Reviews

The Truth about These Strange Times by Adam Foulds

dark_lyn's review

3.0

I found this story enjoyable but the ending seemed a bit lacking. I felt there was more which needed to be answered. The characters were interesting and unusual, except that they all seemed to have the same tendency to withdraw into themselves, which was presented as unique to each of them - it's possible this was intended as a reflection on the human condition as a whole but if it was it was lost on me.

scarpuccia's review against another edition

3.0

A novel about misfits and outcasts of society and how they build an alliance. Howard is fat and hopeless. He was abused and bullied as a child and eventually ended up in a remand home for a violent offence against another child which the author shrouds in mystery for most of the novel. Saul is ten and under immense pressure from his fanatically competitive father to win the world memory championships. They run away together.

This book was too whimsical for me and there was too much gratuitous description and I never wasn't wishing I was reading something else. The writing lacked the poise and elegant command of language of his later books.

asuph's review

4.0

A surprisingly engrossing tale involving two main characters - one adult with a child's worldview, and one child who's lost his childhood thanks to his father's constant pursuit to see him win a memory competition. Howard McNamee, a Scottish man in his late twenties is living a nondescript life, lacking any education or smarts gets his life intertwined with that of Saul, a high IQ boy with a photographic memory. It's an interesting commentary on our times without being preachy. The characters are instantly endearing. Plot progress is slow, linear, and somewhat predictable, but it's not the action that rules, it's the interactions. It's a lovely, part-funny, part dark read.