catdad77a45's review
4.0
A charming, sui generis little romp, which will appeal to anyone who, like myself is an avid (obsessive?) reader. Since there are already two lengthy reviews of this by my chums Paul & Neil, I will defer to their loquacious & insightful reviews, and just say I enjoyed it immensely.
arirang's review
5.0
For someone who hasn’t even started, where to begin?
...
You could start with the one that someone whose opinions you don’t respect thinks is terrible, or the one someone you do respect says is good, but that’s not a proven method either. For a first date, going for the one with the fewest number of pages might be best.
Of course there’s always the risk that you’ll like it, which is a little scary, because then you’ll want to read the others, and what you’re basically doing here is signing away a percentage of the rest of your life to this writer.
Which is exactly what happened to me with Jack Robinson - and indeed I suspect most who read one of his books will then want to read them all. The good news is that his books are short and he has only written 5, so the % of your life signed away is tiny, and the even better news is that it will be more than worth it.
Jack Robinson is one of a number of pen names of Charles Boyle, who runs the publisher CB Editions, or perhaps one could better describe it as one of his authorial alter egos. In Boyle's words:
And I am very glad he does insist: I have previously read:
[b:An Overcoat: Scenes from the Afterlife of H.B.|35111445|An Overcoat Scenes from the Afterlife of H.B.|Jack Robinson|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1497110718s/35111445.jpg|56424633]- my review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2164055567
[b:Robinson|35400500|Robinson|Jack Robinson|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1497111130s/35400500.jpg|56769853] - my review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2025434003
[b:Recessional|12504416|Recessional|Jack Robinson|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1497110624s/12504416.jpg|17489909] - my review https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2029101003
and
[b:Days and Nights In W12|11481360|Days and Nights In W12|Jack Robinson|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1497110823s/11481360.jpg|6671865] - my review https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2182001538
and this completes my reading, and rather fittingly is a book all about the relationship between a reader and a writer's complete works.
Inspired by a true story when CB Boyle was reunited by a waiter with a book he left in a restaurant, it begins (NB a longer sample can be found here http://www.cbeditions.com/userfiles/file/bysameauthor.pdf )
Someone was running, hard, behind me. Had I paid for the coffee? My mind was a blank. It was the waiter, I decided, and I hadn’t paid. I stopped and turned and he almost knocked me over. Grinning, out of breath, he handed me the book I’d left on the table. Had I read XXX, he asked, by the same author. No, I said, not that one, although in fact I have read it. He seemed a little eager. He was younger than me, in the way that she is older. You should, he said. It’s one of the early ones but it’s still her best.
On the next page we find who 'she' is (fictitious obviously):
T. S. Nyman. She’s a blue writer, I knew that from the opening paragraph of XXX, which was the first Nyman I came across. [...] There are pink writers, obviously, and there are grey writers and brown writers and red writers, even some yellow ones, and most of them can shift around a little on the spectrum but each does have a base colour and Nyman is one of the blues but also a little coy, peeping from behind those initials.
The story is told in 39 single paragraph chapters, with a modal length of half a page, and covering just 43 pages in total.
Eric, the waiter, and the first-person narrator (himself an alter ego of Jack Robinson) are both fans of the T.S. Nyman and the story records their thoughts on her work, particularly XXX. XXX is presented as many things in the novel - not all mutually compatible ("the last thing I’d claim for this book is consistency", admitted Robinson is another of his books). I noted that at different times in the brief story XXX is:
the book the author is about to launch; her first book with a mainstream publisher; her comeback book after a long unexplained hiatus; the one the author subsequently disowned and erased from her oeuvre; her most explicit title but her least explicit text; an as yet unwritten novel, read by a character in another of her books; the book that gives us a glimpse of the book, YYY, that she really wants to write; her one book the narrator couldn’t finish; the one with the cop-out ending; the one with the twist; the one he first read; the one he read at a crucial moment in his life; the one most commonly donated to 2nd hand shops; the one Obama purchased during a photo-op and Cameron announced as his holiday reading; the one made into a movie; the one that was actually ghost-written by someone else.
And we also get their experiences as fans and their personal interactions with her, some of which in Eric's case verge on stalking:
Reader, I married her – Eric getting a little carried away. After XXX he did write to her, care of her publisher. A kind of thank-you letter, he says, very polite. Two or three letters, he adds, when I ask if that was the only one. Not more than half a dozen. He never got a reply. He wasn't expecting one.
We also get brief accounts, again not all mutually compatible and all of which ring horribly true, of:
- the jealousy when your favourite undiscovered author goes mainstream (now she’s got all these new readers, she didn’t need me anymore);
- the anticipated disappointment of seeing your favourite author in person at a book reading (you want them to be both humble and authoritative, fallible and infallible). And the greater actual disappointment when the reading of her book turns out to be done by someone else.
- the awkward wait for the first question at a reading - and the second obtuse one that baffles even the author.
And also thoughts on being what I refer to as a completist, someone who seeks and reads every book by an author. The narrator decides on a compromise of reading every other book, trying to convince himself:
but really, you don’t have to read all of them. You don’t have to read any of them, come to that.
Except where it is Jack Robinson you really have to read them all.
And my advice for what it's worth: start with An Overcoat, and finish with this one. My 5 stars are for 5 magnificent books when read as a whole.
...
You could start with the one that someone whose opinions you don’t respect thinks is terrible, or the one someone you do respect says is good, but that’s not a proven method either. For a first date, going for the one with the fewest number of pages might be best.
Of course there’s always the risk that you’ll like it, which is a little scary, because then you’ll want to read the others, and what you’re basically doing here is signing away a percentage of the rest of your life to this writer.
