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No Telling by Adam Thorpe
No
- GenresFiction
Paperback
First published May 6, 2004
3 people are currently reading
28 people want to read
About the author
Adam Thorpe
51 books54 followersAdam Thorpe is a British poet, novelist, and playwright whose works also include short stories and radio dramas.
Adam Thorpe was born in Paris and grew up in India, Cameroon, and England. Graduating from Magdalen College, Oxford in 1979, he founded a touring theatre company, then settled in London to teach drama and English literature.
His first collection of poetry, Mornings in the Baltic (1988), was shortlisted for the Whitbread Poetry Award. His first novel, Ulverton (1992), an episodic work covering 350 years of English rural history, won great critical acclaim worldwide, including that of novelist John Fowles, who reviewed it in The Guardian, calling it "(...) the most interesting first novel I have read these last years". The novel was awarded the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize for 1992.
Adam Thorpe lives in France with his wife and three children.
-Wikipedia
Adam Thorpe was born in Paris and grew up in India, Cameroon, and England. Graduating from Magdalen College, Oxford in 1979, he founded a touring theatre company, then settled in London to teach drama and English literature.
His first collection of poetry, Mornings in the Baltic (1988), was shortlisted for the Whitbread Poetry Award. His first novel, Ulverton (1992), an episodic work covering 350 years of English rural history, won great critical acclaim worldwide, including that of novelist John Fowles, who reviewed it in The Guardian, calling it "(...) the most interesting first novel I have read these last years". The novel was awarded the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize for 1992.
Adam Thorpe lives in France with his wife and three children.
-Wikipedia
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 5, 2017
Really enjoyed this coming-of-age novel written from the point of view of a 12 year old in Paris 1968. And yes, the events of May figure largely in the story.
November 18, 2023
Adam Thorpe, a fine francophone English writer & poet, in his 2003 novel, endeavours over 500+ pages to relate, elucidate & analyse the trials & tribulations of a gentle-souled, young 'Parisian' Catholic boy, growing up in undeveloped Bagneux, just five miles from the shadows of the Eiffel Tower.
Gilles Gobain, although fictional, is a contemporary of mine, born just ten months later than me, on the other side of the Channel.(I hope he is still alive & kicking!).
As he closes in on his religious confirmation ordeal in 1968, France is flaring-up to yet another revolution of rival political cadres (who hijack the idealist students of Paris as 'useful idiots'...a trope that always returns eh?!). Not a great time to be exposed to a wider, wilder world!
Gilles leads the reader through a minefield of personal tragedies & torments - from the unexplained deaths of his father, Henri, & later, his sister, Natalie, a few years his elder. His remaining older sister, Carole, descends, after her own catastrophic behaviour, into a mental quagmire of twisted emotions & feelings which effects his mother, Danielle, struggling to cope with her husband, Alain, Gilles's uncle-cum-stepfather, whose business as an industrial vacuum cleaner salesman begins to fail in the new age of progress of the post-war era, having suffered his own privations in an occupied France of the 1940-44 debacle.
To add to Gilles's miseries, a new baby arrives - of uncertain parentage...is Nicolas a brother or a nephew?...& what is his sad affliction?
The past & its aftermath almost sucks up the senstitive boy into its inner workings as he comes of age as a rather awkward teenager, soon fascinated by his first 'romantic' feelings for a distant cousin, Joceline, whose bourgeois, Parisian lifestyle trumps his own more humble, suburban origins. But Gilles establishes some degree of control over his private reactions to the ever-changing circumstances of his complex family life by his sheer, developing persistence & growing resolve to survive.
By the end of this very personal story, Gilles has been through all kinds of challenges to his individuality, even as his life becomes more focused on his own ideas, & he emerges as a youth with artistic pretensions...becoming a mime-artist, motivated, no doubt, by his acute observations of the human souls lurking in us all. No dumb-show this then...Adam Thorpe sees behind the facades that we all exhibit in public, even as the private worlds are hidden behind them.
'No Telling', the perfect title for this very good read, is not for the faint-hearted who prefer a 'rinse & repeat' tale of shorter span & shallower content...as so many novels are these days...of short attention spans & superficial realities.
I recommend Thorpe's other great novel 'Ulverton' & his non-fiction surmise called 'On Silbury Hill', both considering how the distant past never quite disappears.
Gilles Gobain, although fictional, is a contemporary of mine, born just ten months later than me, on the other side of the Channel.(I hope he is still alive & kicking!).
As he closes in on his religious confirmation ordeal in 1968, France is flaring-up to yet another revolution of rival political cadres (who hijack the idealist students of Paris as 'useful idiots'...a trope that always returns eh?!). Not a great time to be exposed to a wider, wilder world!
Gilles leads the reader through a minefield of personal tragedies & torments - from the unexplained deaths of his father, Henri, & later, his sister, Natalie, a few years his elder. His remaining older sister, Carole, descends, after her own catastrophic behaviour, into a mental quagmire of twisted emotions & feelings which effects his mother, Danielle, struggling to cope with her husband, Alain, Gilles's uncle-cum-stepfather, whose business as an industrial vacuum cleaner salesman begins to fail in the new age of progress of the post-war era, having suffered his own privations in an occupied France of the 1940-44 debacle.
To add to Gilles's miseries, a new baby arrives - of uncertain parentage...is Nicolas a brother or a nephew?...& what is his sad affliction?
The past & its aftermath almost sucks up the senstitive boy into its inner workings as he comes of age as a rather awkward teenager, soon fascinated by his first 'romantic' feelings for a distant cousin, Joceline, whose bourgeois, Parisian lifestyle trumps his own more humble, suburban origins. But Gilles establishes some degree of control over his private reactions to the ever-changing circumstances of his complex family life by his sheer, developing persistence & growing resolve to survive.
By the end of this very personal story, Gilles has been through all kinds of challenges to his individuality, even as his life becomes more focused on his own ideas, & he emerges as a youth with artistic pretensions...becoming a mime-artist, motivated, no doubt, by his acute observations of the human souls lurking in us all. No dumb-show this then...Adam Thorpe sees behind the facades that we all exhibit in public, even as the private worlds are hidden behind them.
'No Telling', the perfect title for this very good read, is not for the faint-hearted who prefer a 'rinse & repeat' tale of shorter span & shallower content...as so many novels are these days...of short attention spans & superficial realities.
I recommend Thorpe's other great novel 'Ulverton' & his non-fiction surmise called 'On Silbury Hill', both considering how the distant past never quite disappears.
October 23, 2013
Het boek komt heel traag op gang, en pas tijdens de laatste 100 bladzijden (van de 542!) gebeurt er werkelijk iets, nu ja ‘iets’, de rellen in Parijs van mei 68 waar Gilles en zijn moeder middenin terechtkomen. Maar de overige 450 bladzijden zijn het lezen méér dan waard. Je leert de twaalfjarige Gilles door en door kennen, maar je krijgt een eenzijdig beeld van zijn familie en omgeving doordat je alles door Gilles’ kinderogen ziet. Over sommige dingen werd misschien te veel uitgeweid of te veel in detail getreden, maar toch sleepte het boek mij van in het begin mee.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews