Journal Entry 1 by BigEyes from New Haven, Connecticut USA on Monday, June 27, 2005

interesting, contrived but interesting 

Journal Entry 2 by BigEyes at Koffee?, 104 Audubon St. (near Whitney Ave.) in New Haven, Connecticut USA on Monday, June 27, 2005

Released 6 yrs ago (6/27/2005 UTC) at Koffee?, 104 Audubon St. (near Whitney Ave.) in New Haven, Connecticut USA

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

RELEASE NOTES:

 

Journal Entry 3 by editorgrrl from New Haven, Connecticut USA on Tuesday, June 28, 2005

The first book I've found at Koffee?, which is the first place I ever released a book. (Two of my books have been caught there.) I've been a huge Fry & Laurie fan ever since they were on The Young Ones. I read Moab Is My Washpot when it came out, and I have four Stephen Fry books on Mt. TBR (The Hippopotamus, The Liar, Making History, and Paperweight), and one by Ben Elton (Inconceivable). Now if I can just find Neil's Book of the Dead by Nigel Planer and The Gun Seller by Hugh Laurie. (The former is out of print, and I assume the latter's so tough to find because all the House fans want to read it.)

From Publishers Weekly
Fry is a well-known British comic actor (he was the detective in Gosford Park) who has written several comic novels that are sometimes extremely funny, sometimes simply outrageous and over the top. In this, his first attempt at a serious thriller, he begins well, but ends up going over the top again in a different way. His hero, Ned Maddstone, is a delightful young man, gifted but diffident in that special English way, and very much in love. By an extraordinary set of coincidences, a trap set for him by envious schoolmates and a rival in love combines with an explosive secret in the life of a powerful British security official to send Ned off to perdition in a sinister sanatorium on a Baltic island where, forgotten to the world, he is exiled for nearly 20 years while his personality disintegrates. A meeting with another lost soul rebuilds his brain and will to live and inspires an escape; whereupon a very different Ned is loosed upon the world, a man of mystery and infinite wealth whose only aim is to fetch death and disaster on those who brought him down as a youth. Fry achieves some gripping scenes, and Ned, until his ultimate turnaround, remains endearing and believable. After that the novel becomes a highly schematic bloodbath, and some rather glib philosophizing about privacy and the Internet cannot make the final scenes seem other than heavily portentous. Fry is a writer of real talent and ideas, but needs a stern editor to save him from his excesses which on the screen would be called overacting.

From Library Journal
The victim of a schoolboy prank that goes bad and ultimately involves the British Intelligence Service, Ned Maddstone finds himself imprisoned in a private lunatic asylum, where he is kept in a drugged state for ten years before he is allowed contact with anyone else. For the next decade, he falls under the tutelage of a man known only as Babe, an elderly spy who teaches him the ways of the world and aids his escape, setting him up with near-limitless funds. The second half of the novel follows Ned as he wreaks his vengeance on all those involved with his mistaken arrest and imprisonment. This bald description does not do justice to the novel's brilliant execution, diminished only by a protagonist who is not very likable and the absence of true conflict as he carries out his revenge. Still, this is a highly intelligent and well-written story by British actor Fry (The Liar, etc.), the author of three previous comic novels and a memoir. Recommended for all public libraries.

From Booklist
British actor Fry, whose many film roles include the imperturbable Jeeves in the Jeeves and Wooster series and the affable, abashed aristocrat in Peter's Friends, has tossed off three comic novels and one acclaimed memoir, Moab Is My Washpot (1999). Fry's latest venture into fiction is a riff on Dumas' Count of Monte Cristo. Fry transplants the main elements of Dumas' plot--the envious, scheming friend; the letter from a sea captain that destroys the hero's life; the imprisonment in an island fortress; the lessons from an old captive; and the elaborate revenge plan--into contemporary terms, making the hero an Eton graduate on a sailing holiday off the coast of Scotland who comes afoul of Home Office operatives and executes his revenge on his false friend via e-trading. The result is a highly satisfying political thriller whose overt resemblances to Dumas' work underscore the claustrophobic and paranoid chills. 

Journal Entry 4 by editorgrrl from New Haven, Connecticut USA on Sunday, August 28, 2005

Originally published in the U.K. as The Stars' Tennis Balls, this U.S. edition contains a new afterword, Fry's July 29, 2002, "Writers on Writers" column from the New York Times, "Forget Ideas, Mr. Author. What Kind of Pen Do You Use?"

I had a weird sense of deja vu while reading this book, although I'm positive I've never read it or The Count of Monte Crisco. Perhaps I just recognize Fry's voice. In the afterword, Fry reveals that this book is a "literary reworking" or "homage" to The Count of Monte Crisco, which Alexandre Dumas had "lifted" from what was, "in Dumas's day, a kind of urban legend." Characters' names are anagrams of the original. For example, Edmond Dantes, who reinvents himself as Monte Crisco, becomes Ned Maddstone, who reinvents himself as Simon Cotter. Apparently the book is also full of awful puns, few if any of which I got, even though I read the afterword first. 

Journal Entry 5 by editorgrrl from New Haven, Connecticut USA on Sunday, September 04, 2005