An enjoyable read that falls short of the standards set in Snowleg, 05 Nov 2008
There seems to be a growing fashion among British novelists to write about erectile dysfunction. First we had Ian McEwen's prematurely ejaculating protagonist in On Chesil Beach, now we have the impotent Alex Dove in Secrets of the Sea, the new novel by Nicholas Shakespeare.

Set in small town Tasmania, where Shakespeare has himself relocated, it tells of the lives of Dove and his wife, Merridy; her cousin, Tildy, and her husband Ray. Underlying each of their existences is history and tragedies great and small. Their quiet lives are shaken by the arrival of a mysterious stranger in the novel's final third.

The small town set up - with the avaristic local businessmen, the old timer running the local store, the grumpy English exile - will be familiar to anyone to have spent time in Australia. Shakespeare is particularly good at building a sense of place.

His characters have charm, but it is sometimes difficult to understand their motivations. Merridy Dove is a case in point. I never really felt convinced as to why she chose to get married and become a housewife in the book's first section. Why was she attracted to her rather bland husband? Why does she subsequently indulge in infidelities, which seem shockingly out of character? Nor is the sense of loss and yearning for her lost brother adequately unravelled.

I also felt that Secrets of the Sea was somewhat flabby, that it would have been better, more taut book were it a third shorter. It is, in essence, a domestic drama, certainly not an epic narrative as his previous novel, Snowleg, and, as such, could be better contained. Some characters - the store keeper, the retired journalist - are carefully constructed, but only really had walk on parts, and this confused me. And at the novel's critical dramatic juncture I was left scratching my head and re-reading bits, such was the (possibly intentional) confusion.

Yet for all of these complaints I enjoyed Secrets of the Sea. It is not a great novel, nor is the prose or storyline particularly memorable; worse still it falls short in comparison to Shakespeare's previous novel, Snowleg. But fans of that, like myself, will find something to enjoy and being second best to such a fine work is nothing to be ashamed about.

Bruce Chatwin was the golden child of the contemporary English novel; by the time he died of an AIDS-related illness aged 49 in January 1989 he had produced the startlingly original masterpieces that made his name. Chatwin came late to being a published writer; In Patagonia, his instant classic of what can loosely be termed "travel literature", came out in 1977. In the preceding years this precocious, intense figure had been an art specialist at Sotheby's, a journalist with The Sunday Times, an archaeologist and a restless, questing traveller. By the time his novel of studying the Aboriginal dreamtime in Australia, The Songlines, was published, he had gained a worldwide audience.

An obsessive art collector, Chatwin also acquired people as he did fabulous objects. He took both male and female lovers while continuing to remain married to his wife Elizabeth, seemingly the most enduring relationship of his life. It is her cooperation and tenacity which enabled this biography to come about, as well as Nicholas Shakespeare's exhaustive research (the book was eight years in the making). It is the international span of Chatwin's experiences that makes the reader appreciate his desire to know all cultures and disciplines. There is some excellent, evocative writing here, particularly in Shakespeare's account of Chatwin's last weeks, his disappointment at not winning the Booker Prize for Utz and the detailed passage describing Chatwin's awful, miserable death surrounded by friends and family. There are a plethora of adjectives used to describe Chatwin such as "elusive", "mercurial", and "charismatic". Yet what Nicholas Shakespeare brings across in this immense, excellent life of Chatwin is the complete aloneness of the man. He was a flamboyant fabulist, an unparalleled conversationalist, yet, as the Australian poet Les Murray is quoted as saying: "He was lonely and he wanted to be. He had those blue, implacable eyes that said: 'I will reject you, I will forget you, because neither you nor any other human being can give me what I want.'"--Catherine Taylor

An enjoyable read that falls short of the standards set in Snowleg, 05 Nov 2008
There seems to be a growing fashion among British novelists to write about erectile dysfunction. First we had Ian McEwen's prematurely ejaculating protagonist in On Chesil Beach, now we have the impotent Alex Dove in Secrets of the Sea, the new novel by Nicholas Shakespeare.

Set in small town Tasmania, where Shakespeare has himself relocated, it tells of the lives of Dove and his wife, Merridy; her cousin, Tildy, and her husband Ray. Underlying each of their existences is history and tragedies great and small. Their quiet lives are shaken by the arrival of a mysterious stranger in the novel's final third.

The small town set up - with the avaristic local businessmen, the old timer running the local store, the grumpy English exile - will be familiar to anyone to have spent time in Australia. Shakespeare is particularly good at building a sense of place.

His characters have charm, but it is sometimes difficult to understand their motivations. Merridy Dove is a case in point. I never really felt convinced as to why she chose to get married and become a housewife in the book's first section. Why was she attracted to her rather bland husband? Why does she subsequently indulge in infidelities, which seem shockingly out of character? Nor is the sense of loss and yearning for her lost brother adequately unravelled.

I also felt that Secrets of the Sea was somewhat flabby, that it would have been better, more taut book were it a third shorter. It is, in essence, a domestic drama, certainly not an epic narrative as his previous novel, Snowleg, and, as such, could be better contained. Some characters - the store keeper, the retired journalist - are carefully constructed, but only really had walk on parts, and this confused me. And at the novel's critical dramatic juncture I was left scratching my head and re-reading bits, such was the (possibly intentional) confusion.

Yet for all of these complaints I enjoyed Secrets of the Sea. It is not a great novel, nor is the prose or storyline particularly memorable; worse still it falls short in comparison to Shakespeare's previous novel, Snowleg. But fans of that, like myself, will find something to enjoy and being second best to such a fine work is nothing to be ashamed about.

A superb book about a superb author and a terrible man, 02 Jun 2007
This is a masterful biography, penetrating yet never judgemental, complete but not clinical. The inspiration behind Chatwin's brutally clipped prose are laid bare, from Hemingway on, with the most excruciating detail about all aspects of his life from childhood to the gay nirvana that was late 70s and early 80s New York. For all those who have ever marvelled at his work's effortless evocation of atmosphere, its probably best not to read this as any illusion you may have had about him wil be irretrievably shattered. He was the centre of a cult of beauty and brittle sociality, fuelled by incredible egotism and arrogance, that left great literature on the upside, and a series of ruined lives and broken hearts on the down. Hitler was said to be a gifted watercolurist, after all, though I doubt that many would enthusiastically embrace his work. However, for all that, Chatwin's writing is staggering, and Nicholas Shakespeare's book should be lauded as THE example of what a modern biography ought to be: a great, eloquent, wide-ranging, well-expressed and truly epic tour de literary force. Outstanding.

Unmasking the mythomane, 01 Feb 2007
Chatwin was a compulsive fantasist in his own life, unable to stop himself from using his considerable knowledge as a launchpad for his own inventions. At the same time, his writing was very clearly rooted in his own experiences, drawing considerably on the people he met and the places he visited. His own life was often as interesting as his books - and when it wasn't, he managed to invent a story to make it so.

As a result, Shakespeare had an uphill struggle to pin down a man who hated being pinned down more than anything else, and he largely succeeded. The result is a portrait of a terribly flawed man who still seemed to be able to touch people's lives even when his own behaviour was at its worst, illustrated best of all by the devotion his wife Elizabeth showed him even as he fled from her repeatedly.

The biography's only flaws are a tendency to trail in his wake, never quite wanting to acknowledge that Chatwin, while a brilliant writer, could also be a brilliant monster. However it does capture the one indisputable truth about Chatwin, that he desired more than anything else to be the central figure in his greatest work of fiction - his own life.

Brilliant Biography of a Monster, 18 Aug 2004
I recently purchased this biography of Bruce Chatwin written by Nicholas Shakespeare. I probably did it to confirm my own prejudices (the sneaking suspicion that Chatwin was 'not a nice man') and on that level it delivered in spades. Shakespeare gives a magnificent warts-and-all portrait. Chatwin's friends and his apparently long-suffering wife could obviously see beyond the warts - all I saw was a monstrous egotistical carbuncle called Bruce Chatwin. I am pleased to have made his acquaintance via this biography; I would never have wanted to meet him in real life. I would have viewed him as a black hole - always taking, never giving. And in answer to another reviewer on this site, you can also meet real people in Waitrose - you don't always have to go chanting on some remote hillside...

A Potrait of the Artist as a Not Very Nice Man, 31 Aug 2001
Nicholas Shakespeare has written a very impressive biography of an author who was as complex and elusive in his persona as his work is crystalline in its clarity. Those who like their heroes to be as inspiring as their prose should look elsewhere. Chatwin displayed all the ruthlessness of many creative artist as he exploited his friends, and most especially his devoted and long suffering wife, in the pursuit of his destiny. Shakespeare's biography is scrupuously fair, exhaustively researched and superbly written. I'm left wondering what my reaction to Chatwin's work would have been had I read this first.

A superb portrayal of a flawed genius, 04 Sep 2000
Chatwin's life is ultimately more interesting than any of his works, as if actually reading about how he wrote his books rather than the end-product seems better. Shakespeare astonishes with the sheer volume of perceptive detail he has included on this man, and this really is one of the great biographies...

