Ιδιοπάθεια

by Sam Byers, Μαργαρίτα Ζαχαριάδου (Translator)

ΙΔΙΟΠΑΘΕΙΑ (η): Ασθένεια άγνωστης προέλευσης και αιτίας.

Η Κάθριν και ο Ντάνιελ έχουν χωρίσει. Στα τριάντα τους, παλεύουν, καθένας ξεχωριστά, με τα σύνδρομα της ηλικίας τους αλλά και το σουρεαλισμό της σύγχρονης ζωής: η Κάθριν, καταθλιπτική και κυνική, προσπαθεί να συνέλθει από το χωρισμό εγκλωβισμένη σε μια πόλη και σε μια δουλειά που μισεί πέραν πάσης αμφιβολίας, ενώ ο Ντάνιελ δεν είναι καθόλου βέβαιος αν η νέα του σχέση και η δουλειά του τον ικανοποιούν πραγματικά. Τα πράγματα παίρνουν νέα τροπή όταν επανεμφανίζεται στο προσκήνιο ένας παλιός τους φίλος, ο Νέιθαν, μετά από ενάμιση χρόνο απουσίας σε ψυχιατρική κλινική, κουβαλώντας επιπλέον το βάρος μιας μαμάς που στο μεταξύ έχει αναδειχθεί σε συγγραφέα ενός αυτοβιογραφικού μπεστ-σέλερ βασισμένου στη δική του ατυχή διαδρομή, και σε δημοφιλή περσόνα των μέσων κοινωνικής δικτύωσης με το ψευδώνυμο «Μάνα Κουράγιο». Με φόντο μια μυστηριώδη επιδημία των βοοειδών που εξαπλώνεται στην Αγγλία, οι τρεις φίλοι θα επιχειρήσουν να λύσουν τα δικά τους μυστήρια, προσφέροντας απολαυστικές σελίδες ευφυούς σάτιρας της σύγχρονης πραγματικότητας και μια ανελέητη ανάγνωση της παθολογίας μιας γενιάς που παραπαίει ανάμεσα στη συντήρηση και την αμφισβήτηση αλλά και της ανθρώπινης κατάστασης ανεξαρτήτως ηλικίας.

Ο Sam Byers στην "Ιδιοπάθεια", το πρώτο του μυθιστόρημα, ακολουθεί με δεξιοτεχνία και κέφι ‒αλλά και με γλώσσα που σπάει κόκαλα‒ τα χνάρια της μεγάλης αγγλοσαξωνικής παράδοσης του χιούμορ και αναδεικνύεται στο πιο φρέσκο και πολλά υποσχόμενο ταλέντο της νεότερης γενιάς Βρετανών συγγραφέων.

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary, Novels, Satire, Literary Fiction, Illness, Friendship

376 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2013

Reviews

[W.D. Clarke · Rating 5 out of 5]

[Edit, just rounding up, why the heck would anyone ever round down like I done?!]

4.5 Stars, cos it was so bloody entertaining*.

Structurally, this was a classic Evelyn Waugh or early Aldous Huxley comedy (or so I thought, at first), with the narrator travelling along in free indirect style with each of the three main characters, each of whom I found to be completely sympathetic (yes, many others here on GR have found them to be loathsome creatures, but I happen to be attracted to a narrator who isn't afraid of what is least attractive about us), and who are about to meet each other for the first time in a year, after Daniel has just cheated on Katherine (with the overly nice woman he is still with a year later), and after Nathan has confessed his love to an unimpressed Katherine and has gone off from a party they were all attending to commit self-harm.

What kept me turning the pages with such unabashed fervor was partly how believable the characters were, to be sure, but mostly it was Sam Byers' taut, polished sentences. They were just a pure delight to linger over and re-re-read. His command of language was such that, much of the time, I felt like I was reading a young Martin Amis with a lot more self-restraint. Or maybe a manic Raymond Carver or something.

Whatever limitations the triangular nature of the plot impose upon him here, anyhow, this Byers fellow can really write, and what is even more impressive is how he can drill down into the most mundane of social situations, pin its essence to the wall with comic precision, and then turn it inside out and make the reader feel the full pathos that the comedy was concealing, all with incredible speed and deftness. I am really looking forward to the next one, which is due out any day now.

