[.ca] Timoleon Vieta Come Home (ISBN 1841954225)

a perfect dark comedy:
Dan Rhodes has written a hugely entertaining send-up of the "sentimental tale" -- swift, picaresque, brutal and unsparing of contemporary pieties. I read it in a single Sunday afternoon, howling with laughter right up to the end when I pitched the book across the room, knowing I'd that I'd played directly into the author's hands in spite of myself. If you're the type of reader who chortles at Edward Gorey's "Gashlycrumb Tinies," this is your kind of book. (...)Maybe the book needs an Amazon warning: Readers with no taste for irony should skip this book and click directly to "Lassie Come-Home."

We need saving from this book.:
It takes something special for me to write a review of something. Something like a magnificent game or a gripping, yet funny, book. Maybe an excellent album could do it, too. Or, something has to be bad. Not just put-back-on-the-shelf bad, but makes-you-want-to-do-something bad. This book is that bad. This book should be avoided at all costs. Hell, avoid it if it's free; your spare time would be best spent watching pigeons pick the lumpy bits out of steaming dog turds as the flies flit above in a dance that can only end with their face in faeces. We need saving from this book. It starts off rather boringly and gets worse. The lead character (lead human, I should say. There's a dog you're supposed to like too. You'd better like this dog because he takes over later) is an aging Englishman who lives in rural italy with his dog, the titular Timoleon Wossname, in the hope that young boys come to visit, paying the rent by fellating him. Charming. Then the bullet-scarred Bosnian comes into his life and soon enough, he comes into the Bosnian's mouth in return for board. Said "I like girls but there's rent to be paid" Bosnian dislikes aforementioned mongrel and makes old man choose between DIY, fellatio at 7pm every wednesday and human company, and The Mutt. If I were in that position, I'd choose the dog as at least you retain a shred of dignity that way. Obviously, that would not allow us to segway (sic) into charming tales remotely related to the fugly dog. Yes, that's right, the author, and I use that term loosely, can't stick the pace and drops out of the story and decides to write vignettes on Italian life, as seen by people the dog stumbles near. What happens next? I have no idea as I couldn't stomach this book any more. I hear from other reviewers that the dog dies quite horribly at the end, but I wouldn't know as I have better things to do with my life. Forgive me for not caring. So, instead of discussing the book any more, I will deal with the comments on the back that made me take this book off the bookshelf and pack in my bag for my Metro ride to work. I shall be heaping scorn on the perpetrators of these outright lies in my own time later. 1: "Is there a more innovative blah blah Britain today?" I hope to $DEITY that there is. 2: "The Best New Writer In Britain." Look, I capitalised every word in hope to emphasise that phrase. Does that make it correct? No, Mr. Guardian Newspaper, it doesn't. You are wrong, he is ... not good. 3: "The Beauty of his writing is persuasive and his themes are universal." Thank you, Mr. Times. Persuasive? Maybe to a suicide needing pushed over the edge to thrust his body that extra inch so the weight shifts to the point he cannot stop his fall and eventual death off the window ledge. Universal? No. I could go on saying how I bear no resemblance to the lead character, but seeing as he's a dog, I'd hope that were true. I like cats, see. Next time I see a book about a dog, I will trust my gut and not pick it up.

The worst book I've read this year:
This book was recommended to me as a funny book, but there isn't one funny sentence in it. The writing is mediocre at best. The characters are cliches, and the main character especially is drawn in incredibly homophobic terms. The plot is lame and the ending disgusting. Just terrible.

Bitter disappointment:
I love books and am guilty of reading many of them because they were recommended by friends or by book reviewers. This one was recommended in a book review, and I wish I'd skipped both. The stories of the individuals with whom Timoleon, the titular subject, crosses paths, are sympathetically described, but there is not enough about them or their futures to be satisfying. And Timoleon's fate is just too heartbreaking for an animal lover. Skip this book if you are at all tender-hearted.

A disappointment:
First, I should say that I love Rhodes' first book, Anthropology. (I haven't read Don't Tell Me the Truth about Love yet.) I picked up Timoleon Vieta the other day at a second-hand shop and was very excited to read it, but I'm afraid I was disappointed by it. Far too often, and especially in the second half, I found myself saying, "This is nice. So what?" I kept wanting the stories of the various people Timoleon Vieta met to add up, but they didn't. They overlap, certainly; as another reviewer observed they all share the thread of thwarted hope. But it all seems weirdly flat. Anthropology was more obviously about one thing (romantic relationships) yet Rhodes' treatment of it was much more nuanced and complicated than his treatment of hope is here. Part of the problem, I think, is an apparent lack of clarity about what the novel wants to be. If it had been character sketches all the way through, not just the second half, I might be more inclined to see them as building toward something. The first half ends just as the relationship between Cockroft and the Bosnian is getting interesting, too. I kept waiting for Rhodes to get back to them, but he only glanced back at them during the second half. This was particularly frustrating coming from Anthropology, which is so tightly constructed and fatlessly written. Timoleon Vieta feels uncertain of its form and consequently, I think, whatever thematic overtones it tries to generate are muffled. I like Rhodes, but I feel like he got off track here. I hope this doesn't end up being his last book.