An enjoyable read that falls short of the standards set in Snowleg, 05 Nov 2008
There seems to be a growing fashion among British novelists to write about erectile dysfunction. First we had Ian McEwen's prematurely ejaculating protagonist in On Chesil Beach, now we have the impotent Alex Dove in Secrets of the Sea, the new novel by Nicholas Shakespeare.

Set in small town Tasmania, where Shakespeare has himself relocated, it tells of the lives of Dove and his wife, Merridy; her cousin, Tildy, and her husband Ray. Underlying each of their existences is history and tragedies great and small. Their quiet lives are shaken by the arrival of a mysterious stranger in the novel's final third.

The small town set up - with the avaristic local businessmen, the old timer running the local store, the grumpy English exile - will be familiar to anyone to have spent time in Australia. Shakespeare is particularly good at building a sense of place.

His characters have charm, but it is sometimes difficult to understand their motivations. Merridy Dove is a case in point. I never really felt convinced as to why she chose to get married and become a housewife in the book's first section. Why was she attracted to her rather bland husband? Why does she subsequently indulge in infidelities, which seem shockingly out of character? Nor is the sense of loss and yearning for her lost brother adequately unravelled.

I also felt that Secrets of the Sea was somewhat flabby, that it would have been better, more taut book were it a third shorter. It is, in essence, a domestic drama, certainly not an epic narrative as his previous novel, Snowleg, and, as such, could be better contained. Some characters - the store keeper, the retired journalist - are carefully constructed, but only really had walk on parts, and this confused me. And at the novel's critical dramatic juncture I was left scratching my head and re-reading bits, such was the (possibly intentional) confusion.

Yet for all of these complaints I enjoyed Secrets of the Sea. It is not a great novel, nor is the prose or storyline particularly memorable; worse still it falls short in comparison to Shakespeare's previous novel, Snowleg. But fans of that, like myself, will find something to enjoy and being second best to such a fine work is nothing to be ashamed about.

A superb book about a superb author and a terrible man, 02 Jun 2007
This is a masterful biography, penetrating yet never judgemental, complete but not clinical. The inspiration behind Chatwin's brutally clipped prose are laid bare, from Hemingway on, with the most excruciating detail about all aspects of his life from childhood to the gay nirvana that was late 70s and early 80s New York. For all those who have ever marvelled at his work's effortless evocation of atmosphere, its probably best not to read this as any illusion you may have had about him wil be irretrievably shattered. He was the centre of a cult of beauty and brittle sociality, fuelled by incredible egotism and arrogance, that left great literature on the upside, and a series of ruined lives and broken hearts on the down. Hitler was said to be a gifted watercolurist, after all, though I doubt that many would enthusiastically embrace his work. However, for all that, Chatwin's writing is staggering, and Nicholas Shakespeare's book should be lauded as THE example of what a modern biography ought to be: a great, eloquent, wide-ranging, well-expressed and truly epic tour de literary force. Outstanding.

Unmasking the mythomane, 01 Feb 2007
Chatwin was a compulsive fantasist in his own life, unable to stop himself from using his considerable knowledge as a launchpad for his own inventions. At the same time, his writing was very clearly rooted in his own experiences, drawing considerably on the people he met and the places he visited. His own life was often as interesting as his books - and when it wasn't, he managed to invent a story to make it so.

As a result, Shakespeare had an uphill struggle to pin down a man who hated being pinned down more than anything else, and he largely succeeded. The result is a portrait of a terribly flawed man who still seemed to be able to touch people's lives even when his own behaviour was at its worst, illustrated best of all by the devotion his wife Elizabeth showed him even as he fled from her repeatedly.

The biography's only flaws are a tendency to trail in his wake, never quite wanting to acknowledge that Chatwin, while a brilliant writer, could also be a brilliant monster. However it does capture the one indisputable truth about Chatwin, that he desired more than anything else to be the central figure in his greatest work of fiction - his own life.

Brilliant Biography of a Monster, 18 Aug 2004
I recently purchased this biography of Bruce Chatwin written by Nicholas Shakespeare. I probably did it to confirm my own prejudices (the sneaking suspicion that Chatwin was 'not a nice man') and on that level it delivered in spades. Shakespeare gives a magnificent warts-and-all portrait. Chatwin's friends and his apparently long-suffering wife could obviously see beyond the warts - all I saw was a monstrous egotistical carbuncle called Bruce Chatwin. I am pleased to have made his acquaintance via this biography; I would never have wanted to meet him in real life. I would have viewed him as a black hole - always taking, never giving. And in answer to another reviewer on this site, you can also meet real people in Waitrose - you don't always have to go chanting on some remote hillside...

A Potrait of the Artist as a Not Very Nice Man, 31 Aug 2001
Nicholas Shakespeare has written a very impressive biography of an author who was as complex and elusive in his persona as his work is crystalline in its clarity. Those who like their heroes to be as inspiring as their prose should look elsewhere. Chatwin displayed all the ruthlessness of many creative artist as he exploited his friends, and most especially his devoted and long suffering wife, in the pursuit of his destiny. Shakespeare's biography is scrupuously fair, exhaustively researched and superbly written. I'm left wondering what my reaction to Chatwin's work would have been had I read this first.

A superb portrayal of a flawed genius, 04 Sep 2000
Chatwin's life is ultimately more interesting than any of his works, as if actually reading about how he wrote his books rather than the end-product seems better. Shakespeare astonishes with the sheer volume of perceptive detail he has included on this man, and this really is one of the great biographies...

Greene at his best, 14 Feb 2007
With all due respect to the in house reviewer I would like to assure all potential readers of this fine novel that it is in no way a political book. The politics referred to serve to bring the characters together. At no point in the novel does Greene investigate any of the characters' politics. Nor does he analyse the political situation in Paraguay and Argentina where the novel is set.
It is a novel about love; about the inability to love and the nature of love. It's about the nature of god and how the protagonists have to come to terms with the difficult idea that god is both good and evil. It's about the nature of the catholic church; the complicated nature of human beings. It's about that favourite paradox of Green's that very often those seemingly furthest from redemption, humanity and god are in fact the closest to them.
It's a beautiful book aching with humanity- our foibles, our goodness and our badness. But please don't call it a political book. Greene would have had a fit. It is after all the novel he most preferred of all those he wrote.

Greene's most enduring novel, 25 Jan 2007
In a provincial town 800 km north of Buenos Aires a group of revolutionaries kidnap by mistake Charly Fortnum, the Honorary Consul, instead of the American Ambassador. They request the liberation of 10 prisoners from Paraguay.
The characters are brilliantly drawn and the prose is sparse and taught. Fortnum, sixty-one year old, living on whisky and his disputed status as an "Honorary" British Consul marries a young ex-prostitute from Senora Sanchez's brothel. Dr Eduardo Plarr whose deficient emotions form the heart of the novel. Although Plarr is Clara's lover and the father of the child she's expecting, he still envies Fortnum's love for her because it is a feeling he has never been capable of experiencing himself. Even the minor characters of the kidnappers, Aquino, Father Rivas and Marta are sardonically drawn and during the bungled kidnap, plenty is said among them about justice, faith, love and God during the 3-day confine in a dirty mud and tin hut.
This audiobook features Tim Pigott-Smith as reader, one of the best in the Chivers series.

gripping, 21 Nov 2006
This perfectly judged, beautifully paced novel is full of marvellous characters. It's definitely one of the best books I've read this year. This book was the first I've read by Graham Greene, if they're all as good as this then I will have at least a decade of brilliant reading ahead of me. He captures the tropics of South America perfectly, as well as the political situation at the time from the vantage point of an isolated country town. His characters are intensly human, the cake-loving mother sitting in the BA tea shops is a far more important character than the American Ambassador. Plarr himself is extremely 3 dimensional, full of South American machismo while believing himself to be aloof from the very concept. an excellent read throughout.

Moving tragi-comedy of errors from Graham Greene, 21 Aug 2003
South America in the 1970s. A group of revolutionaries plan to highlight their cause by kidnapping the American ambassador. Unfortunately, they get it wrong and kidnap instead Charley Fortnum, a boozy expatriate Briton whose quasi-official status as an honorary consul amunts to little more than the right to import and sell a car every two years. Dr Plarr, one of only two other Britons in the city, is involved from the start: not only was it he who provided the revolutionaries with their information, but he is also having an affair with Fortnum's young wife. Though this is more sombre in tone than some of Greene's other 'entertainments', there is much wry humour in these pages, but what struck me most was the degree of emotional involvement Greene manages to produce in what could easily have been a cynical tale of unprincipled behaviour and bungling. The novel takes us down a dark road, and I found some of the later scenes really quite sad, but I hope I'm not giving too much away by saying that the road leads eventually to redemption - of a kind.

Not Greene's at his best., 29 Jul 2001
I enjoyed this book over-all, however it did seem to me to be slow-moving in parts. Focusing on the despair of the main charachter, Greene explores the familiar subject of mis-placed Britains in strange countries: this time the South Americas. The result is that it could be seen to be un-interesting and I have to say that the comedy side didn't shine through.

An enjoyable read that falls short of the standards set in Snowleg, 05 Nov 2008
There seems to be a growing fashion among British novelists to write about erectile dysfunction. First we had Ian McEwen's prematurely ejaculating protagonist in On Chesil Beach, now we have the impotent Alex Dove in Secrets of the Sea, the new novel by Nicholas Shakespeare.