*Entertaining, that is, if your definition of entertainment involves sentences not only singing and dancing on the page, but performing back-flips (many of those on display here) and tumbling—even rhythmic gymnastics (ribbons optional). Prancercize ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-50G... ), however, might just be A Smidge Too Far....

[Blair · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wish I hadn't read this on holiday, or read so many other books immediately before and after it... I find myself with nothing but a scrappy page of notes to refer to and there's a lot I'd like to say about it that probably can't be said articulately without a re-read of at least certain parts of the book. It seems to be generally kind of misunderstood or misinterpreted, and not very well-liked on Goodreads or book blogs. I enjoyed it a LOT, maybe not so much because the story was particularly brilliant but because of elements of the characterisation and the communication between characters that I felt 'hit the nail on the head' and rang remarkably true.

Original notes:

1. Amazed Katherine was written by a man. I often approach female characters written by male authors (in particular types of books) with a certain amount of dread, especially when the characters are doing things like sleeping around and trying to get their lives together. But she was really spot-on, I don't think I've related to a fictional character so much in ages. There's a great, really honest balancing of who she is and who she wants to be and how these things intersect - I loved that she was a mild failure at many things but was never pathetic, was sometimes even pretty enviable.

2. A long scene depicting an argument between Katherine and Daniel was so thoroughly real in showing how these things progress and spiral, and the different specific little ways people in relationships try to hurt each other. It also somehow made both parties seem equally right and wrong. If I'd read the book at a point when I was in a relationship within which arguments were commonplace, I imagine this scene would have been almost unbearably painful to read.

3. Nailed the type of horrible strained interaction that goes on in offices, its repetitive and completely predictable nature, as in this extract from a passage about Katherine's colleagues, whose acceptance she both craves & is repelled by: 'Often one of them was coming down with something, and the others would worry that they were about to come down with something, although often they would not and then they would all agree that they were probably just run-down. Yoghurts had a lot more calories than any of them ever really imagined. Somehow, they had all been given computers that were particularly recalcitrant. They liked each other only to the extent that they themselves wanted to be liked.' Again, spot-on insight into the behaviour/temperament of certain groups of (mostly) women without being sneery or sexist.

4. I think where it occasionally fell down for me was in being too comic, too silly. While the main characters' inner dialogues and neuroses about relationships, work and life in general were totally, horribly believable, some of the smaller details outside that - especially relating to their parents - were over-exaggerated for satirical effect, and too close to zany for my taste.

Additional notes post-holiday and after reading through other reviews on Goodreads:

Katherine - like Mavis Gary in the movie Young Adult - is one of those benchmark characters, for me. I totally get why people might find her unlikeable, but if you genuinely hated or were offended by her, we really wouldn't get on with each other.

There are a lot of reviews on here decrying not only Katherine, but all three main characters, as 'horrible', 'vile', 'repellent', loathsome' and the like. Really? I consider myself more sensitive than average to 'offensive' male characters and I liked both the men in this book. Daniel does a few bad things, sure, but they're human things, and he's so well-rounded, so perfectly realised in all his insecurities and uncertainties, and while Nathan was fucked up I didn't find anything to actually dislike about him. Another review describes the book as 'laddish', which I find equally mystifying. Katherine is one of the best female characters I've come across in ages, regardless of the author's gender, and the extent to which the male characters were shown to be riddled with emotional anguish, doubt and vulnerability struck me as the opposite of laddish.

I think this might be the longest time I've taken to review an ARC - two years between approval on NetGalley and actually getting round to reading it. It was worth hanging on to, though.

[Sevi Salagianni · Rating 1 out of 5]

Αν δεν έπασχα από αυτή τη συνήθεια του να μην μπορώ να αφήσω βιβλίο στη μέση, ακόμη και αν δεν μ' αρέσει, τότε σίγουρα θα το χα κλείσει καιρό πριν.

[Sarah Gk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ο λόγος για τον οποίο το βιβλίο είναι βαρετό, τίγκα στα first world problems, και δεν καταλήγει πουθενά, είναι γιατί έτσι είναι και η ζωή μας.

[Antonomasia · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book about, by and quite possibly for bitter, cynical, British white middle-class people in their mid thirties. Critics like Idiopathy, it won the Costa First Novel award, I like it – but the general public don't seem to like it much: there are quite a lot of negative reviews on Goodreads and Amazon. (Or there were when I last looked in December – I'm keeping away from reader reviews as much as possible just now.)
I read the book in two chunks a couple of months apart, so my different impressions of the beginning and the later book may be as much me as it.

