Alice Thomas EllisRezensionen

An actual usable cookbook by novelist/essayist Caroline Blackwood (wife of poet Robert Lowell) & Anna Haycraft (writer Alice Thomas Ellis) - amusing for its quotations and contributions from restauranteurs and famous authors from Barbara Cartland to Quentin Crisp.

The blurb describes this as a 'wickedly dark comedy' which examines the lives of oddball outsiders. When I finished the book, I thought "What was that?". I didn't find anything comedic (dark or otherwise) in this novel (or more realistically, novella) The only relatable character was the cat!

I give this book 5 stars not because it is Literature with a capital L but because it succeeds in being a work of comic genius. From the very first page we are made acquainted with a cast of eccentric characters who have been antagonizing each other in small ways for years. If you like Muriel Spark you will like this, which is equally roughly told, but with more whimsy. The ending is disappointing, yes, but not ruiniously so. This is a book that can be read in one sitting, and once you get started you will have very little reason to stop reading. Delightfuly wicked!

add tags once home - do not remember which other titles were in trilogy

check my copy when home - is setting England or Wales ?
think I bought this from Common Reader

Lori has this her library ...

change cover ?

Lori has this in her library at ... time to read again

C’est avec le souvenir en tête de la sublime trilogie du jardin d’hiver (Les habits neufs de Margaret, Les ivresses de madame Monro et Les égarements de Lili) que je me suis lancé dans ces oiseaux du ciel.

Certes, la satire sociale des familles anglaises est délicieuse et l’humour grinçant bien présent. Pour autant, j’ai trouvé que ce petit livre manquait un peu de tonus et peinait à conclure, malgré l’annonce du désastre annoncé

A mixed-race postulant is sent to stay with her Mother Superior's sister, ostensibly to test her vocation.

Although there are flashes of humour throughout, it wasn't as funny as the first chapter led me to think it would be. The ending was very strange and inconclusive.

For the first twenty pages I didn't much like this book. I found the writing a shade too pretentious even for me, and the metaphor of the birds (I mean, come on - the dead son was called Robin...) a bit too trite. But I gave it some time, and before I knew it I was on the way to reading the whole short book in a single sitting. Ellis's writing began to grow on me - her similes became more telling and more precise, and her characters more fleshed-out. I was actually a little sad that it all ended when it did - I would have been grateful for another twenty or thirty pages, but that would have meant ending the book with some kind of reconciliation - and that would have been antithetical to Ellis's point.½

A reading friend once told be this was his favorite book in the entire world, so I bought a copy— in 2005. Tried to read it before he came for a visit, but it wasn’t the right book for the time. Picked it up this weekend, and not only am I enjoying it, but I found a little prezzie from a previous reader, to a performance I went to, but in the balcony! Still makes a good bookmark. #books #bookstory #reading #readingtreasures #foundinabook #unexplainedlaughter #favoritebooks #alicethomasellis #bookcrossing #usedbooks #ticket #spoletofestival #1990 #marthagraham #marthagrahamdancecompany #gaillardauditorium #thatsalotofhashtags

As someone else stated, when I finished the book I thought "What was that?" The term "stream of consciousness" kept popping into my head as I read. Entertaining, but for me, not memorable.

I didn't think I had read this before, but I'm no longer sure. Maybe I just recognised the unlikeable characters and their contempt for those around them from other books by Alice Thomas Eliis.½

A re-read. Fittingly, on Christmas eve. Some comments from a second read:

1. Some books take you differently as a (as you imagine) stable, rooted, but childless bulwark of society, than as a father. Soldier of the Great War is one such. This is another.
2. I tend to idolize the bourgeois virtues. Ellis' provides an astringent corrective. There is no law but Gods law. No virtues but his.

I'm not sure where I heard about this book or its author but I'm glad they both came to my attention. A great book told just like I like it; three characters all telling us their own version of the story. A bit slow to start, but well worth persevering until the end.

A beautiful, if melancholy, illustrated guide to the Wales of the author's childhood.

Ms Blackwood was the muse to many artists Lucian Freud, Israel Citkowitz, Robert Lowell. Anna Haycraft aka Alice Thomas Ellis. Ze aka Zelide Cowan irresistible illustrations.