Set in small town Tasmania, where Shakespeare has himself relocated, it tells of the lives of Dove and his wife, Merridy; her cousin, Tildy, and her husband Ray. Underlying each of their existences is history and tragedies great and small. Their quiet lives are shaken by the arrival of a mysterious stranger in the novel's final third.

The small town set up - with the avaristic local businessmen, the old timer running the local store, the grumpy English exile - will be familiar to anyone to have spent time in Australia. Shakespeare is particularly good at building a sense of place.

His characters have charm, but it is sometimes difficult to understand their motivations. Merridy Dove is a case in point. I never really felt convinced as to why she chose to get married and become a housewife in the book's first section. Why was she attracted to her rather bland husband? Why does she subsequently indulge in infidelities, which seem shockingly out of character? Nor is the sense of loss and yearning for her lost brother adequately unravelled.

I also felt that Secrets of the Sea was somewhat flabby, that it would have been better, more taut book were it a third shorter. It is, in essence, a domestic drama, certainly not an epic narrative as his previous novel, Snowleg, and, as such, could be better contained. Some characters - the store keeper, the retired journalist - are carefully constructed, but only really had walk on parts, and this confused me. And at the novel's critical dramatic juncture I was left scratching my head and re-reading bits, such was the (possibly intentional) confusion.

Yet for all of these complaints I enjoyed Secrets of the Sea. It is not a great novel, nor is the prose or storyline particularly memorable; worse still it falls short in comparison to Shakespeare's previous novel, Snowleg. But fans of that, like myself, will find something to enjoy and being second best to such a fine work is nothing to be ashamed about.

A superb book about a superb author and a terrible man, 02 Jun 2007
This is a masterful biography, penetrating yet never judgemental, complete but not clinical. The inspiration behind Chatwin's brutally clipped prose are laid bare, from Hemingway on, with the most excruciating detail about all aspects of his life from childhood to the gay nirvana that was late 70s and early 80s New York. For all those who have ever marvelled at his work's effortless evocation of atmosphere, its probably best not to read this as any illusion you may have had about him wil be irretrievably shattered. He was the centre of a cult of beauty and brittle sociality, fuelled by incredible egotism and arrogance, that left great literature on the upside, and a series of ruined lives and broken hearts on the down. Hitler was said to be a gifted watercolurist, after all, though I doubt that many would enthusiastically embrace his work. However, for all that, Chatwin's writing is staggering, and Nicholas Shakespeare's book should be lauded as THE example of what a modern biography ought to be: a great, eloquent, wide-ranging, well-expressed and truly epic tour de literary force. Outstanding.

Unmasking the mythomane, 01 Feb 2007
Chatwin was a compulsive fantasist in his own life, unable to stop himself from using his considerable knowledge as a launchpad for his own inventions. At the same time, his writing was very clearly rooted in his own experiences, drawing considerably on the people he met and the places he visited. His own life was often as interesting as his books - and when it wasn't, he managed to invent a story to make it so.

As a result, Shakespeare had an uphill struggle to pin down a man who hated being pinned down more than anything else, and he largely succeeded. The result is a portrait of a terribly flawed man who still seemed to be able to touch people's lives even when his own behaviour was at its worst, illustrated best of all by the devotion his wife Elizabeth showed him even as he fled from her repeatedly.

The biography's only flaws are a tendency to trail in his wake, never quite wanting to acknowledge that Chatwin, while a brilliant writer, could also be a brilliant monster. However it does capture the one indisputable truth about Chatwin, that he desired more than anything else to be the central figure in his greatest work of fiction - his own life.

Brilliant Biography of a Monster, 18 Aug 2004
I recently purchased this biography of Bruce Chatwin written by Nicholas Shakespeare. I probably did it to confirm my own prejudices (the sneaking suspicion that Chatwin was 'not a nice man') and on that level it delivered in spades. Shakespeare gives a magnificent warts-and-all portrait. Chatwin's friends and his apparently long-suffering wife could obviously see beyond the warts - all I saw was a monstrous egotistical carbuncle called Bruce Chatwin. I am pleased to have made his acquaintance via this biography; I would never have wanted to meet him in real life. I would have viewed him as a black hole - always taking, never giving. And in answer to another reviewer on this site, you can also meet real people in Waitrose - you don't always have to go chanting on some remote hillside...

A Potrait of the Artist as a Not Very Nice Man, 31 Aug 2001
Nicholas Shakespeare has written a very impressive biography of an author who was as complex and elusive in his persona as his work is crystalline in its clarity. Those who like their heroes to be as inspiring as their prose should look elsewhere. Chatwin displayed all the ruthlessness of many creative artist as he exploited his friends, and most especially his devoted and long suffering wife, in the pursuit of his destiny. Shakespeare's biography is scrupuously fair, exhaustively researched and superbly written. I'm left wondering what my reaction to Chatwin's work would have been had I read this first.

A superb portrayal of a flawed genius, 04 Sep 2000
Chatwin's life is ultimately more interesting than any of his works, as if actually reading about how he wrote his books rather than the end-product seems better. Shakespeare astonishes with the sheer volume of perceptive detail he has included on this man, and this really is one of the great biographies...

Greene at his best, 14 Feb 2007
With all due respect to the in house reviewer I would like to assure all potential readers of this fine novel that it is in no way a political book. The politics referred to serve to bring the characters together. At no point in the novel does Greene investigate any of the characters' politics. Nor does he analyse the political situation in Paraguay and Argentina where the novel is set.
It is a novel about love; about the inability to love and the nature of love. It's about the nature of god and how the protagonists have to come to terms with the difficult idea that god is both good and evil. It's about the nature of the catholic church; the complicated nature of human beings. It's about that favourite paradox of Green's that very often those seemingly furthest from redemption, humanity and god are in fact the closest to them.
It's a beautiful book aching with humanity- our foibles, our goodness and our badness. But please don't call it a political book. Greene would have had a fit. It is after all the novel he most preferred of all those he wrote.

Greene's most enduring novel, 25 Jan 2007
In a provincial town 800 km north of Buenos Aires a group of revolutionaries kidnap by mistake Charly Fortnum, the Honorary Consul, instead of the American Ambassador. They request the liberation of 10 prisoners from Paraguay.
The characters are brilliantly drawn and the prose is sparse and taught. Fortnum, sixty-one year old, living on whisky and his disputed status as an "Honorary" British Consul marries a young ex-prostitute from Senora Sanchez's brothel. Dr Eduardo Plarr whose deficient emotions form the heart of the novel. Although Plarr is Clara's lover and the father of the child she's expecting, he still envies Fortnum's love for her because it is a feeling he has never been capable of experiencing himself. Even the minor characters of the kidnappers, Aquino, Father Rivas and Marta are sardonically drawn and during the bungled kidnap, plenty is said among them about justice, faith, love and God during the 3-day confine in a dirty mud and tin hut.
This audiobook features Tim Pigott-Smith as reader, one of the best in the Chivers series.

gripping, 21 Nov 2006
This perfectly judged, beautifully paced novel is full of marvellous characters. It's definitely one of the best books I've read this year. This book was the first I've read by Graham Greene, if they're all as good as this then I will have at least a decade of brilliant reading ahead of me. He captures the tropics of South America perfectly, as well as the political situation at the time from the vantage point of an isolated country town. His characters are intensly human, the cake-loving mother sitting in the BA tea shops is a far more important character than the American Ambassador. Plarr himself is extremely 3 dimensional, full of South American machismo while believing himself to be aloof from the very concept. an excellent read throughout.

Moving tragi-comedy of errors from Graham Greene, 21 Aug 2003
South America in the 1970s. A group of revolutionaries plan to highlight their cause by kidnapping the American ambassador. Unfortunately, they get it wrong and kidnap instead Charley Fortnum, a boozy expatriate Briton whose quasi-official status as an honorary consul amunts to little more than the right to import and sell a car every two years. Dr Plarr, one of only two other Britons in the city, is involved from the start: not only was it he who provided the revolutionaries with their information, but he is also having an affair with Fortnum's young wife. Though this is more sombre in tone than some of Greene's other 'entertainments', there is much wry humour in these pages, but what struck me most was the degree of emotional involvement Greene manages to produce in what could easily have been a cynical tale of unprincipled behaviour and bungling. The novel takes us down a dark road, and I found some of the later scenes really quite sad, but I hope I'm not giving too much away by saying that the road leads eventually to redemption - of a kind.

Not Greene's at his best., 29 Jul 2001
I enjoyed this book over-all, however it did seem to me to be slow-moving in parts. Focusing on the despair of the main charachter, Greene explores the familiar subject of mis-placed Britains in strange countries: this time the South Americas. The result is that it could be seen to be un-interesting and I have to say that the comedy side didn't shine through.