In a way, it's an English comic novel, as was reportedly pointed out by Giles Foden, Byers' tutor at UEA. (Yes, it's the product of a creative writing course, but one which would sneer at that very concept of itself as I'm doing there. More viciously, in fact.) There's also something Continental about it: the bitter philosophic seriousness underlying its wry comic observations, the lack of easy answers, the way it's more character study than plot and the focus on three people that's reminiscent of the triangular structure of many French films. (They are deliberately less glamorous than anyone from the Nouvelle Vague, and stuck in the provincial location of Norwich: Katherine, an office manager who hates pretty much everything and has an unending supply of Charlie Brookeresque comments; her ex Daniel who works for an environmental consultancy, wants to like people more and be liked, and “dreams, like every sad little middle class white man, of a good old-fashioned fight that wouldn't make him look bad”, and their friend Nathan, who was once a source of escapism, parties and drugs, but vanished for a year and has just reappeared fresh from rehab.)

It's one of those works which perhaps seems all the more observant the closer you've been to its milieu. Whilst it only rarely makes named cultural allusions (something which makes the characters' relationships and heads all the more effectively claustrophobic) I felt as if the writer and characters had grown up watching, reading and listening to the same stuff as I had, and given age and assuming a high intake of national non-tabloid media, they probably did. Even recognisable details of the depressing interiors of houses were there, like chairs which won't stay level because of the stick-on felt pads on the feet, and I saw a reference which could have come straight from the previous book I finished (a necklace of ears / The Ballad of Halo Jones). Idiopathy works partly via a set of shared assumptions and tastes, which for me (and probably a few people I know) are spot on: that hippy protestors probably have their hearts in the right place but oh god aren't they eye-rollingly embarrassing sometimes; that one can underline the awfulness of a character's parents via their interior design choices such as destroying original features and their high level of self-promotion on social media. Some would probably find it too cruel and specific; I remembered the time years ago when a close friend said a Half Man Half Biscuit song was a bit harsh (I'd put the album on because I thought would amuse her as it did me). [Not long before I started Idiopathy I'd ended up looking at a blog called The Middle Class Handbook; it had an alphabetical list of categories of British middle-class people, the sort of thing you might see in a semi-parody of a magazine quiz. A weird experience was to read the first one and be fairly sure that was the one I'd belong in if any : it's a group of people who don't tend to fit very well and like it that way, and probably wouldn't expect to be in the first category in a list, alt.middle … and it also seems to describe those who'd be likely to get the underlying assumptions in this book.]

I don't usually doubt the ability of good writers to create characters of a gender not their own, but I was staggered, especially in the earlier scenes, that Katherine had been written by a man. There are thoughts in the book, especially belonging to her, which I've often had but never seen written down anywhere before (and unlike her, tried to argue against and not to say). Though it's never stated, I would guess that Katherine also read too many magazines when she was younger and is stuck with a head full of assumptions from them which she variously agrees with and is at war with, sometimes both at the same time, whilst she really wouldn't like people to know this, wanting to seem like someone who'd always been above all that rubbish. If that sentence sounds suffocatingly self-involved, that's a good illustration of the tone of quite a bit of the book... Even though I could see where the characters were coming from, or perhaps because of that, I found it a bit exhausting to read at times. There were arguments between Katherine and Daniel which I've basically had with myself in my own head (possessing both their opposing temperaments to varying degrees – unfortunately I couldn't do Katherine's putdowns, though I used to know a woman who said similar things and was rather in awe of her). I just wrote “and I wasn't sure to what degree I was supposed to be laughing” [at the arguments]: that “supposed to be” is like an idea from the book - these are people who have been marinated in a media, and latterly social media, soup and are subtly preoccupied with how others see them, but not, of course, in the boring parenty way of “what would the neighbours think”. The book's subtitle is “a novel of love, narcissism and ailing cattle”; this isn't the glaringly obvious narcissism of people thinking how fabulous they look, filling their houses with portraits of themselves, or who are megalomaniac bosses thinking they should rule the world – it's about the frequently futile wish to control minor social situations, and a concern with how everything appears that can seem routine if you grew up with a head more full of media than of satisfying emotional connections with other people. Byers, to his credit, eschews long repetitive scenes connected with online social networks and other glaringly obvious ways of putting this sort of thing across, and lets characters skewer themselves via their conversation and thoughts about things which have existed far longer than Facebook.