Which is exactly what happened to me with Jack Robinson - and indeed I suspect most who read one of his books will then want to read them all. The good news is that his books are short and he has only written 5, so the % of your life signed away is tiny, and the even better news is that it will be more than worth it.
Jack Robinson is one of a number of pen names of Charles Boyle, who runs the publisher CB Editions, or perhaps one could better describe it as one of his authorial alter egos. In Boyle's words:
Jack-of-all-trades? Hardly. He’s no poet. He’s not a non-fiction writer because he likes making things up, but nor is he a novelist: he has a short attention span, he lacks stamina, he can’t sustain a plot and he’s not that interested in how characters develop. He writes short books, generally made up of fragments, in which fiction and fact bounce off each other. He likes table tennis, without being much good at it. He’s a bit frivolous, frankly. I don’t think he’s married. He can be forgetful (as I can: I’d forgotten, until the review of by the same author reminded me, that I once described CBe as ‘a small machine for reading aloud to strangers’). He’s not good at joining things up (he can just about do joined-up handwriting). He has a problem with endings. (A review remarks on how many of the paragraphs – ‘It’s hard to describe these sequent pages as “episodes”’ – don’t so much end as simply stop: ‘Robinson’s paragraphs run for as long as their thoughts do, and then stop running’.) He’s stubborn: knowing that he’s not a ‘natural’ novelist/poet/journalist, he still insists on writinghttp://sonofabook.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/on-jack-robinson.html
And I am very glad he does insist: I have previously read:
[b:An Overcoat: Scenes from the Afterlife of H.B.|35111445|An Overcoat Scenes from the Afterlife of H.B.|Jack Robinson|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1497110718s/35111445.jpg|56424633]- my review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2164055567
[b:Robinson|35400500|Robinson|Jack Robinson|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1497111130s/35400500.jpg|56769853] - my review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2025434003
[b:Recessional|12504416|Recessional|Jack Robinson|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1497110624s/12504416.jpg|17489909] - my review https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2029101003
and
[b:Days and Nights In W12|11481360|Days and Nights In W12|Jack Robinson|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1497110823s/11481360.jpg|6671865] - my review https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2182001538
and this completes my reading, and rather fittingly is a book all about the relationship between a reader and a writer's complete works.
Inspired by a true story when CB Boyle was reunited by a waiter with a book he left in a restaurant, it begins (NB a longer sample can be found here http://www.cbeditions.com/userfiles/file/bysameauthor.pdf )
Someone was running, hard, behind me. Had I paid for the coffee? My mind was a blank. It was the waiter, I decided, and I hadn’t paid. I stopped and turned and he almost knocked me over. Grinning, out of breath, he handed me the book I’d left on the table. Had I read XXX, he asked, by the same author. No, I said, not that one, although in fact I have read it. He seemed a little eager. He was younger than me, in the way that she is older. You should, he said. It’s one of the early ones but it’s still her best.
On the next page we find who 'she' is (fictitious obviously):
T. S. Nyman. She’s a blue writer, I knew that from the opening paragraph of XXX, which was the first Nyman I came across. [...] There are pink writers, obviously, and there are grey writers and brown writers and red writers, even some yellow ones, and most of them can shift around a little on the spectrum but each does have a base colour and Nyman is one of the blues but also a little coy, peeping from behind those initials.
The story is told in 39 single paragraph chapters, with a modal length of half a page, and covering just 43 pages in total.
Eric, the waiter, and the first-person narrator (himself an alter ego of Jack Robinson) are both fans of the T.S. Nyman and the story records their thoughts on her work, particularly XXX. XXX is presented as many things in the novel - not all mutually compatible ("the last thing I’d claim for this book is consistency", admitted Robinson is another of his books). I noted that at different times in the brief story XXX is:
the book the author is about to launch; her first book with a mainstream publisher; her comeback book after a long unexplained hiatus; the one the author subsequently disowned and erased from her oeuvre; her most explicit title but her least explicit text; an as yet unwritten novel, read by a character in another of her books; the book that gives us a glimpse of the book, YYY, that she really wants to write; her one book the narrator couldn’t finish; the one with the cop-out ending; the one with the twist; the one he first read; the one he read at a crucial moment in his life; the one most commonly donated to 2nd hand shops; the one Obama purchased during a photo-op and Cameron announced as his holiday reading; the one made into a movie; the one that was actually ghost-written by someone else.
And we also get their experiences as fans and their personal interactions with her, some of which in Eric's case verge on stalking:
Reader, I married her – Eric getting a little carried away. After XXX he did write to her, care of her publisher. A kind of thank-you letter, he says, very polite. Two or three letters, he adds, when I ask if that was the only one. Not more than half a dozen. He never got a reply. He wasn't expecting one.
We also get brief accounts, again not all mutually compatible and all of which ring horribly true, of:
- the jealousy when your favourite undiscovered author goes mainstream (now she’s got all these new readers, she didn’t need me anymore);
- the anticipated disappointment of seeing your favourite author in person at a book reading (you want them to be both humble and authoritative, fallible and infallible). And the greater actual disappointment when the reading of her book turns out to be done by someone else.
- the awkward wait for the first question at a reading - and the second obtuse one that baffles even the author.
And also thoughts on being what I refer to as a completist, someone who seeks and reads every book by an author. The narrator decides on a compromise of reading every other book, trying to convince himself:
but really, you don’t have to read all of them. You don’t have to read any of them, come to that.
Except where it is Jack Robinson you really have to read them all.
And my advice for what it's worth: start with An Overcoat, and finish with this one. My 5 stars are for 5 magnificent books when read as a whole.
More...