mazza57's review against another edition
not sure about this the first 3 chapter fabulous but then it fell apart
dhnewman's review
5.0
Though subsequent chapters aren't as funny as the first would lead you to believe, it's still an amazing book dealing with life, love and which stories we pass on.
jmiae's review
4.0
For the first three chapters of this book, I hemmed and hawed and wondered what on earth Mr Barnes as trying to get at. First he writes from the perspective of a woodworm who has stowed away on Noah's Ark, and the next chapter is about terrorists hijacking a cruise ship? But the more I read, the more spellbound I became. This is not the most complex book I've ever read, but it raises fascinating questions about what it means to be a product and process of human history. Each chapter can be read by itself as a short story, but when read together it's a marvel. My only complaint is that the title might be better off with the addition of "according to an Englishman" at the very end.
My favourite was the half-chapter. The latter half of it was more abstract but the first half, when the narrator describes his wife whilst she's sleeping and continues on to wax poetic about how way lips form the words "I love you" in various languages embody romantic love. It's an excerpt that will stay with me for a long time, if not for the rest of my life.
This book may have deserved a higher rating, because I know it is one I will want to read again, perhaps when I am older and (hopefully) wiser. But I am sticking to four stars for now because I know I have not got everything I could have out of this book, rather than because of any serious or weighty criticism against the author. This is the kind of book that takes time and research. Barnes clearly put loads of effort into researching all manner of things, and such effort on the writer's part requires a good measure of dedication by the reader, as well. I'm afraid this time around I did not invest quite as much of myself as I ought to have. Next time.
My favourite was the half-chapter. The latter half of it was more abstract but the first half, when the narrator describes his wife whilst she's sleeping and continues on to wax poetic about how way lips form the words "I love you" in various languages embody romantic love. It's an excerpt that will stay with me for a long time, if not for the rest of my life.
This book may have deserved a higher rating, because I know it is one I will want to read again, perhaps when I am older and (hopefully) wiser. But I am sticking to four stars for now because I know I have not got everything I could have out of this book, rather than because of any serious or weighty criticism against the author. This is the kind of book that takes time and research. Barnes clearly put loads of effort into researching all manner of things, and such effort on the writer's part requires a good measure of dedication by the reader, as well. I'm afraid this time around I did not invest quite as much of myself as I ought to have. Next time.
redheadorganist's review against another edition
funny
lighthearted
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
3.75
Content Warnings
Moderate: Alcohol, Classism, Confinement, Animal death, Excrement, and Incest
qofdnz's review
These individual stories did not make sense to me as a full book and some of them were hard to read. I didn't get it.
anywiebs's review against another edition
2.0
Okay, so I finished the book after taking a break for several years.
I put the book aside because I wasn't particularly into the stories. Each chapter tells a different story. They are all loosely connected via bible references (very loosely in some cases).
In the past I wasn't captivated by the writing either.
Now that I've read the last 3 1/2 chapters I cannot change my opinion of the book. I still didn't love the writing or the stories.
I do appreciate what the author wanted to achieve and see how he used the different stories to tell another story. However, I can't say I was impressed.
It feels good to remove the postcard from the book though :)
I put the book aside because I wasn't particularly into the stories. Each chapter tells a different story. They are all loosely connected via bible references (very loosely in some cases).
In the past I wasn't captivated by the writing either.
Now that I've read the last 3 1/2 chapters I cannot change my opinion of the book. I still didn't love the writing or the stories.
I do appreciate what the author wanted to achieve and see how he used the different stories to tell another story. However, I can't say I was impressed.
It feels good to remove the postcard from the book though :)
kirstiecat's review
4.0
Ok, the first chapter of the book entitled "The Stowaway" is one of the most brilliant things i've ever read. If there ever was a more intriguing hypothetical account of Noah's Ark, I haven't read it.
Sadly, the rest of the chapters are not as amazing. They are worth reading and interesting. They are engaging and inventive. But, they still aren't 5/5 stars good. I'm a tough critic. This is a solid 4 star work with some real five star moments. Barnes proves he's a creative thinker and able to delve into some important events in the history of both events and concepts (i.e. love, mental illness, and heaven for instance). At times he is wry and at other times he is completely serious and should be taken even more seriously for it. There are great historical accounts of the world based on true paintings and events and then more personal accounts that still seem just as valid for an understanding of the world's history.