Idiopathy's greatest weakness is perhaps the subplot about the ailing cattle, a sort of neo-BSE which is a heavy-handed metaphor for themes that get a defter touch elsewhere in the book. However, this is often used sardonically and it's a good idea to have a current-affairs distraction from the total self-involvement of the characters as they're painted. As with most comic novels, this one walks a tightrope re. the use of cliches, and where it does deal in stereotypes will be be more interesting when you've met the sort of people it means. And I, for one, like the way it at times subverts the comic-novel trajectory for something less predictable in a minor key.

[Anni · Rating 5 out of 5]

A terse yet poignant satire on self-absorbed thirty-somethings, eco-activists, misery memoirs and self-help gurus. Katherine is the cynical ex-girlfriend from hell and, like the devil, she gets all the best lines with her scathing put-downs and one-upmanship. You will want to read it twice to savour all the acerbic one-liners, reminiscent of the wise-cracking dialogue of old Hollywood movies.

Extract
She went back to the charity shop where she'd donated Keith's vibrator. She told them she'd left something in the bag by accident and wanted it back. The woman looked blank yet suspiciously relaxed.
'I haven't seen anything,' she said. 'What was it you left?'
'A vibrator,' said Katherine.
'Oh. Um ...'
'You can't miss it,' said Katherine. 'It's shaped like an enormous penis and on the side it says The Widowmaker in day-glo letters.'
'I don't think I ...'
'I know you've got it,' said Katherine.
'I assure you I haven't.'
'Give it back.'
'I would if I could.'
'Whatever,' said Katherine.

[Snoakes · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. It is populated by a cast of self-obsessed and narcissistic characters and none more so than Katherine, the novel's protagonist. She should be loathsome but she is so self-destructive, so unable to feel anything or even exist except in relation to others' reactions to her, usually while making then uncomfortable or unhappy, that I found her compelling.

"She’d wanted this, and now it was here all she could think was that the wanting was a weakness, and all she could feel was the remote and grey-edged disappointment you might experience as you left a party and walked to your car and realised that from outside the music and chatter sounded all the brighter for being muffled, all the more enticing for being far away, leaving you wishing you’d had a better time while you were inside and had the chance."

"Now there was a burden, she thought: loving someone; being loved. Dreams of houses. All that crap about forever. The conversation about kids that never quite happens. And what a weight to be loved, too; to know that another person had invested their future happiness in your weak self. The walking on eggshells; the daily effort not to hurt, and when you did, as of course you always would, all that effort was erased, the memory of all that you’d done to spare them pain simply obliterated by pain itself."

By far and away the most odious character however is Nathan's mother, the self-styled Mother Courage. So perfectly hateful - I'd have loved to see a bit more of her in the novel.

Sam Byers has completely nailed the dynamic of the bickering spiteful arguments couples inevitably have - so well that I fear he must have suffered at least one thoroughly appalling relationship in the past. I also loved the long rambling sentences following the characters' internal monologues as they struggle to understand and reinvent themselves.

I have read reviews that say that this is a novel for people who have given up on the human race - well it definitely appealed to the cynic in me and I sniggered out loud more than once.

[Kate · Rating 2 out of 5]

In my professional life (before children), I spent a large amount of time writing things for government ministers to ‘say’ (most often these things were published in documents, brochures and as part of press releases). The aim of the game was ‘sound bites’ – pithy little one-liners that got to the guts of the matter (in my case, it was all about river and water management) and made for ‘quotable quotes’ for ministers.

Idiopathy by Sam Byers is novel written in ‘sound bites’. Punchy, carefully crafted sentences (many of them funny and/or insightful) draped over a loose (and somewhat odd) plot.

“She wondered how people had ever achieved comprehensive worrying before Google, which listed fears you never knew you had in the order other people had them.”

The story centres on Katherine, Daniel and Nathan. Katherine and Daniel were once a couple – their relationship fuelled by arguments – of the intellectual and just good-old-fashioned spiteful varieties. Nathan hung out with Katherine and Daniel when they were a couple but suddenly dropped off the radar (we quickly learn he was admitted into hospital for psychiatric treatment).

Nathan returns. Daniel has a job that makes him feel like a hypocrite. He also has a new girlfriend – the predictable (and aptly named) Angelica who does ‘..what it said on her wrapper.’ Katherine’s self-loathing is at an all-time high. And did I mention that this is all played out on a stage that features a mysterious cattle disease as the backdrop?

