of Brickley. Living alone and dressing like a tramp, Harry lives closed up in his ramshackle house that always seems to be bathed in a sepulchral gloom. Stripped of all of his life enhancing interests, Harry's only one hobby is saving money while observing prices, and economizing on food, clothing and household bills.

While Desmond anguishes over what to do about Harry, Alex becomes his female nemesis and ultimately his arch manipulator. Indeed, Desmond curses the day that he let this unscrupulous young woman "twist him around the little finger of her flattery". To confess his dealings with her would make him look smaller in Fred's eyes even as he becomes convinced that an acknowledgement of Alex's attempted seductions would further weaken the status of his marriage. Alternating between the first and third person, Lodge's tale drifts from the serious to the humorous as Desmond tries to figure out how to get out of the dilemma of Alex. In the process this affable and kindly man ruminates and entertains the reader with his thoughts on ageing, marriage, seduction, isolation and the advantages and disadvantages of deafness. As the uncomfortable memories of Maisie, his first wife who died of cancer, whirls around him, Desmond cannot help but be a little bitter about his deafness. Even his new found new happiness with Fred has not assuaged his share of misfortunes and his sense of the discontent.

Filled with literary illusions and misunderstood irony, this novel ultimately comes across as a type of modern comedy of manners framed around the themes of life's fragility and the ease with which the marks we leave on the surface of the earth are erased. The chapters on linguistics, while obligatory for comprehending the many facets of Desmond`s character can be a bit difficult to digest, but the narrative generally moves along with sparkling dialogue that is full of guileful observations on life. Most notable for displaying for the minute and humorous details of British family life, the novels chief pleasure lies in the familiar - a chaotic Christmas dinner with the entire family present, a new years holiday at a sexy leisure resort, a chaotic dinner in a loud Italian restaurant that is filled with irritating background noise, and ruminations on Desmond's future years of tranquility with Fred, still after all that transpires, the decisive love of his life. Mike Leonard September 08.

A very enjoyable book, 27 Aug 2008
I loved this book. It's like the very best situation comedy: the laugh-out-loud humour inter-cut with painful situations and a sense of tension as to what will befall the characters as the story unfolds. I think you need to be a bit older in years to appreciate this book as its comedy partly depends on the infirmities of aging and the funny as well as sad trials and tribulations of having very elderly parents with failing powers. The book will appeal, I think, even more to those of us with poor hearing, especially also using hearing aids, as we are all too familiar with the embarrassments and disadvantages of our disability.

Not quite up to the usual Lodge standard, 12 Aug 2008
A David Lodge novel is something to look forward to and I wish I could have enjoyed this one more than I did. Admittedly there are some hilarious misunderstandings, the ones on page 108 caused by the narrator's deafness, made me laugh out loud. However the plot requires more tension and the potential interactions between Professor Bates and the psychotic PhD student Alex never quite take off because they meet rather infrequently. The pathos of his father's troubles tend to dominate the book latterly and together with the trip to Auschwitz, leave one feeling rather gloomy. There is a novel amongst all the diary entries but perhaps this is not the best one that Lodge could have written.

One rather curious feature is the occasional change from first to third person narration, to no great effect. One felt as if Lodge just fancied a change!

Second rate novel by a first-rate writer, 30 Jul 2008
I look forward to a David Lodge novel like a look forward to spring, only they come along less often, so they are more cherished. This one, however, only engaged me periodically. To me, it felt like a short story grafted on an autobiographical novel, and the combination just didn't seem to work after about the halfway point.

Desmond Bates, retired professor of linguistics at an unnamed northern university, is suffering from deafness, which caused his early retirement and places a strain on his second marriage to posh Winifred. The other strain in his life is his elderly, and decidedly unposh, father, who is similarly deaf, as well as cheap and unwilling to consider moving into any kind of assisted living.

The novel begins with a moving and interesting story of how Desmond confronts a noisy party, at which an attractive girl he later finds out is named Alex and a graduate student at his old university, talks to him while he can't hear a word she says. He finds himself saying yes to things he hasn't heard, only later to discover he has agreed to talk to her about her thesis. Lodge himself suffers from deafness and he writes about it in ways that ring true to my own experience and that of family members with hearing loss.

There is some rich background that might have been better brought closer to the surface here in Desmond's relationship to his daughter, Anne, and son, Richard, children of his first marriage to Maisie, who had died of cancer. Anne barely appears at all (she is pregnant through 90% of the novel), yet names her first child Desmond. Rick is barely mentioned til the end, yet has an important role in the last quarter of the book. There's a contrast between the match Desmond made with Maisie and that which he makes with Fred that is simply not resolved, yet at times is the most important part of the book.

