bradleythebuyer

My Mum bought this for me when I was 15 and I've just started reading it to my three-year old son who adores is. The story contains mystique and intrigue, baffles as much as it enlightens but ultimately, it makes you feel incredible. The artwork is intricate, full of character and a joy to examine in detail. highly recommend to anyone looking for a children's story that break away from the traditional mould.

Can't believe no-one has commented on this book. Always seems inextricably linked to Michael Chabon's 'The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay' and while they share similar thematic ground (magic, life, er, that's about it) and a similar scope (wide-angle lens at life and history) they are very different books.

Glen David Gold manipulates you like the greatest of all magicians, twisting and turning his great showpiece and performing audacious sleights of plotting. The story has much humour and humanity and is both touching and thrilling at the same time. Unlike Kavalier & Clay the historical references seem to be decorative rather than an intrinsic part of the plot (with the exclusion of the TV element) but that does not get in the way of an excellent and highly compulsive read.

I was puzzled to see this book mentioned in the recent news story about 'unfinishable' books alongside Ulysses and Crime & Punishment. I would hardly describe it as heavy or particularly 'literary' and, despite the structural jiggery-pokery, it is a very accessible and readable novel.

It is basically a series of mildly interconnected stories which span centuries and countries but all of which have running themes; imprisonment, injustice, etc. I say mildly interconnected only because the outcome of one doesn't really rely on any of the others and in many ways, they could function as a set of straightforward short stories. However, the structural twist does keep you engaged.

Some of the 'invented' language could put people off (I guess that's why it made it into that article but I mean come on, have these people never read William Burroughs or Clockwork Orange?) but once you wrap your head around it, it is the simple power of David Mitchell's storytelling which drives you through. Recommended.

This is a staggering book, by far one of my favourites, which brought me to my knees as I read it. I would say it provides an almost definitive account of the Vietnam War in that it reflects that which the war meant on an almost conceptual, rather than an historical or even social, level. With this book Michael Herr wrote the language of the Vietnam War and defined the cultural vocabulary with which it would become discussed and analysed over the years, particularly in films such as Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket (with which Herr had some involvement). It is the awful combustion of the sacred and the profane, and Herr's almost psychedelic manipulations of language, which make you not just understand what it was like to be there, but what the Vietnam War was to all those people it sucked in and spat out.

I have an autstic son. There is nothing in this book I recognise. The emotionless maths-addict is as big a cliche as Rainman, in fact it is worse.

Always thought this was overrated. It rubs me up the wrong way because it really seems to make out that those middle class island hoppers who leave piles of litter on Thai beaches are somehow the cultural superiors of those who stay at home. Tesseract was far, far better in my opinion.