Good quality, but not complete, 25 Jun 2007
In spite of it's 848 pages the book (of course) does not contain all short stories by W. Somerset Maugham (as far as I know round about 120). So I still have to wait for a hardcover-edition with all short stories.
Included are the following 31 stories:
- In a Strange Land
- Rain
- The Fall of Edward Barnard
- The Pool
- Mackintosh
- The Happy Couple
- The Unconquered
- Before the Party
- The Yellow Streak
- The Vessel of Wrath
- The Force of Circumstande
- The Alien Corn
- Virtue
- The Bum
- The Treasure
- The Colones's Lady
- The Human Element
- Footprints in the Jungle
- The Book-bag
- The Back of Beyond
- Mayhew
- Mirage
- The Letter
- The Outstation
- Red
- Miss King
- The Hairless Mexican
- Giulia Lazzari
- The Traitor
- His Excellency
- Sanatorium
The book also comes with an introduction, a select bibliography and a chronology.
It is made very nice with a red cover and a dust-wrap. The quality of the binding also seems to be o.k.
As I consider Maugham to be one of the greatest short story writers and I love to read him there is only one possibility: 5 Stars

(P.S.: If there are any mistakes in my text please apologize: I'm from Germany)

An enjoyable read that falls short of the standards set in Snowleg, 05 Nov 2008
There seems to be a growing fashion among British novelists to write about erectile dysfunction. First we had Ian McEwen's prematurely ejaculating protagonist in On Chesil Beach, now we have the impotent Alex Dove in Secrets of the Sea, the new novel by Nicholas Shakespeare.

Set in small town Tasmania, where Shakespeare has himself relocated, it tells of the lives of Dove and his wife, Merridy; her cousin, Tildy, and her husband Ray. Underlying each of their existences is history and tragedies great and small. Their quiet lives are shaken by the arrival of a mysterious stranger in the novel's final third.

The small town set up - with the avaristic local businessmen, the old timer running the local store, the grumpy English exile - will be familiar to anyone to have spent time in Australia. Shakespeare is particularly good at building a sense of place.

His characters have charm, but it is sometimes difficult to understand their motivations. Merridy Dove is a case in point. I never really felt convinced as to why she chose to get married and become a housewife in the book's first section. Why was she attracted to her rather bland husband? Why does she subsequently indulge in infidelities, which seem shockingly out of character? Nor is the sense of loss and yearning for her lost brother adequately unravelled.

I also felt that Secrets of the Sea was somewhat flabby, that it would have been better, more taut book were it a third shorter. It is, in essence, a domestic drama, certainly not an epic narrative as his previous novel, Snowleg, and, as such, could be better contained. Some characters - the store keeper, the retired journalist - are carefully constructed, but only really had walk on parts, and this confused me. And at the novel's critical dramatic juncture I was left scratching my head and re-reading bits, such was the (possibly intentional) confusion.

Yet for all of these complaints I enjoyed Secrets of the Sea. It is not a great novel, nor is the prose or storyline particularly memorable; worse still it falls short in comparison to Shakespeare's previous novel, Snowleg. But fans of that, like myself, will find something to enjoy and being second best to such a fine work is nothing to be ashamed about.

A superb book about a superb author and a terrible man, 02 Jun 2007
This is a masterful biography, penetrating yet never judgemental, complete but not clinical. The inspiration behind Chatwin's brutally clipped prose are laid bare, from Hemingway on, with the most excruciating detail about all aspects of his life from childhood to the gay nirvana that was late 70s and early 80s New York. For all those who have ever marvelled at his work's effortless evocation of atmosphere, its probably best not to read this as any illusion you may have had about him wil be irretrievably shattered. He was the centre of a cult of beauty and brittle sociality, fuelled by incredible egotism and arrogance, that left great literature on the upside, and a series of ruined lives and broken hearts on the down. Hitler was said to be a gifted watercolurist, after all, though I doubt that many would enthusiastically embrace his work. However, for all that, Chatwin's writing is staggering, and Nicholas Shakespeare's book should be lauded as THE example of what a modern biography ought to be: a great, eloquent, wide-ranging, well-expressed and truly epic tour de literary force. Outstanding.

Unmasking the mythomane, 01 Feb 2007
Chatwin was a compulsive fantasist in his own life, unable to stop himself from using his considerable knowledge as a launchpad for his own inventions. At the same time, his writing was very clearly rooted in his own experiences, drawing considerably on the people he met and the places he visited. His own life was often as interesting as his books - and when it wasn't, he managed to invent a story to make it so.

As a result, Shakespeare had an uphill struggle to pin down a man who hated being pinned down more than anything else, and he largely succeeded. The result is a portrait of a terribly flawed man who still seemed to be able to touch people's lives even when his own behaviour was at its worst, illustrated best of all by the devotion his wife Elizabeth showed him even as he fled from her repeatedly.

The biography's only flaws are a tendency to trail in his wake, never quite wanting to acknowledge that Chatwin, while a brilliant writer, could also be a brilliant monster. However it does capture the one indisputable truth about Chatwin, that he desired more than anything else to be the central figure in his greatest work of fiction - his own life.

Brilliant Biography of a Monster, 18 Aug 2004
I recently purchased this biography of Bruce Chatwin written by Nicholas Shakespeare. I probably did it to confirm my own prejudices (the sneaking suspicion that Chatwin was 'not a nice man') and on that level it delivered in spades. Shakespeare gives a magnificent warts-and-all portrait. Chatwin's friends and his apparently long-suffering wife could obviously see beyond the warts - all I saw was a monstrous egotistical carbuncle called Bruce Chatwin. I am pleased to have made his acquaintance via this biography; I would never have wanted to meet him in real life. I would have viewed him as a black hole - always taking, never giving. And in answer to another reviewer on this site, you can also meet real people in Waitrose - you don't always have to go chanting on some remote hillside...

A Potrait of the Artist as a Not Very Nice Man, 31 Aug 2001
Nicholas Shakespeare has written a very impressive biography of an author who was as complex and elusive in his persona as his work is crystalline in its clarity. Those who like their heroes to be as inspiring as their prose should look elsewhere. Chatwin displayed all the ruthlessness of many creative artist as he exploited his friends, and most especially his devoted and long suffering wife, in the pursuit of his destiny. Shakespeare's biography is scrupuously fair, exhaustively researched and superbly written. I'm left wondering what my reaction to Chatwin's work would have been had I read this first.

A superb portrayal of a flawed genius, 04 Sep 2000
Chatwin's life is ultimately more interesting than any of his works, as if actually reading about how he wrote his books rather than the end-product seems better. Shakespeare astonishes with the sheer volume of perceptive detail he has included on this man, and this really is one of the great biographies...

Greene at his best, 14 Feb 2007
With all due respect to the in house reviewer I would like to assure all potential readers of this fine novel that it is in no way a political book. The politics referred to serve to bring the characters together. At no point in the novel does Greene investigate any of the characters' politics. Nor does he analyse the political situation in Paraguay and Argentina where the novel is set.
It is a novel about love; about the inability to love and the nature of love. It's about the nature of god and how the protagonists have to come to terms with the difficult idea that god is both good and evil. It's about the nature of the catholic church; the complicated nature of human beings. It's about that favourite paradox of Green's that very often those seemingly furthest from redemption, humanity and god are in fact the closest to them.
It's a beautiful book aching with humanity- our foibles, our goodness and our badness. But please don't call it a political book. Greene would have had a fit. It is after all the novel he most preferred of all those he wrote.

Greene's most enduring novel, 25 Jan 2007
In a provincial town 800 km north of Buenos Aires a group of revolutionaries kidnap by mistake Charly Fortnum, the Honorary Consul, instead of the American Ambassador. They request the liberation of 10 prisoners from Paraguay.
The characters are brilliantly drawn and the prose is sparse and taught. Fortnum, sixty-one year old, living on whisky and his disputed status as an "Honorary" British Consul marries a young ex-prostitute from Senora Sanchez's brothel. Dr Eduardo Plarr whose deficient emotions form the heart of the novel. Although Plarr is Clara's lover and the father of the child she's expecting, he still envies Fortnum's love for her because it is a feeling he has never been capable of experiencing himself. Even the minor characters of the kidnappers, Aquino, Father Rivas and Marta are sardonically drawn and during the bungled kidnap, plenty is said among them about justice, faith, love and God during the 3-day confine in a dirty mud and tin hut.
This audiobook features Tim Pigott-Smith as reader, one of the best in the Chivers series.

gripping, 21 Nov 2006
This perfectly judged, beautifully paced novel is full of marvellous characters. It's definitely one of the best books I've read this year. This book was the first I've read by Graham Greene, if they're all as good as this then I will have at least a decade of brilliant reading ahead of me. He captures the tropics of South America perfectly, as well as the political situation at the time from the vantage point of an isolated country town. His characters are intensly human, the cake-loving mother sitting in the BA tea shops is a far more important character than the American Ambassador. Plarr himself is extremely 3 dimensional, full of South American machismo while believing himself to be aloof from the very concept. an excellent read throughout.

Moving tragi-comedy of errors from Graham Greene, 21 Aug 2003
South America in the 1970s. A group of revolutionaries plan to highlight their cause by kidnapping the American ambassador. Unfortunately, they get it wrong and kidnap instead Charley Fortnum, a boozy expatriate Briton whose quasi-official status as an honorary consul amunts to little more than the right to import and sell a car every two years. Dr Plarr, one of only two other Britons in the city, is involved from the start: not only was it he who provided the revolutionaries with their information, but he is also having an affair with Fortnum's young wife. Though this is more sombre in tone than some of Greene's other 'entertainments', there is much wry humour in these pages, but what struck me most was the degree of emotional involvement Greene manages to produce in what could easily have been a cynical tale of unprincipled behaviour and bungling. The novel takes us down a dark road, and I found some of the later scenes really quite sad, but I hope I'm not giving too much away by saying that the road leads eventually to redemption - of a kind.

