Reviews

Ulverton by Adam Thorpe

michael5000's review against another edition

4.0

Ten or so carefully interlocking stories over several centuries of an English village. Difficult going in places, possibly a tiny bit too clever for its own good in others, and one that I think needs at least two reads to fully grasp.

shelfofunread's review

Style wasn't for me. Whilst technically ambitious, I didn't feel that Smith wholly captured the style of the eras that he was conveying. I also found the book too slow in terms of pace and lacking in plot. 

elisatin's review against another edition

adventurous challenging slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

You have to invest some time and effort into reading this, but I think it's worth it! There is lots of historical detail, and you get to see how local myths and legends are passed down through the generations. Each chapter is unique in style and content - so you don't follow the same characters throughout but rather the history of the village over several centuries! 

anonblueberry's review against another edition

This is the first book that I remember not finishing.
Honestly, I've not read such self aggrandising, pretentious twattery in my life (and I had to do a "literary fiction" module full of angsty white middle aged authors projecting onto their characters at uni)

dave_holwill's review against another edition

5.0

There are points in this book where you may not want to carry on, but it really does pay off in the end. Well worth fighting through some of the more rurally voiced chapters.
Excellent document of a disappearing world.

oliviall's review

2.0

2.5 really. Although some of the individual passages were well written, I really didn't enjoy this at all. The sections with local dialect were just too challenging to read for very little return to the reader. I like the premise of the book, with the same place featuring through time from 17oo's until the present day, but found it focused more on the people rather than the place and it didn't engage me or give me a sense of the place through time. It's difficult when the sections are so disparate and rather obscure. My favourite section was near the end, set at the start of WW1. I thought this was very well written. The very last part is impossible to read on the Kindle version but I tried my best. All in all an unsatisfying read.

alldebooks's review

3.0

I have raced through this, very good evocation of voices from different time periods around the location of Ulverton. It reads as 12 distinct short stories rather than a collective novel which I would have personally preferred.

rodillagrande's review against another edition

challenging emotional reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No

luluallison's review against another edition

A lovely, meditative book, moves through time with the slow, undeniable purchase of a river flowing through the land.

zoer03's review against another edition

2.0

Ok so the good things about this novel... I love the sense of the change of time over the centuries in one small village like the changing of the seasons. I love how as you go through the centuries the language in the book changes with each new decade though I found the last part of the book incredibly irritating and just plain batty also I couldn’t actually read the last bit because it was script and I was reading it on kindle it felt like a waste as I had no idea what the ending was like because it was too small. I also found certain ye olde English extremely trying and just annoying as hell. So by the end I just wanted to finish it not caring if I actually read the last few pages. So ok but not great