Katherine and Daniel’s navel-gazing made for tiring reading. I felt like I’d been nagged incessantly by the end. Daniel was an insecure dill and Katherine was mean, with a penchant for one-upmanship - they probably made the perfect couple.

“…he felt decidedly sharp-edged. Katherine would have said this was his true self. As far as she was concerned, conviviality was always a lie. You could fake being nice, she would say, but being a cunt came from the heart.”

In contrast, the parts of the story focused on Nathan and his parents were clever and if Byers was taking a satirical aim at parenting, he hit the mark, particularly with Nathan’s mother who, much to Nathan’s horror, publishes her experiences in a self-help book – ‘Mother Courage: One Woman’s Battle Against Maternal Blame’ (brilliant!).

“Nathan’s father, a man who wore a year-round yachting jacket despite never having set foot on a yacht, slid out of the car accompanied by the industrial rustle of chemically complex fabrics.”

and

“‘Mothers Who Survive dot com. The website.’ His mother’s voice was strategically calm to the point where it aroused the exact opposite sense in Nathan. ‘It’s for mother’s who have, at one time or another, as the name suggests, survived.’
‘Survived what?’
‘Survived what, he says,’ said Nathan’s father.
‘Their children,’ said Nathan’s mother.”

Byers’s writing style is snappy and energetic – occasionally it’s a little too smart and forced. But I forgave that for the passages about Nathan and his relationship with his father – endearing, cleverly observed elements that are no doubt true of so many real-life father/son relationships. To a lesser extent, Daniel’s relationship with his father (suffering dementia) and Katherine’s with her interfering mother were explored – again, the small, almost banal details were perfectly integrated into the narrative, making them deliciously close to the bone. It was these parent/child relationships that shone.

2.5/5 There were four elements to this book – Katherine, Daniel, Nathan and cows. They were all okay to begin with but only Nathan’s story held fast for me.

I received my copy of Idiopathy from the publisher, Fourth Estate, via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.

[Michelle · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have nothing good to say about this book. I keep thinking the plot will hit me upside the head and I'll have an epiphany...I'm still waiting. Once I start reading a book, I have an asinine rule about not finishing it but god help me I wished I could break that rule. Honestly, I was browsing the shelves at the library and thought the cover looked interesting. I read the reviews on the back and was fully convinced when one of the reviewers said it was gut-busting funny. Let me be clear, there is nothing remotely laughable about this book. The characters are surprisingly one dimensional even with all the excessive use of adjectives. There are whole tedious chapters simply devoted to every word said in past arguments. I get that Mr. Byers was being facetious about the narcissism of the current generation. However, he failed to wrap it all up in a big red bow and present the whole package. A purpose would have been nice. In summary, I just don't get it and for that, I'm pretty sure, I'm grateful.

[Chris Young · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chilling, bitter, black as pitch — three self-obsessed, depressed and wholly believable characters clash in Norwich, against the backdrop of a nationwide cattle epidemic. Laugh and despair for the world at the same time. There's nothing likeable here — but a lot to enjoy.

[Roisin Mooney · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF - life is too short to read boring books and this was boring

[Roula · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ειναι καποια βιβλια που απλα αναρωτιεσαι πώς και γιατι εκδοθηκαν? Μεγαλο οχι απο εμενα..

[Hananaki · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really have trouble remembering why I bothered to finish this book. I guess I was curious if I would actually care about any of the awful characters in it by the end.
Well... I really didn't.I hated the characters, I didn't care about the plot and the writing which was the sole reason I kept reading was not enough.After a while I felt it was overly pretentious.Congrats to me for finishing it!
2 stars because it wasn't awful while I was reading it

[Allison Fusaro · Rating 1 out of 5]

I’m an avid reader and have been my whole life and I can honestly say this is one of the worst books I’ve ever read and I’m not even done yet. Only 60 pages left but really I’d rather gouge my eyes out than finish. It’s terrible.. do not waste your time. Books like these make me hate myself for always feeling the need to finish them

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review coming... catching up - read this about a month ago and it hasn't stayed with me as much as I thought it would. Remember thinking it was dead funny when I was reading it, very good on modern office politics and sexual politics (probably, I'm out of the game now). A bunch of unlikeable characters but strongly drawn. And a lot of cows dying.