While the chapters are vastly different in terms of the topic and theme, time period, perspective, and setting, Barnes has an apt way of providing a distinguishing link between all of them, as if underneath it all deep within our sub conscious is naturally our own origins. In the meantime, Barnes is going to help us explain our own sense of survival and reaction to terrorism in "Franklin Hughes." He writes about the agony of waiting for death and hope in addition to how humans turn catastrophes into art in "Shipwreck." He analyzes sexism, mysticism, WWIII paranoia, and psychosis in "The Survivor." He tells of a story of one man misunderstanding another based on culture and race in "Upstream!" and celebrates as well as criticizes love in "Parenthesis" He shows us the fallibility of religion in "The Wars of Religion" and of heaven itself in "The Dream." He is ever aware of the immense shortcomings in both humanity and history. It is my opinion that he is just as brutal as he is forgiving.
You will learn from this book and you will too investigate deeper thought into human events of the past. It will make you wonder which aspects of history really are true and it will help you re-examine those you thought could be true. He deconstructs history, and myth, and with the greatness of his writing, reminds us of what good there actually is in our species.
Memorable Quotes:
pg. 4 "It wasn't a nature reserve, that Ark of ours; at times it was more like a prison ship."
...
"They were chosen, they endured, they survived: It's normal for them to gloss over the awkward episodes, to have convenient lapses of memory. Bit I am not constrained in that way. I was never chosen. In fact like several other species, I was specifically not chosen. I was a stowaway."
...
"When I recall the Voyage, I feel no sense of obligation, gratitude puts no smear of Vaseline on my lens. My account you can trust."
pg. 6 "We weren't in any way to blame (you don't really believe that story about the serpent, do you? -it was just Adam's black propaganda), and yet the consequences for us were equally severe: every species wiped out except for a single breeding pair, and that couple consigned to the high seas under the charge of an old rogue with a drink problem who was already into his seventh century of life."
...
"Did you imagine that in the vicinity of Noah's palace (Oh, he wasn't poor, that Noah) there dwelt a convenient example of every species on earth? Come, come. No, they were obliged to advertise, and then select the best pair that presented itself. Since they didn't want to cause a iniversal panic, they announced a competition for twosomes-a sort of beauty contest.."
pg. 12 "I don't know how best to break this to you, nut Noah was not a nice man. I realize this idea is embarrassing, since you are all descended from him; still, there it is He was a monster, a puffed-up patriarch who spent half his day grovelling to his God and the other half taking it out on us. He had a gopher-wood stave with which...well, some of the animals carry the stripes to this day. It's amazing what fear can do..."
pg. 16 "Once, in a gale, Ham's wife lost her footing near the rail and was about to go overboard. The unicorn-who had deck privileges as a result of popular lobbying-galloped across and struck his horn through her trailing cloak, pinning it to the desk. Fine thanks he got for his valour; the Noahs had him casseroled one Embarkation Sunday. I can vouch for that. I spoke personally to the carrier hawk who delivered a warm pot to Shem's ark."
pg. 19 "Again-I am reporting what the birds said...And the birds said Noah didn't know what he was doing-he was all bluster and prayer. It wasn't difficult, what he had to do, was it? "
pg. 25 "If you think I am being contentious, it is probably because your species-I hope you don't mind my saying this-is so hopelessly dogmatic. You believe what you want to believe, and you go on believing it. But then, of course, you all have Noah's genes. No doubt this also accounts for the fact that you are often strangely incurious."
pg. 27 "God said...He was creating for us the rainbow. The rainbow! Ha! It's a very pretty thing, to be sure, and the first one he produced for us, an iridescent semi-circle with a paler sibling beside it, the pair of them glittering in an indigo sky, certainly made a lot of us look up from our grazing. You could see the idea behind it: as the rain gave reluctant way to the sun, this flamboyant symbol would remind us each time that the rain wasn't going to carry on and turn into a Flood. But even so. It wasn't much of a deal. And was it legally enforceable? Try getting a rainbow to stand up in court."