Recommended by Nancy Pearl. Monica's version off the events was the most interesting but overall, I was disappointed

As you'll imagine, it was the wonderful title that drew me to this book. The novel itself isn't, to be honest, quite as wonderful, but it's by no means a poor thing: I did like it, but it was a bit of a let-down after the title!

Eric, an Englishman who's bought a cottage hotel on a remote Hebridean island in the hopes that the isolation will stop his wife from sleeping around, places an ad in the English papers suggesting his hostelry as the ideal place for an Escape Christmas holiday. Five disparate people seize on the idea, and travel separately to spend a few days in seclusion among the islanders . . . and, it seems, the selkies; the islander called Finlay and his unnamed sister-in-law seem to be beyond even selkiedom, to be archetypal beings of some unidentified kind. What follows is really a comedy -- or tragicomedy -- of manners with supernatural overtones: I grinned a lot, laughed aloud a couple of times. The narrative technique is interesting too: an almost aggressive use of multiple viewpoints which is quite unsettling (in a good sense). All in all, a well spent few hours.

I read this in one long gulp overnight. A somewhat lighter, more casual Ellis. Excellent as always and notable for the (very funny) novel-within-a-novel "A Grope in the Heather"

Another magnificent accomplishment by Ellis. As always, she paints with a subtle hand, and with tiny details illuminates alienation, darkness, redemption.½

Spoiler Alert! The title alone was enough to make me want to read this book. It was rewarding and annoying and humorous by turns.
I only wish she'd have wrapped up a few of those loose ends...what happens to Valentine, Kyril, Mrs. Mason, and why did Mr. Sorocco have to kill himself, and what did the feathers in his room signify, and why did the apple wither.

The afterword (written by Thomas Meagher, whoever that might be) of my Common Reader edition (Akadine Press) of The sin eater is lyrical about the novel and its author, Alice Thomas Ellis, a kind of enthusiasm I do not share.

Many books have been written by British authors, Welsh, English and Scottish, about groups of characters convening in a countryside cottage or house for whatever resolution, and then go their own ways. Any particular wit (I did not notice), any outstanding dialogue or conversation (must have escaped my attention), any brilliancy otherwise, I could not detect.

Apparently, The sin eater which came out in 1977, is Alice Thomas Ellis' debut novel (the author of the afterword describes how he retrieved a copy from an antiquairian book shop), but her style is reminiscent of the 1930s or 1940s. What makes the novel somewhat unusual, perhaps, at least within the realm of British fiction, is its sense of Christian background, often absent from other English literature.

There wasn't anything that attracted me to this novel.

Behaving badly made Lydia feel better. She hoped she wasn't turning into one of those maniacs who murder people in order to establish their superiority over their fellows who say Please and Thank you and conform to the basic customs of society. She thought it unlikely. Murder seemed to her too intimate, too similar to giving birth. She thought she would never care enough about anyone to give birth to them or to kill them.

This is the third or fourth of Alice Thomas Ellis's offbeat and quirky novels that I have read and it's the second time I have read "Unexplained Laughter". It's a short but very enjoyable book, with an unforgettable heroine in the witty and amusing Lydia.

Freelance journalist Lydia, who has just broken up with her cheating boyfriend, goes to stay at her cottage in the Welsh countryside for a few weeks, and her friend (well, sort of friend) Betty goes along to keep her company. Since she has never liked Betty very much, and resents being stuck with her, Lydia makes an effort for the first time to get to know some of her neighbours.

All the way through the book, I was wondering when it was set, and how old Lydia and Betty are. The other characters describe them as girls, which would imply that they are in their twenties, but they speak and act as if they are older than that. When the BBC did a version of it in the late eighties they cast 50-year-old Diana Rigg as Lydia, but I can't believe that Lydia is meant to be anything like that old. The book was published in the mid-eighties, but the names Lydia and Betty just aren’t right for that date. Elizabeths would have nearly all shortened their name to Liz or Lizzy, possibly Beth, but definitely not Betty, which was really old-fashioned by then. So maybe it is set earlier - Lydia's comments about class would fit with an earlier date, too.½