[Jeff Raymond]

I'm not sure how this landed on my to read list (which is a common occurrence), but this book utterly failed to grab me. Not funny enough, overly profane, not really engaging. Didn't work for me right now.

[Otilia ILIE · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book was amazing, witty and such a pleasure to read, I loved it. It was a fresh breath of air among the latest books that I have read. I totally reccommend it.

[Siv30 · Rating 1 out of 5]

ספר סתמי שמהר מאוד איבד את חינו בעיניי והפך למיותר.
הוא לא משעשע, לא מעניין ממש. סתמי.

[Dafnush · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5
Even though i didn’t like the writing style for the first half, i did like that book. The characters are sharp, the dialogues are witty and are on point, and you can really sense the British kind of humor.

[Ian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Funny, British, quotable.

"Some of them wanted to fuck her because they liked her, and some them wanted to fuck her because they hated her. This suited Katherine reasonably well. Sometimes she fucked men because she felt good about herself, and sometimes she fucked them because she hated herself." (6-7)

"morals were what dense people clung to in lieu of a personality" (8)

"His convalescence had not, however, gone according to plan, and it was this precise sense of missed opportunity that now led him to resent his forced return to the land of the well" (33)

"Sometimes, for example Angelica got it into her head that she wanted to tantrically merge for hours on end, seeking some semi-mystical state of union she'd read about in a second-hand boo. At other times, she felt the whole dimming-the-lights-and-dousing-the-room-with-incense planning of the thing made it all rather moribund and predictable, at which point she just wanted to screw and be done with it. The difficulty was that Daniel never knew, so to speak, if he was coming or going" (49)

"Katherine's occasional episodes of bad-faith niceness were always rather short-lived, and always left her, like her recent bumptious, bad-faith orgasms, feeling disappointed and faintly dirty after the event" (118)

"I know how it is. You're all Mr Superior. I've seen you. Looking out your window at us. Having a good old laugh. But now the boot's on the other foot. You look at me and you think, hold on, he's got a cow."(302)

[Ian Mapp · Rating 4 out of 5]

First book that has made me laugh out loud for a long time.

I loved Sam Byers Perfidious Albion, so decided to look at this, his first book. It did not disappoint.

Three disenchanted 30 somethings battling through a pandemic (bovine, rather than human) - struggling to make sense of their lives. How very apt.

Katherine - the character that provides most of the laughs - has split up from Daniel. She has moved from London to Norwich and passes the time by sleeping with inappropriate men from the office - chiefly the hapless Keith.

Daniel has moved onto a new relationship - where he has to put up with endless social gatherings with her friends that he doesn't like.

And their common friend, Nathan - has recovered from something tragic - slowly revealed - and re-enters all of their lives - bringing along his overbearing mother - making a name from herself through real life misery writing and father, who spends his time obliterating reality by drinking increasing bizarre and lethal cocktails. The "Mad Cow" - a cider/red bull based one being my favourite.

The text is dense, meaningful and with laugh along lines at a very high hit rate. A slight drag in the middle to final third, saved wonderfully by a set piece dinner party - where we learn what happened to Nathan and all the strands - including the Bovine Pandemic - are nicely pulled together.

I see he has a new book in March 2021 - there's something to look forward to.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ähnlich wie auf der Achterbahnfahrt der Emotionen, welche die Protagonisten erleben, ging es mir auch mit dem Buch! An manchen Stellen ist der Roman zäh und ich musste mich tatsächlich zwingen, weiterzulesen. Das mag auch daran liegen, dass es so gut wie keine Handlung gibt, weil sich das Geschehen größtenteils um die verkorkste Psyche der Figuren dreht. Doch genau deswegen ist "Idiopathie“ auch wiederum lesenswert, da Byers hier mit bitterbösen Humor erzählt und es teilweise so überzogen darstellt, dass es einem Gänsehaut beschert.

[Zoe · Rating 1 out of 5]

Βαρετό, φλύαρο, κατατονικό, φλύαρο, φλύαρο, τόσο φλύαρο χωρίς νόημα και σε σημεία με πολύ κακή μετάφραση (δεν μπορεί να μεταφράζεις το thread ως νήμα, όταν η συκγκεκριμένη λέξη χρησιμοποιείται στο αρχικό κείμενο για να περιγράψει μια σειρά e-mail που έχουν πάει κι έχουν έρθει. είναι σαν να χρησιμοποίησε ο μεταφραστής google translate και να μην το έψαξε καν!). Στα + είναι το μοναδικό βιβλίο που με ανάγκασε να φτάσω ως το τέλος ΜΗΠΩΣ και στην πορεία άλλαζε και γινόταν πιό ενδιαφέρον. Καμία τύχη. Αδιάφορο.