pg. 30 "He just couldn't handle the responsibility. He made some bad navigational decisions, he lost four of his eight ships and about a third of the species entrusted to him-he'd have been court-marshalled if there'd been anyone to sit on the bench. And for all his bluster, he felt guilty about losing half the Ark. Guilt. immaturity, the constant struggle to hold down a job beyond your capabilities-it makes a powerful combination, one which would have had the same ruinous effect on most members of your species. You could even argue, I suppose, that God drove Noah to drink."
pg. 83 "But her Dad said you could tell from the antlers that the reindeer pulling the sleigh were stags. At first she only felt disappointed, but later resentment grew. Father Christmas ran an all-male team. Typical. Absolutely bloody typical, she thought."
pg. 103 "The mind just got carried away. Never knew when to stop. But then the mind never does. It's the same with these nightmares"
pg. 104 "Everything was connected, the weapons and the nightmares. That's why they'd had to break the cycle. Start making things simple again. Begin at the beginning. People said you couldn't turn the clock back, but you could. The future was in the past."
pg. 125 "How do you turn catastrophe into art? Nowadays, the process is automatic. A nuclear plant explodes? We'll have it on the London stage within a year. A president is assassinated? You can have the book or the film or the filmed book or the booked film. War? Send in the novelists. A series of gruesome murders? Listen for the tramp of the poets. We have to understand it, of course, this catastrophe; to understand it, we have to imagine it, so we need the imaginative arts. But we also need to justify it and forgive it, this catastrophe, however minimally. Why did it happen, this mad act of Nature, this crazed human moment? Well, at least it produced art. Perhaps, in the end, that's what catastrophe is *for*"
pg. 137 "How hopelessly we signal; how dark the sky, how big the waves. We are all lost at sea, washed between hope and despair, hailing something that may never come to rescue us. Catastrophe has become art; but this is no reducing process. It is freeing, enlarging, explaining. Catastrophe has become art: that is, after all, what it is for."
pg. 134 "There always appear to be two explanations of everything. That is why we have been given free will, in order that we may choose the correct one."
pg. 205 "Also I think cities make people lie to one another."
pg. 226 "It would be comforting if love were an energy source which continued to glow after our deaths. Early television sets, when you turned them off, used to leave a blob of light in the middle of the screen, which slowly diminished from the size of a florin to an expiring speck...Is love meant to glow on like this for a while after the set has been switched off?
pg. 227 "I love you. For a start, we'd better put these words on a high shelf; in a square box behind glass which we have to break with our elbow; in the bank. We shouldn't leave them lying around the house like a tube of Vitamin C...These are grand words; we must make sure we deserve them."
pg. 134 "Perhaps love is essential because it's unnecessary."
pg. 235 "A medical textbook doesn't immediately disenchant us; here the heart is mapped like the London underground. Aorta, left and right pulmonary arteries and veins, left and right subclavian arteries, left and right coronary arteries, left and right carotid arteries...it looks elegant, purposeful, a confident network of pumping tubes. Here the blood runs on time, you think."
pg. 238 "But I can tell you why to love. The history of the world becomes brutally self important without love. Our random mutation is essential because it's unnecessary. Love won't change the history of the world...but it will do something much more important: teach us to stand up to history, to ignore its chin-out strut. I don't accept your terms, love says; sorry, you don't impress, and by the way what a silly uniform you're wearing. "
pg. 239 "How you cuddle in the dark governs how you see the history of the world. It's as simple as that.
We get scared by history we allow ourselves to be bullied by dates."
pg. 304 "And scholarly people, they tend to last as long as anyone. They like sitting around reading all the books there are. And then they love arguing about them. Some of these arguments-she casts an eye to the heavens-go on for millennium after millennium. It just seems to keep them young, for some reason, arguing about books."
mokasin's review against another edition
4.0
Вам не по душе теория эволюции Дарвина? Что-ж, тогда некоторые "недостающие" виды исчезли по более банальной причине - их съели Ной и компания во время Всемирного потопа. Устраивает? Я уж было расслабился для довольно оригинальной формы "восполнения" пробелов в моем историческом образовании :) Но дальше пошли более серьезные вещи...
bobbo49's review
4.0
Like so many books of short stories, Barnes' world contains some absolutely five star winners (hard to beat the first story told by a stowaway on Noah's Ark), but is uneven in places. All of Barnes' writing is terrific, but some of the stories aren't as compelling as the best of them. Still, a very fun read!