Not Greene's at his best., 29 Jul 2001
I enjoyed this book over-all, however it did seem to me to be slow-moving in parts. Focusing on the despair of the main charachter, Greene explores the familiar subject of mis-placed Britains in strange countries: this time the South Americas. The result is that it could be seen to be un-interesting and I have to say that the comedy side didn't shine through.

Good quality, but not complete, 25 Jun 2007
In spite of it's 848 pages the book (of course) does not contain all short stories by W. Somerset Maugham (as far as I know round about 120). So I still have to wait for a hardcover-edition with all short stories.
Included are the following 31 stories:
- In a Strange Land
- Rain
- The Fall of Edward Barnard
- The Pool
- Mackintosh
- The Happy Couple
- The Unconquered
- Before the Party
- The Yellow Streak
- The Vessel of Wrath
- The Force of Circumstande
- The Alien Corn
- Virtue
- The Bum
- The Treasure
- The Colones's Lady
- The Human Element
- Footprints in the Jungle
- The Book-bag
- The Back of Beyond
- Mayhew
- Mirage
- The Letter
- The Outstation
- Red
- Miss King
- The Hairless Mexican
- Giulia Lazzari
- The Traitor
- His Excellency
- Sanatorium
The book also comes with an introduction, a select bibliography and a chronology.
It is made very nice with a red cover and a dust-wrap. The quality of the binding also seems to be o.k.
As I consider Maugham to be one of the greatest short story writers and I love to read him there is only one possibility: 5 Stars

(P.S.: If there are any mistakes in my text please apologize: I'm from Germany)

Too many coincidences, 13 Jan 2008
A name like the author's is a heavy burden, and, as far as style goes, this Shakespeare here does quite well. His problem is how to organise a convincing plot, and, sad to say, this is where he fails, at least in the long run. At the beginning his story is really thrilling and quite unusual for a British author. On his 16th birthday young hero Peter Hithersay finds out, that his beloved father is not his biological one, as his mother had a one-night-stand with a German prisoner on the run in Leipzig in the GDR. From that moment Peter feels German, takes German language courses at his rather posh school and endures being mobbed for his German roots by his fellow students. He then studies medicine in Hamburg and gets the chance to go to Leipzig with a student drama group. Here he hopes to find out more about his father. Instead he falls in love with a girl called Snjolaug, a name that sounds to him like Snowleg. She takes him to the farewell party of her brother, who has finally been allowed to leave the GDR. Snowleg finds out, that this also means her personal future is in shambles. So after they spend the night together in a Schrebergarten datscha, she asks Peter to smuggle her out of the country. Although he first is glad about that, he then has second thoughts and in the end denies knowing her when confronted with her at an official reception. And now his and the reader's torment begins. Shakespeare is neither really interested in his hero's quest to find Snowleg again, nor in the dire situation he has left her in. What we hear about the infamous methods of the Stasi is just cheap sensationalism, nothing new or convincing. Like Housseini's hero in "The Kiterunner" Peter keeps moaning on and on about his fatal mistake. And, there are just one too many coincidences in the plot.

Enjoyable tale of long lost love..., 29 Jan 2007
The concept of lost love isn't anything new and you can probably work out how it will end, but you're still likely to be drawn into the intricate stories of the main characters.

I found this gripping in parts, but at other times it just felt like the author had 'tried too hard' and concentrated more on the words rather than the story. Having said that, the book contains a lot a detail about the divided Germany, which is interesting and definitely makes this novel stand out from others.

On the whole, worth a read. A good one to take on a long flight.

Good in parts, 17 Jan 2006
A story of love and longing which takes us into Eastern Germany past and present.

In common with other reviewers I found Shakespeare very convincing at evoking atmosphere and a sense of time and place. Less convincing, however, is the manner in which every loose end is tied up all too neatly at the end.

Could not appreciate this book., 18 Mar 2005
Despite the praise that has been heaped on this book, I can't say that I liked it much. The author seems well acquainted with East Germany both before and after reunification, and sometimes he gives fine descriptions of atmospheric settings; but to my mind these were often over-written, forced or pretentious. The same goes for the description of often rather seedy and grotesque characters, even given that the Stasi went in for (to put it mildly) seedy and grotesque operations; and there is one incident which is just too gratuitously disgusting for words. Nor did I take very much to Peter, the central character. True, he is supposed to be a flawed human being, riddled for years with guilt for not having taken the risk to smuggle out to the West a girl with whom, as a young visitor to the GDR, he had had a short affaire; but I find little that is attractive about his personality or about his relationships with all except one old woman. The book is slow - once Peter is on a trail of interviews to find the girl, his interlocutors are all deliberately and tantalizingly slow to pass on any information they have: that in itself becomes monotonous. There are too many rather improbable coincidences. There are references near the end of the book to certain incidents earlier on which you are likely to have missed unless you have read the book very closely and have a good memory. It's the sort of book which one really ought to read twice, which I sometimes like to do under similar circumstances, but had no desire to do in this case.

"Remorse. The bird that never settles.", 12 Nov 2004
In one of the most elegantly written and carefully constructed love stories in recent memory, Nicholas Shakespeare introduces Peter Hithersay, who, on his sixteenth birthday, learns that "Daddy" is not his father. In Leipzig, East Germany, for a vocal competition, his mother had met and loved his biological father very briefly, only to see him arrested, and taken away forever. Curious about Germany, Peter spends his gap year in Hamburg and applies for and is accepted to its medical school, where he lives for the next six years. Eventually, Peter makes a trip to Leipzig, where he, now twenty-two, falls passionately in love with a young East German, whose Icelandic nickname, "Snjolaug," sounds to him like "Snowleg." When he has to leave, he is unable to forget her.

Peter's search for Snowleg, and secondarily, for his father, is told through flashbacks and memories, and the nature of their relationship unfolds in detail. The role of the secret police in their separation and the conflicts between the original ideal of communism and its later implementation are shown through Uwe and Hesse, two secret policemen, who appear in the prologue and in the conclusion and provide fresh perspective on the action, elevating this novel above the typical love story.

The vibrancy of Shakespeare's prose makes every page of this novel a delight to read. Filled with irony and, often, humor, the dialogue comes alive. Unforgettable descriptions, especially of the darkness, cold, and soot in Leipzig, reveal feelings as well as convey information. To Peter, listening to the radio, a love song "had red eyes and ran furtively across his mind...It was a rat dressed up as a promise." Repeating motifs--a van with a fish painted on it, a dying deer, the story of Sir Bedevere, a fur coat, and the bones of a muskrat--echo throughout the novel and connect scenes symbolically. Like most romances, the story relies on coincidence and fortuitous accident, but Shakespeare's writing is so strong and the story is so exciting that even the most jaded reader will willingly accept the implausibilities. Mary Whipple

An enjoyable read that falls short of the standards set in Snowleg, 05 Nov 2008
There seems to be a growing fashion among British novelists to write about erectile dysfunction. First we had Ian McEwen's prematurely ejaculating protagonist in On Chesil Beach, now we have the impotent Alex Dove in Secrets of the Sea, the new novel by Nicholas Shakespeare.

Set in small town Tasmania, where Shakespeare has himself relocated, it tells of the lives of Dove and his wife, Merridy; her cousin, Tildy, and her husband Ray. Underlying each of their existences is history and tragedies great and small. Their quiet lives are shaken by the arrival of a mysterious stranger in the novel's final third.

The small town set up - with the avaristic local businessmen, the old timer running the local store, the grumpy English exile - will be familiar to anyone to have spent time in Australia. Shakespeare is particularly good at building a sense of place.

His characters have charm, but it is sometimes difficult to understand their motivations. Merridy Dove is a case in point. I never really felt convinced as to why she chose to get married and become a housewife in the book's first section. Why was she attracted to her rather bland husband? Why does she subsequently indulge in infidelities, which seem shockingly out of character? Nor is the sense of loss and yearning for her lost brother adequately unravelled.

I also felt that Secrets of the Sea was somewhat flabby, that it would have been better, more taut book were it a third shorter. It is, in essence, a domestic drama, certainly not an epic narrative as his previous novel, Snowleg, and, as such, could be better contained. Some characters - the store keeper, the retired journalist - are carefully constructed, but only really had walk on parts, and this confused me. And at the novel's critical dramatic juncture I was left scratching my head and re-reading bits, such was the (possibly intentional) confusion.

Yet for all of these complaints I enjoyed Secrets of the Sea. It is not a great novel, nor is the prose or storyline particularly memorable; worse still it falls short in comparison to Shakespeare's previous novel, Snowleg. But fans of that, like myself, will find something to enjoy and being second best to such a fine work is nothing to be ashamed about.

