Download The Amnesiac fb2, epub

by Sam Taylor

ISBN: 0571233538
Author: Sam Taylor
Language: English
Publisher: Faber and Faber; Main edition (March 1, 2007)
Pages: 392
Subcategory: No category
Rating: 4.4
Votes: 966
Size Fb2: 1618 kb
Size ePub: 1382 kb
Size Djvu: 1516 kb
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Sam Taylor English

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FREE shipping on qualifying offers. A gripping literary thriller from an exciting new voice in fiction Hailed as ?one to watch ? by the UK?s Telegraph.

FREE shipping on qualifying offers.

Hailed as ?one to watch ? by the UK's Telegraph, Sam Taylor is one of the most imaginative and innovative young writers at work today. When A gripping literary thriller from an exciting new voice in fiction. Hailed as ?one to watch ? by the UK's Telegraph, Sam Taylor is one of the most imaginative and innovative young writers at work today.

Sam Taylor's The Amnesiac forgets to wear its influences lightly, says Sarah Hughes. Sam Taylor's first novel, The Republic of Trees, was a haunting tale of innocence defiled, let down by a muddled ending. His second, The Amnesiac, is equally haunting, but again less than the sum of its parts. The main problem is Taylor's ability to create believable yet off-kilter worlds. For when the initial premise is so well-executed, it is probably inevitable that the ending cannot quite live up to expectations. When we first meet James Purdew, he is living in Amsterdam with his Dutch girlfriend, but his superficial enjoyment of life masks a darker tale.

Sam Taylor has taken us on an open house tour of a basement or two in our minds. No wonder I feel uneasy about this story. But I strongly recommend that you take the tour by reading The Amnesiac and find out for yourself. Jason Rice: When this book first got started I was thrilled with James (even though he was just a lazy do nothing), he was a wounded hero who couldn’t make his life work the way it was supposed to. But how was it supposed to work?

by. Taylor, Sam, 1970-.

by. Books for People with Print Disabilities. Internet Archive Books.

Sam Taylor was born in 1970 and is the former pop culture correspondent for the Observer. He lives in France with his young family. Библиографические данные.

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Hailed as ?one to watch ? by the UK?s Telegraph, Sam Taylor is one of the most imaginative and innovative young writers at work today

A gripping literary thriller from an exciting new voice in fiction Hailed as ?one to watch ? by the UK?s Telegraph, Sam. Hailed as ?one to watch ? by the UK?s Telegraph, Sam Taylor is one of the most imaginative and innovative young writers at work today. When James Purdew returns to England from his home in Amsterdam, it is to discover what happened during three earlier years of his life that he cannot recall.

The Amnesiac (Paperback). Please provide me with your latest book news, views and details of Waterstones’ special offers. A journey into a mysterious world of fiction and reality, The Amnesiac is a compelling novel by one of Britain's most innovative young storytellers.

A gripping literary thriller from an exciting new voice in fiction Hailed as ?one to watch ? by the UK's "Telegraph," Sam Taylor is one of the most imaginative and innovative young writers at work today.

James Purdew is quietly obsessed with his own past - in particular three years of his life, about which he remembers nothing. So he travels back to the city of H, where he lived during those years, and finds a familiar house, now derelict. Stripping the wallpaper from one of the rooms, James discovers the first chapter of Confessions of a Killer, a 19th-century thriller, which seems to offer clues to a tragedy that took place in the house many years before, and one which James feel inexorably linked to . . .

A journey into a mysterious world of fiction and reality, The Amnesiac is a compelling novel by one of Britain's most innovative young storytellers.

Comments:

Dolid

The Amnesiac is a strange book. I bought it following a recommendation on VSL, that called the book "unputdownable". Well, it took me a few days to get through it, so I wouldn't define it quite as such. But it is an intriguing book, as one would expect from a book about amnesia.

