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Sep 2014
3:26pm, 29 Sep 2014
3,121 posts
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Lalli
Oh and I gave it a 9. I am clearly easily pleased! 
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Sep 2014
3:32pm, 29 Sep 2014
5,227 posts
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Columba
I hated the list.
HATED it.
Back in the late '50s, when John Osborne and Arnold Wesker were writing "Angry Young Men" books, someone dismissed them as "postmen, - they deliver messages". I'm not at all sure that books should primarily deliver messages. As someone has already said, that makes them into self-help books.
I don't know Cambridge, so didn't identify the mistakes but the fact that he made mistakes about Cambridge doesn't surprise me in the least, as I found dozens of other mistakes, and so easy to check up on and correct. E.g. he describes eyebrows as pointless, - as any runner could tell him, they do indeed have a point, to deflect sweat away from the eyes, and surely if he's so clever he would have seen this? The Vonnadorians don't like music - fails to recognise the close links between music and maths - both from a rhythm point of view and pitch (halve the length of the string and you get a note an ocatave higher) - surely they would have loved music. Gulliver hasn't been going to school, - yet neither his teachers nor the Attendance Officer seem to be aware of this - in my experience school attendance is checked-up on very closely. Catholicism - "a type of Christianity for humans who like gold leaf, Latin and guilt" - no idea where the gold leaf comes into this, but Latin Masses have been extremely few and far between since the late 1960s - and Catholic guilt is just a tired old cliche. Any practising Catholic could have told him, he had only to ask.
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Sep 2014
3:53pm, 29 Sep 2014
14,956 posts
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fetcheveryone
I liked the way that he described the intelligence of humans and dogs, on a universal scale, as being somewhere close to the middle (or maybe fairly close together - I forget).
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Sep 2014
4:25pm, 29 Sep 2014
3,122 posts
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Lalli
My next door neighbour is a staunch Catholic, Columba and tells me she suffers from good old Catholic guilt when I suggest she finishes work early, or takes a day off!
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Sep 2014
4:47pm, 29 Sep 2014
4,434 posts
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Carpathius
I quite liked the list, but it was the basic logical errors that stopped me really enjoying it. However, by the time I got about two-thirds of the way through I was enjoying it and wanting to see what happened and I was also rooting for Alien Andrew Martin to stay with the wife and Gulliver because I'm sentimental like that
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Sep 2014
4:57pm, 29 Sep 2014
12,300 posts
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Yorkshire Pie
I wasn’t a big fan. I finished it because it was easy reading once you got going with it but not because I was gripped.
The language/style grated on me at the start. Simplistic and devoid of emotion. I managed to cope with it a bit better once I realised that it was a deliberate stylistic choice rather than the author being crap at writing and it helped that as the alien became more human his language became more sophisticated too.
Once I’d got over the language point, the plot started to frustrate me. There were a couple of points where it was too obvious what was going to happen next (sending another alien, for example) and one point about 75% in where I started running through possible endings. I also didn't find the reactions of the wife/son believable.
I didn’t like the list. It felt a bit too self help or like all the crap you see on facebook.
I also didn’t like the fact that his observations on “humans” were little wider than observations on a relatively privileged section of English society. This ties back to some of the errors pointed out early on – e.g. the one about the human alphabet having 26 letters. The life of Cambridge academics does not give a representative sample of humans in England let alone worldwide.
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Sep 2014
5:05pm, 29 Sep 2014
9,988 posts
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Oysterboy
I didn't like the list either, I thought it was really cliché.
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Sep 2014
7:20pm, 29 Sep 2014
7,461 posts
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Diogenes
That's a good point about the language being a stylistic choice, but it still grated with me. As was said, it reads like a self-help primer.
What did people think about the Maggie character? To me she was the only dislikeable character in the book (excluding the violent boyfriend and the real Andrew Martin, who only exists in absentia), but maybe I am judging her based on my own prejudices about how people should behave.
To me her role in the story was to demonstrate the difference between love and sex, and to show another character flaw of the true Andrew Martin. (Could the woman the Richard character said he lived with be another of his infidelities?) I guess.she could be viewed as a free spirit, a liberated woman not constrained by the mores of society. I just didn't like her. I bet her flat stank.
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Sep 2014
7:28pm, 29 Sep 2014
4,801 posts
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Autumnleaves
I didn't like her much (probably for similar reasons), I wasn't entirely convinced by her as the real Andrew Martin seemed so unattractive!!
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Sep 2014
7:36pm, 29 Sep 2014
7,381 posts
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Bazoaxe
I found the book really hard to like.
There did seem to be a good concept and parts of it worked - the alien learning a new concept and the dog knowing things were not right as examples
However too much was left unsaid, no one seemed to miss the dead guy, Gullivers turn around from hating to liking was kinda weird, some of the stuff that happened just didnt add up (did you see what I did there ?)
Just when I thought the book was getting better the list came along and I ended up skipping that.
I wouldnt rush out to buy another of his books
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