After the excellent opening, the Alex story seems grafted on. Alex turns out to be trouble for Desmond, but even more so for his colleague Butterworth (whose wife is referred to once as "Mrs. Butterworth", which I don't know if that is as funny in England as it is in America). Once it appears clear that she is trouble for Butterworth, she ceases to be much of a threat to Desmond, and the story basically peters out. At the point late in the book where Desmond mentions to her he is going to Poland, and he begins a retrospective of the time in Poland with some dire foreshadowing, one believes that Alex may have followed him there to embarrass him in some way, but the opportunity passes.

The bulk of the novel, and certainly the climax, deal with Desmond's relationship with his dying father. Many of the scenes are handled with care and compassion (Lodge states in an afterword that this was quite autobiographical), but the only conflict is relatively trite and contrived: the father who won't leave home, is paranoid about people stealing from him, can't get along with his son's posh in-laws, etc. Only the idea that the two men, father and son, sharing the same affliction sometimes leads to some comedy, particularly when they have conversations in public at full volume so as to hear one another, seems fresh and alive.

Lodge's late friendly rival, Malcolm Bradbury, left behind some fragments of novels and stories that he never finished, which were published without change and make interesting reading. This book, for all its good points, feels much like Lodge struggling not to leave such fragments behind. It's not clear to me that this was the right choice.


Comic not tragic, 09 Jun 2008
Desmond Bates has been going deaf for the last 20 years. He took early retirement from his position as Professor of Linguistics because he couldn't hear what his students were saying. Now, he faces the frustrations & indignities of deafness every day. His wife, Winifred (Fred), is sympathetic but sometimes irritated. When Desmond meets post graduate student, Alex Loom, he agrees - without realizing it - to a meeting about her thesis on the linguistics of suicide notes. He hasn't heard a word she said at a noisy gallery opening & doesn't realize he's agreed to anything at all. This leads him into a confusing relationship with the manipulative Alex, who wants Desmond to supervise her thesis. Desmond is also worried about his elderly father (also going deaf), living alone in London. This is the most poignant and humorous part of the book. Harry lives in the family home, in increasing squalor, hiding money under the floorboards, and refusing to spend any money on making his life more comfortable. David Lodge has written a beautifully observed novel which illuminates the world of people with hearing loss. Desmond's theory that blindness is tragic while deafness is merely comic is illustrated by the facts of his everyday life - struggles with hearing aid batteries, lip reading classes, & the funny yet frustrating misunderstandings in everyday conversation. Lodge shows the reader the isolation of the deaf in this absorbing novel.

got it, 20 Nov 2008
just got it will start reading soon :)

i got into a few lines and its quite addictive, niceee :D



Pretty good, 28 Sep 2008
I bought this recently, having never read (but often heard about) Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos.

I'm only about a third of the way through, but it seems pretty good (although the author does seem to have swallowed a thesaurus - and a particularly gibbous and over-nourished one at that, most likely recovered from some Stygian Pit that the mortal mind was not meant to know of). Plus, he does have some rather - ahem - "old fashioned" attitudes to race and class that can seem rather jarring to a modern reader.

This particular edition also does, unfortunately, have a number of typos in the text, some of which ("Necroriomicon", "clay" instead of "day", and "Gthulhu") suggest to me that the publishers had the original text scanned and digitised, but imperfectly. (I'm keeping a note of them as I find them, and will inform the publishers when I've finished the book).

Still, all said, I don't regret getting the book, and if you don't mind those faults, I'd certainly recommend this to anyone interested in the genera.


Just as I remembered!!, 14 Sep 2008
Excellent, worth the wait!! I remember reading this as a child, it's just as good as I remembered. Real Classic stuff!!

I recommend it to anyone looking for some good old creepy stories.

JOIN THE DARKSIDE!!!!, 19 Jul 2008
What can i say that already hasn't been said.
This is truly awesome, a complete collection of lovecraft in a well bound casebound book with faux Leather cover, in black.
All your favorites are there. If you're a real lovecraft fan this is deffinately for you.
And for a very reasanoble price.
100% recommended, buy now & join us on a truly Dark venture into the world of the one & the only H.P.lovecraft


Beautifully produced edition, but -2 stars for horrible tacky price sticker on the back, 28 Jun 2008
Finally a beautifully produced and complete edition of H.P. Lovecraft's works, but whoever at Gollancz/Orion decided to spoil each book with a tacky price sticker - not even put on straight - that leaves a sticky residue when removed (and believe me, it's tenacious) should be punished by the elder gods, or at least someone senior at the publishers.

Overhyped book-Two Caravans, 10 Nov 2008
Two CaravansI absolutely hated everything about this book. I cannot believe that it is described as 'hilarious' I don't think I raised a smile reading any part of this book. The structural layout is awful; it switches every few paragraphs between the perspectives of