James Purdew is a 30-year-old Briton that leads a more or less contented, easy-going life in Amsterdam with his girlfriend, Ingrid. A leg injury has him confined to the apartment for a while, which gets him thinking about life in general and his in particular (lesson for life: do not think too much!) He gradually realises he has this blank about three years in his past, and when he checks his diaries he finds out those relating to that period are locked in a box to which he has conveniently lost the key. As his relationship with Ingrid hits a dead-end anyway, he decides to head back to England to retrace his past.

So far so good, and up until this part the book was indeed "unputdownable". A great start. But this is where things get more complicated. James starts his detective work by going back to the house he lived in during his university days. The plot goes back and forth in time and various clues come together, pieces of the past. James starts feeling this is all part of a bigger picture that keeps eluding him. He also gets the feeling he is being manipulated by greater forces.

The story is hard to follow, not only because of the obvious "holes" of James' missing past, but also because of the writing style. Narration switches between James and a mysterious narrator, that claims at times to be in the same room as James. Excerpts of other works are inserted alongside the main story. There are several characters, in different times, whose names or initials are similar. Taylor also switches between genres: science fiction, mystery and drama. This is partly why this book is slow to read; the reader is curious to find out what is going on, but the style is such that it slows down the reading pace.

The end is rather disappointing, as one suspects what happened quite early on in the story. Nevertheless, this is a book I would recommend and certainly a great debut book for Sam Taylor.

PS - I was reminded of the movie Memento while reading this book (note to self: must watch that movie again).

Hucama

This text has a terrific degree of depth. You can see the influence of Kafka, Borges, and Marquez.

This novel addresses the question of identity. Anyone with a philosophy background will quickly identify questions from Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and more contemporary icons of psychoanalysis like Freud and Lacan.

I met Sam Taylor and he, just like this novel and his character, has a terrific amount of humility about the questions being pursued. He isn't trying to give you answers, he's trying to help you ask questions.

Kazijora

I finished reading the Amnesiac last week, and I'm left with two abiding images. The Magus and 2001: A Space Odyssey. After the first 50 pages I knew the book was reminding me of something, when I realized it was John Fowles' work. I went to the (very helpful) influences section at the back, but no Fowles. However, Nicholas Urfe, the anti-hero of that book is mentioned. Unlike the Magus, the rest of the book does not rise above the 50 pages, but rather meanders and then resolves itself in a rather annoying way. The painting of everything white reminded me of the final scenes from Stanley Kubrick's film, only this time the resolution was a little more obvious. Now that I'm writing this, I realize that the story within a story has a hint of French Lieutenant's Woman about it. Just a thought.

So my overall view was interesting rather than entertaining, derivative, but a good effort. I will read his next book, but not this one again.

JoJosho

OK, it's not really a spoiler alert, but after a great build-up in this novel, I was disappointed with how it ended. The premise is a great one, and I think of this book a lot, but the ending made very little sense..

Wilalmaine

Good condition and amazing read. Thank you

Darksinger

I liked this novel but it was slow at times, at least for me. It's certainly not a book to speed read through.

elektron

I read this book in a long coast-to-coast plane flight. Thank goodness I had the time. I would NOT have wanted to be interrupted and read this book a bit at a time.

I did find it a page turner and not slow at all. One clue to what is going on in this book is that he starts with a quote by Jorge Luis Borges and follows it with a quote from Phillip Larkin. This pretty much gives you the tone of the book.

Labyrinths play an important role in this story. By sheer coincidence (or not???) I have been reading Borges' Labyrinths a story at a time. I had in fact just finished reading Funes the Memorious the night before I started this. That story plays a role in the book. If you've read Labyrinths, you will feel right at home in this book. I confess I am unfamiliar with Larkin but I suspect that a familiarity with his work would also increase your pleasure in what Taylor has done here. According to the book they are each other's opposites. One might argue that one is the hope and the other the fear although which author you assign to which emotion depends largely on your outlook in life.

I am so ever delighted that I found this book and the way it blends the mundane with the dreamy. I have a long TBR so I am actively resisting the urge to spend the weekend rereading this book to see how it looks differently to me this time. I suspect I would get even more out of it.