A superb book about a superb author and a terrible man, 02 Jun 2007
This is a masterful biography, penetrating yet never judgemental, complete but not clinical. The inspiration behind Chatwin's brutally clipped prose are laid bare, from Hemingway on, with the most excruciating detail about all aspects of his life from childhood to the gay nirvana that was late 70s and early 80s New York. For all those who have ever marvelled at his work's effortless evocation of atmosphere, its probably best not to read this as any illusion you may have had about him wil be irretrievably shattered. He was the centre of a cult of beauty and brittle sociality, fuelled by incredible egotism and arrogance, that left great literature on the upside, and a series of ruined lives and broken hearts on the down. Hitler was said to be a gifted watercolurist, after all, though I doubt that many would enthusiastically embrace his work. However, for all that, Chatwin's writing is staggering, and Nicholas Shakespeare's book should be lauded as THE example of what a modern biography ought to be: a great, eloquent, wide-ranging, well-expressed and truly epic tour de literary force. Outstanding.

Unmasking the mythomane, 01 Feb 2007
Chatwin was a compulsive fantasist in his own life, unable to stop himself from using his considerable knowledge as a launchpad for his own inventions. At the same time, his writing was very clearly rooted in his own experiences, drawing considerably on the people he met and the places he visited. His own life was often as interesting as his books - and when it wasn't, he managed to invent a story to make it so.

As a result, Shakespeare had an uphill struggle to pin down a man who hated being pinned down more than anything else, and he largely succeeded. The result is a portrait of a terribly flawed man who still seemed to be able to touch people's lives even when his own behaviour was at its worst, illustrated best of all by the devotion his wife Elizabeth showed him even as he fled from her repeatedly.

The biography's only flaws are a tendency to trail in his wake, never quite wanting to acknowledge that Chatwin, while a brilliant writer, could also be a brilliant monster. However it does capture the one indisputable truth about Chatwin, that he desired more than anything else to be the central figure in his greatest work of fiction - his own life.

Brilliant Biography of a Monster, 18 Aug 2004
I recently purchased this biography of Bruce Chatwin written by Nicholas Shakespeare. I probably did it to confirm my own prejudices (the sneaking suspicion that Chatwin was 'not a nice man') and on that level it delivered in spades. Shakespeare gives a magnificent warts-and-all portrait. Chatwin's friends and his apparently long-suffering wife could obviously see beyond the warts - all I saw was a monstrous egotistical carbuncle called Bruce Chatwin. I am pleased to have made his acquaintance via this biography; I would never have wanted to meet him in real life. I would have viewed him as a black hole - always taking, never giving. And in answer to another reviewer on this site, you can also meet real people in Waitrose - you don't always have to go chanting on some remote hillside...

A Potrait of the Artist as a Not Very Nice Man, 31 Aug 2001
Nicholas Shakespeare has written a very impressive biography of an author who was as complex and elusive in his persona as his work is crystalline in its clarity. Those who like their heroes to be as inspiring as their prose should look elsewhere. Chatwin displayed all the ruthlessness of many creative artist as he exploited his friends, and most especially his devoted and long suffering wife, in the pursuit of his destiny. Shakespeare's biography is scrupuously fair, exhaustively researched and superbly written. I'm left wondering what my reaction to Chatwin's work would have been had I read this first.

A superb portrayal of a flawed genius, 04 Sep 2000
Chatwin's life is ultimately more interesting than any of his works, as if actually reading about how he wrote his books rather than the end-product seems better. Shakespeare astonishes with the sheer volume of perceptive detail he has included on this man, and this really is one of the great biographies...

Greene at his best, 14 Feb 2007
With all due respect to the in house reviewer I would like to assure all potential readers of this fine novel that it is in no way a political book. The politics referred to serve to bring the characters together. At no point in the novel does Greene investigate any of the characters' politics. Nor does he analyse the political situation in Paraguay and Argentina where the novel is set.
It is a novel about love; about the inability to love and the nature of love. It's about the nature of god and how the protagonists have to come to terms with the difficult idea that god is both good and evil. It's about the nature of the catholic church; the complicated nature of human beings. It's about that favourite paradox of Green's that very often those seemingly furthest from redemption, humanity and god are in fact the closest to them.
It's a beautiful book aching with humanity- our foibles, our goodness and our badness. But please don't call it a political book. Greene would have had a fit. It is after all the novel he most preferred of all those he wrote.

Greene's most enduring novel, 25 Jan 2007
In a provincial town 800 km north of Buenos Aires a group of revolutionaries kidnap by mistake Charly Fortnum, the Honorary Consul, instead of the American Ambassador. They request the liberation of 10 prisoners from Paraguay.
The characters are brilliantly drawn and the prose is sparse and taught. Fortnum, sixty-one year old, living on whisky and his disputed status as an "Honorary" British Consul marries a young ex-prostitute from Senora Sanchez's brothel. Dr Eduardo Plarr whose deficient emotions form the heart of the novel. Although Plarr is Clara's lover and the father of the child she's expecting, he still envies Fortnum's love for her because it is a feeling he has never been capable of experiencing himself. Even the minor characters of the kidnappers, Aquino, Father Rivas and Marta are sardonically drawn and during the bungled kidnap, plenty is said among them about justice, faith, love and God during the 3-day confine in a dirty mud and tin hut.
This audiobook features Tim Pigott-Smith as reader, one of the best in the Chivers series.

gripping, 21 Nov 2006
This perfectly judged, beautifully paced novel is full of marvellous characters. It's definitely one of the best books I've read this year. This book was the first I've read by Graham Greene, if they're all as good as this then I will have at least a decade of brilliant reading ahead of me. He captures the tropics of South America perfectly, as well as the political situation at the time from the vantage point of an isolated country town. His characters are intensly human, the cake-loving mother sitting in the BA tea shops is a far more important character than the American Ambassador. Plarr himself is extremely 3 dimensional, full of South American machismo while believing himself to be aloof from the very concept. an excellent read throughout.

Moving tragi-comedy of errors from Graham Greene, 21 Aug 2003
South America in the 1970s. A group of revolutionaries plan to highlight their cause by kidnapping the American ambassador. Unfortunately, they get it wrong and kidnap instead Charley Fortnum, a boozy expatriate Briton whose quasi-official status as an honorary consul amunts to little more than the right to import and sell a car every two years. Dr Plarr, one of only two other Britons in the city, is involved from the start: not only was it he who provided the revolutionaries with their information, but he is also having an affair with Fortnum's young wife. Though this is more sombre in tone than some of Greene's other 'entertainments', there is much wry humour in these pages, but what struck me most was the degree of emotional involvement Greene manages to produce in what could easily have been a cynical tale of unprincipled behaviour and bungling. The novel takes us down a dark road, and I found some of the later scenes really quite sad, but I hope I'm not giving too much away by saying that the road leads eventually to redemption - of a kind.

Not Greene's at his best., 29 Jul 2001
I enjoyed this book over-all, however it did seem to me to be slow-moving in parts. Focusing on the despair of the main charachter, Greene explores the familiar subject of mis-placed Britains in strange countries: this time the South Americas. The result is that it could be seen to be un-interesting and I have to say that the comedy side didn't shine through.

Good quality, but not complete, 25 Jun 2007
In spite of it's 848 pages the book (of course) does not contain all short stories by W. Somerset Maugham (as far as I know round about 120). So I still have to wait for a hardcover-edition with all short stories.
Included are the following 31 stories:
- In a Strange Land
- Rain
- The Fall of Edward Barnard
- The Pool
- Mackintosh
- The Happy Couple
- The Unconquered
- Before the Party
- The Yellow Streak
- The Vessel of Wrath
- The Force of Circumstande
- The Alien Corn
- Virtue
- The Bum
- The Treasure
- The Colones's Lady
- The Human Element
- Footprints in the Jungle
- The Book-bag
- The Back of Beyond
- Mayhew
- Mirage
- The Letter
- The Outstation
- Red
- Miss King
- The Hairless Mexican
- Giulia Lazzari
- The Traitor
- His Excellency
- Sanatorium
The book also comes with an introduction, a select bibliography and a chronology.
It is made very nice with a red cover and a dust-wrap. The quality of the binding also seems to be o.k.
As I consider Maugham to be one of the greatest short story writers and I love to read him there is only one possibility: 5 Stars

(P.S.: If there are any mistakes in my text please apologize: I'm from Germany)

Too many coincidences, 13 Jan 2008
A name like the author's is a heavy burden, and, as far as style goes, this Shakespeare here does quite well. His problem is how to organise a convincing plot, and, sad to say, this is where he fails, at least in the long run. At the beginning his story is really thrilling and quite unusual for a British author. On his 16th birthday young hero Peter Hithersay finds out, that his beloved father is not his biological one, as his mother had a one-night-stand with a German prisoner on the run in Leipzig in the GDR. From that moment Peter feels German, takes German language courses at his rather posh school and endures being mobbed for his German roots by his fellow students. He then studies medicine in Hamburg and gets the chance to go to Leipzig with a student drama group. Here he hopes to find out more about his father. Instead he falls in love with a girl called Snjolaug, a name that sounds to him like Snowleg. She takes him to the farewell party of her brother, who has finally been allowed to leave the GDR. Snowleg finds out, that this also means her personal future is in shambles. So after they spend the night together in a Schrebergarten datscha, she asks Peter to smuggle her out of the country. Although he first is glad about that, he then has second thoughts and in the end denies knowing her when confronted with her at an official reception. And now his and the reader's torment begins. Shakespeare is neither really interested in his hero's quest to find Snowleg again, nor in the dire situation he has left her in. What we hear about the infamous methods of the Stasi is just cheap sensationalism, nothing new or convincing. Like Housseini's hero in "The Kiterunner" Peter keeps moaning on and on about his fatal mistake. And, there are just one too many coincidences in the plot.

