A Fool's Alphabet (1995)

Book Info

Author

Sebastian Faulks

Genre

Fiction

Rating

3.23 of 5 Votes: 1

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ISBN

0517138247 (ISBN13: 9780517138243)

Language

English

Publisher

random house value publishing

Shops

Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble

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About book A Fool's Alphabet (1995)

Sebastian Faulks could write about just about anything and make it artistic and meaningful. That being said, A Fool's Alphabet was quite a difficult for me to read. The constant chronological and geographic shifting isn't the problem as some would have you believe, it's more the fact that ostensibly this novel seems to be more about Faulks exercising the aforementioned literary flair than probing away at a telling theme. There are of course messages and themes in the narrative but a lot of the time these seem very subtle and until writing this review I took more pleasure in the actual writing than thinking deeply about the book. A case in point was the fantastic passage Faulks devotes to a literal interpretation of how place names look and feel: this was sublimely written but the broader theme of how people connect with places was much harder to get at and requires a lot of proactive thinking by the reader (although who's to say that's not a requisite for fully appreciating all great novels). I shall definitely be re-reading this in a couple of years as I feel that digesting it a second time may yield a much more satisfying result in terms of the overall rounding of the main character and themes. Challenging but subtly masterful.

The non-chronological telling of the tale makes this a harder book to read than usual: recalling detail is easier when events are simply linear.Nevertheless it is another piece of perceptive and sensitive writing by Faulks. Occasionally it appears to falter and seems to lack tightness in the direction the story is going, but it mirrors life, and basically that dictates the structure and the technique.An unusual format, but an engaging study of life as she is lived: arbitrarily, uncertainly, in spurts, with love, alone, and to what end?

Do You like book A Fool's Alphabet (1995)?

Sebastian Faulks's 3rd novel from 1992 clearly exhibits his early promise as a storyteller; a promise now fully-developed into his present literary control & narrative drive in the likes of 'Charlotte Gray' 'Birdsong', & 'Engleby'. In this novel,Faulks exploits a new device(to me!)of a story divided-up (& mixed together!) by location & chronolgy,of a 'bildungsroman' of Anglo-Italian,Pietro Russell.It reads very well,despite the arch literary device,jumping around from America to Italy to a very subdued but familiar England.I was fully absorbed by the trials & tribulations of Pietro,& was impressed by the power of numerous passages throughout the novel.Recommended to Faulks' admirers everywhere!
—Andrew