Enjoyable tale of long lost love..., 29 Jan 2007
The concept of lost love isn't anything new and you can probably work out how it will end, but you're still likely to be drawn into the intricate stories of the main characters.

I found this gripping in parts, but at other times it just felt like the author had 'tried too hard' and concentrated more on the words rather than the story. Having said that, the book contains a lot a detail about the divided Germany, which is interesting and definitely makes this novel stand out from others.

On the whole, worth a read. A good one to take on a long flight.

Good in parts, 17 Jan 2006
A story of love and longing which takes us into Eastern Germany past and present.

In common with other reviewers I found Shakespeare very convincing at evoking atmosphere and a sense of time and place. Less convincing, however, is the manner in which every loose end is tied up all too neatly at the end.

Could not appreciate this book., 18 Mar 2005
Despite the praise that has been heaped on this book, I can't say that I liked it much. The author seems well acquainted with East Germany both before and after reunification, and sometimes he gives fine descriptions of atmospheric settings; but to my mind these were often over-written, forced or pretentious. The same goes for the description of often rather seedy and grotesque characters, even given that the Stasi went in for (to put it mildly) seedy and grotesque operations; and there is one incident which is just too gratuitously disgusting for words. Nor did I take very much to Peter, the central character. True, he is supposed to be a flawed human being, riddled for years with guilt for not having taken the risk to smuggle out to the West a girl with whom, as a young visitor to the GDR, he had had a short affaire; but I find little that is attractive about his personality or about his relationships with all except one old woman. The book is slow - once Peter is on a trail of interviews to find the girl, his interlocutors are all deliberately and tantalizingly slow to pass on any information they have: that in itself becomes monotonous. There are too many rather improbable coincidences. There are references near the end of the book to certain incidents earlier on which you are likely to have missed unless you have read the book very closely and have a good memory. It's the sort of book which one really ought to read twice, which I sometimes like to do under similar circumstances, but had no desire to do in this case.

"Remorse. The bird that never settles.", 12 Nov 2004
In one of the most elegantly written and carefully constructed love stories in recent memory, Nicholas Shakespeare introduces Peter Hithersay, who, on his sixteenth birthday, learns that "Daddy" is not his father. In Leipzig, East Germany, for a vocal competition, his mother had met and loved his biological father very briefly, only to see him arrested, and taken away forever. Curious about Germany, Peter spends his gap year in Hamburg and applies for and is accepted to its medical school, where he lives for the next six years. Eventually, Peter makes a trip to Leipzig, where he, now twenty-two, falls passionately in love with a young East German, whose Icelandic nickname, "Snjolaug," sounds to him like "Snowleg." When he has to leave, he is unable to forget her.

Peter's search for Snowleg, and secondarily, for his father, is told through flashbacks and memories, and the nature of their relationship unfolds in detail. The role of the secret police in their separation and the conflicts between the original ideal of communism and its later implementation are shown through Uwe and Hesse, two secret policemen, who appear in the prologue and in the conclusion and provide fresh perspective on the action, elevating this novel above the typical love story.

The vibrancy of Shakespeare's prose makes every page of this novel a delight to read. Filled with irony and, often, humor, the dialogue comes alive. Unforgettable descriptions, especially of the darkness, cold, and soot in Leipzig, reveal feelings as well as convey information. To Peter, listening to the radio, a love song "had red eyes and ran furtively across his mind...It was a rat dressed up as a promise." Repeating motifs--a van with a fish painted on it, a dying deer, the story of Sir Bedevere, a fur coat, and the bones of a muskrat--echo throughout the novel and connect scenes symbolically. Like most romances, the story relies on coincidence and fortuitous accident, but Shakespeare's writing is so strong and the story is so exciting that even the most jaded reader will willingly accept the implausibilities. Mary Whipple

Unputtdownable, 07 Aug 2008
A fabulous novel - a real page turner. The storyline is inspired by the real life capture of the leader of the Peruvian Shining Path terrorist group and does bear some similarity. As well as being a gripping thriller, it is also a story full of humanity.

The couple of chapters were a little slow but once the story proper starts the book becomes immediately compelling. The central character and narrator is Rejas, the policeman who succeeded in capturing the enigmatic guerilla leader Ezequiel after years of searching. Rejas is a good character and one who is easy to sympathise with, and is supported by strong supporting characters.

South America is vividly conjured up and anyone who has lived in or travelled on the continent will be transported back there. The descriptions of the hardships suffered by people in rural areas, at the hands of both guerillas and military, are powerful. Although the story is a work of fiction set in an unnamed South American country, there are many similarities with Peru and the Shining Path group.

Sometimes the plot relies a little bit too much on coincidence, although that doesn't spoil the story, it does stretch credibility a little bit. For example, we have to believe that Ezequiel just happens to be hiding above the dancing school where Rejas' daughter regularly attends, and where Rejas has a friendship with the teacher. It's handled well though and never feels too clunking.

I would strongly recommend this book to anyone - it will be particularly enjoyed by those with a love of South America, and by anyone who likes the novels of Le Carre, Grisham etc.

I good read if you're a fan of SA.., 13 Apr 2005
The insight into Peru and what has occurred is brilliant. The combination of love, relationships, violence and mystery are enough to keep a casual reader like myself eager for more. I was a little disappointed by the ending. However it does encourage me to read the prequel, and watch the film.

Would recommend 'My Name is Light' as a better alternative.

The Dancer Upstairs, 04 Feb 2003
Nicholas Shakespeare is tough on his characters. He makes them inhabit a world where daily they must confront the big issues of life: morality, love, betrayal and the political machinations of an unstable state. But just as dancers must often endure pain to produce movement of great beauty, Shakespeare's protagonists are made to fight emotional battles to produce a work of surprising humanity and tenderness.

Of course all this needs an environment sufficiently grand to accommodate such large themes, and Shakespeare's undeniable understanding of South America and its societies provides ample space. Across Shakespeare's lonely mountains and confused cities we follow Colonel Rejas, a policeman on the trail of Eziquiel, a terrorist leader. Eziquiel himself leads a life of incarceration, partly due to his outlaw status and partly because of his own illness, an ailment which, ironically, is confined largely to the social group Eziquiel is fighting against.

Throughout the book we watch the characters make moral choices, influenced both by the society and the environment they find themselves in. This is a place where children carry out political assassinations and in which no-one remains untouched by politics and corruption. We see most of the events through the eyes of Rejas, who himself begins to question the rights and wrongs of his own actions when confronted with evidence of violence on both sides of the political divide and realises the risk to the relationships he holds dear. The book is full of fearful encounters, but each has its own humanity and with each we achieve some sort of recognition, or empathy even.

The Dancer Upstairs has the pace of a thriller and the intrigue of a detective novel, but has a very human heart. Read this and, just like Colonel Rejas, you may find yourself examining the very roots of values and relationships you hold close.

An enjoyable read that falls short of the standards set in Snowleg, 05 Nov 2008
There seems to be a growing fashion among British novelists to write about erectile dysfunction. First we had Ian McEwen's prematurely ejaculating protagonist in On Chesil Beach, now we have the impotent Alex Dove in Secrets of the Sea, the new novel by Nicholas Shakespeare.

Set in small town Tasmania, where Shakespeare has himself relocated, it tells of the lives of Dove and his wife, Merridy; her cousin, Tildy, and her husband Ray. Underlying each of their existences is history and tragedies great and small. Their quiet lives are shaken by the arrival of a mysterious stranger in the novel's final third.

The small town set up - with the avaristic local businessmen, the old timer running the local store, the grumpy English exile - will be familiar to anyone to have spent time in Australia. Shakespeare is particularly good at building a sense of place.

His characters have charm, but it is sometimes difficult to understand their motivations. Merridy Dove is a case in point. I never really felt convinced as to why she chose to get married and become a housewife in the book's first section. Why was she attracted to her rather bland husband? Why does she subsequently indulge in infidelities, which seem shockingly out of character? Nor is the sense of loss and yearning for her lost brother adequately unravelled.

I also felt that Secrets of the Sea was somewhat flabby, that it would have been better, more taut book were it a third shorter. It is, in essence, a domestic drama, certainly not an epic narrative as his previous novel, Snowleg, and, as such, could be better contained. Some characters - the store keeper, the retired journalist - are carefully constructed, but only really had walk on parts, and this confused me. And at the novel's critical dramatic juncture I was left scratching my head and re-reading bits, such was the (possibly intentional) confusion.

Yet for all of these complaints I enjoyed Secrets of the Sea. It is not a great novel, nor is the prose or storyline particularly memorable; worse still it falls short in comparison to Shakespeare's previous novel, Snowleg. But fans of that, like myself, will find something to enjoy and being second best to such a fine work is nothing to be ashamed about.

A superb book about a superb author and a terrible man, 02 Jun 2007
This is a masterful biography, penetrating yet never judgemental, complete but not clinical. The inspiration behind Chatwin's brutally clipped prose are laid bare, from Hemingway on, with the most excruciating detail about all aspects of his life from childhood to the gay nirvana that was late 70s and early 80s New York. For all those who have ever marvelled at his work's effortless evocation of atmosphere, its probably best not to read this as any illusion you may have had about him wil be irretrievably shattered. He was the centre of a cult of beauty and brittle sociality, fuelled by incredible egotism and arrogance, that left great literature on the upside, and a series of ruined lives and broken hearts on the down. Hitler was said to be a gifted watercolurist, after all, though I doubt that many would enthusiastically embrace his work. However, for all that, Chatwin's writing is staggering, and Nicholas Shakespeare's book should be lauded as THE example of what a modern biography ought to be: a great, eloquent, wide-ranging, well-expressed and truly epic tour de literary force. Outstanding.

Unmasking the mythomane, 01 Feb 2007
Chatwin was a compulsive fantasist in his own life, unable to stop himself from using his considerable knowledge as a launchpad for his own inventions. At the same time, his writing was very clearly rooted in his own experiences, drawing considerably on the people he met and the places he visited. His own life was often as interesting as his books - and when it wasn't, he managed to invent a story to make it so.

As a result, Shakespeare had an uphill struggle to pin down a man who hated being pinned down more than anything else, and he largely succeeded. The result is a portrait of a terribly flawed man who still seemed to be able to touch people's lives even when his own behaviour was at its worst, illustrated best of all by the devotion his wife Elizabeth showed him even as he fled from her repeatedly.

The biography's only flaws are a tendency to trail in his wake, never quite wanting to acknowledge that Chatwin, while a brilliant writer, could also be a brilliant monster. However it does capture the one indisputable truth about Chatwin, that he desired more than anything else to be the central figure in his greatest work of fiction - his own life.

Brilliant Biography of a Monster, 18 Aug 2004
I recently purchased this biography of Bruce Chatwin written by Nicholas Shakespeare. I probably did it to confirm my own prejudices (the sneaking suspicion that Chatwin was 'not a nice man') and on that level it delivered in spades. Shakespeare gives a magnificent warts-and-all portrait. Chatwin's friends and his apparently long-suffering wife could obviously see beyond the warts - all I saw was a monstrous egotistical carbuncle called Bruce Chatwin. I am pleased to have made his acquaintance via this biography; I would never have wanted to meet him in real life. I would have viewed him as a black hole - always taking, never giving. And in answer to another reviewer on this site, you can also meet real people in Waitrose - you don't always have to go chanting on some remote hillside...

A Potrait of the Artist as a Not Very Nice Man, 31 Aug 2001
Nicholas Shakespeare has written a very impressive biography of an author who was as complex and elusive in his persona as his work is crystalline in its clarity. Those who like their heroes to be as inspiring as their prose should look elsewhere. Chatwin displayed all the ruthlessness of many creative artist as he exploited his friends, and most especially his devoted and long suffering wife, in the pursuit of his destiny. Shakespeare's biography is scrupuously fair, exhaustively researched and superbly written. I'm left wondering what my reaction to Chatwin's work would have been had I read this first.

A superb portrayal of a flawed genius, 04 Sep 2000
Chatwin's life is ultimately more interesting than any of his works, as if actually reading about how he wrote his books rather than the end-product seems better. Shakespeare astonishes with the sheer volume of perceptive detail he has included on this man, and this really is one of the great biographies...

Greene at his best, 14 Feb 2007
With all due respect to the in house reviewer I would like to assure all potential readers of this fine novel that it is in no way a political book. The politics referred to serve to bring the characters together. At no point in the novel does Greene investigate any of the characters' politics. Nor does he analyse the political situation in Paraguay and Argentina where the novel is set.
It is a novel about love; about the inability to love and the nature of love. It's about the nature of god and how the protagonists have to come to terms with the difficult idea that god is both good and evil. It's about the nature of the catholic church; the complicated nature of human beings. It's about that favourite paradox of Green's that very often those seemingly furthest from redemption, humanity and god are in fact the closest to them.
It's a beautiful book aching with humanity- our foibles, our goodness and our badness. But please don't call it a political book. Greene would have had a fit. It is after all the novel he most preferred of all those he wrote.

Greene's most enduring novel, 25 Jan 2007
In a provincial town 800 km north of Buenos Aires a group of revolutionaries kidnap by mistake Charly Fortnum, the Honorary Consul, instead of the American Ambassador. They request the liberation of 10 prisoners from Paraguay.
The characters are brilliantly drawn and the prose is sparse and taught. Fortnum, sixty-one year old, living on whisky and his disputed status as an "Honorary" British Consul marries a young ex-prostitute from Senora Sanchez's brothel. Dr Eduardo Plarr whose deficient emotions form the heart of the novel. Although Plarr is Clara's lover and the father of the child she's expecting, he still envies Fortnum's love for her because it is a feeling he has never been capable of experiencing himself. Even the minor characters of the kidnappers, Aquino, Father Rivas and Marta are sardonically drawn and during the bungled kidnap, plenty is said among them about justice, faith, love and God during the 3-day confine in a dirty mud and tin hut.
This audiobook features Tim Pigott-Smith as reader, one of the best in the Chivers series.

gripping, 21 Nov 2006
This perfectly judged, beautifully paced novel is full of marvellous characters. It's definitely one of the best books I've read this year. This book was the first I've read by Graham Greene, if they're all as good as this then I will have at least a decade of brilliant reading ahead of me. He captures the tropics of South America perfectly, as well as the political situation at the time from the vantage point of an isolated country town. His characters are intensly human, the cake-loving mother sitting in the BA tea shops is a far more important character than the American Ambassador. Plarr himself is extremely 3 dimensional, full of South American machismo while believing himself to be aloof from the very concept. an excellent read throughout.

Moving tragi-comedy of errors from Graham Greene, 21 Aug 2003
South America in the 1970s. A group of revolutionaries plan to highlight their cause by kidnapping the American ambassador. Unfortunately, they get it wrong and kidnap instead Charley Fortnum, a boozy expatriate Briton whose quasi-official status as an honorary consul amunts to little more than the right to import and sell a car every two years. Dr Plarr, one of only two other Britons in the city, is involved from the start: not only was it he who provided the revolutionaries with their information, but he is also having an affair with Fortnum's young wife. Though this is more sombre in tone than some of Greene's other 'entertainments', there is much wry humour in these pages, but what struck me most was the degree of emotional involvement Greene manages to produce in what could easily have been a cynical tale of unprincipled behaviour and bungling. The novel takes us down a dark road, and I found some of the later scenes really quite sad, but I hope I'm not giving too much away by saying that the road leads eventually to redemption - of a kind.

Not Greene's at his best., 29 Jul 2001
I enjoyed this book over-all, however it did seem to me to be slow-moving in parts. Focusing on the despair of the main charachter, Greene explores the familiar subject of mis-placed Britains in strange countries: this time the South Americas. The result is that it could be seen to be un-interesting and I have to say that the comedy side didn't shine through.

Good quality, but not complete, 25 Jun 2007
In spite of it's 848 pages the book (of course) does not contain all short stories by W. Somerset Maugham (as far as I know round about 120). So I still have to wait for a hardcover-edition with all short stories.
Included are the following 31 stories:
- In a Strange Land
- Rain
- The Fall of Edward Barnard
- The Pool
- Mackintosh
- The Happy Couple
- The Unconquered
- Before the Party
- The Yellow Streak
- The Vessel of Wrath
- The Force of Circumstande
- The Alien Corn
- Virtue
- The Bum
- The Treasure
- The Colones's Lady
- The Human Element
- Footprints in the Jungle
- The Book-bag
- The Back of Beyond
- Mayhew
- Mirage
- The Letter
- The Outstation
- Red
- Miss King
- The Hairless Mexican
- Giulia Lazzari
- The Traitor
- His Excellency
- Sanatorium
The book also comes with an introduction, a select bibliography and a chronology.
It is made very nice with a red cover and a dust-wrap. The quality of the binding also seems to be o.k.
As I consider Maugham to be one of the greatest short story writers and I love to read him there is only one possibility: 5 Stars

(P.S.: If there are any mistakes in my text please apologize: I'm from Germany)

Too many coincidences, 13 Jan 2008
A name like the author's is a heavy burden, and, as far as style goes, this Shakespeare here does quite well. His problem is how to organise a convincing plot, and, sad to say, this is where he fails, at least in the long run. At the beginning his story is really thrilling and quite unusual for a British author. On his 16th birthday young hero Peter Hithersay finds out, that his beloved father is not his biological one, as his mother had a one-night-stand with a German prisoner on the run in Leipzig in the GDR. From that moment Peter feels German, takes German language courses at his rather posh school and endures being mobbed for his German roots by his fellow students. He then studies medicine in Hamburg and gets the chance to go to Leipzig with a student drama group. Here he hopes to find out more about his father. Instead he falls in love with a girl called Snjolaug, a name that sounds to him like Snowleg. She takes him to the farewell party of her brother, who has finally been allowed to leave the GDR. Snowleg finds out, that this also means her personal future is in shambles. So after they spend the night together in a Schrebergarten datscha, she asks Peter to smuggle