[Nataliec7 · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting enough read once you get into it. The characters are rather annoying at times and I felt myself wanting to slap Katherine numerous times then feeling sorry for her. Daniel and Nathan are a little easier to put up with but would drive you nuts as well.
The book is however humorous and I had some real laugh out loud moments.
Not bad 3/5

[Jill Lamond · Rating 2 out of 5]

A cast of more miserable and annoying people you would be hard-pushed to meet anywhere. Katherine's bitter and hate-filled attitude suffused the book. It was not an enjoyable read. That said I feel it was well-written, just not my thing.

[Alex Miller · Rating 1 out of 5]

Hated it. Quit after 25 pages.

[Clive Grewcock · Rating 2 out of 5]

I recently read, and really enjoyed, Sam Byers second novel ‘Perfidious Albion’ so I thought I would read ‘Idiopathy’ his debut novel. Whilst this has the same wry satirical observations about modern living it is nowhere near as funny, nor anyhere near as disturbing as ‘Perfidious Albion’ and is therefore slightly disappointing. For me it is flawed in that I found no likable traits in any of the main characters, nor come to that in any of the minor characters. There are also chunks of prose that read as though they were written in advance, or were in the author’s mind and then slotted into the story, whether they quite fit or not.

[Liberis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Την Ιδιοπαθεια, την πήρα από φόβο, σύγχρονη λογοτεχνία, χωρισμένοι... αλλά λέω ας το δοκιμάσω..είμαι στη μέση, είναι γρήγορο, ενδιαφέρον και με όσα βλέπω σε διάφορες ομάδες του φβ κάτι thank you next, τσίλι κλπ, είναι πολύ μέσα στα πράγματα και θα μπορούσε να γίνει κλασικό της εποχής μας. Παρά το γεγονός ότι προς το τέλος το κούρασε λίγο, δεν παύει να μας δείχνει με τρόπο μάλλον ενοχλητικό σαν μια μύγα που μας αποσπά συνέχεια την προσοχή, τα προσωπικά μας αδιέξοδα, που οφείλονται στον εγωισμό μας και στην ανειλικρίνειά μας, που πολλές φορές μας στοιχίζει αγάπες, έρωτες, σχέσεις και ακόμα και φιλίες.

[Genia · Rating 1 out of 5]

כתוב בצורה מסורבלת מאוד, הרבה שמות תואר ומעט מאוד עלילה.
ויתרתי אחרי 160 עמודים

[Beth (bibliobeth) · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the May read for The Waterstones Eleven debut authors, please see my previous post HERE. The tag line for this story is that it is “a novel of love, narcissism and ailing cattle,” which actually sums it up quite well! On starting, I really wasn’t sure if I was going to like it, as all the characters are quite awful to each other, and it’s written in quite an original style. The author focuses on three main characters – Katherine and Daniel, who used to be a couple but have broken up, and Nathan their friend, who has spent a year in a psychiatric unit and is back home living with his parents. His mother has used his mental state to re-invent herself as an author – “Mother Courage,” telling the world how she copes with such a wayward son. Katherine is single and full of bitterness at men, and at the world in general. She sleeps with a few different men but has not been able to find happiness (or even care about finding happiness). Daniel is in a new relationship with a girl who he’s not really sure if he loves, but has to continue saying he loves her, for fear of being alone and that he might actually love her. Make sense?

The book has a few different quirks, and once I got used to the style, I did enjoy it, and when Nathan comes back into Katherine and Daniel’s lives, we begin to see how toxic their former relationship really was. The author writes about their arguments in such a way that the reader feels almost like a guilty onlooker, with many cringe-worthy moments. It’s very hard to like Katherine or Daniel as characters, especially Katherine, who seems to be spiteful and full of hatred, angry at everyone and everything, although at the end, I did feel quite sorry for her, as her true loneliness came across.

Oh yes, and the news stations are going mad across the country because all the cows are staring off into the distance, not moving, and clearly ill. There is a very funny moment at the end involving a cow called Mavis, a hippy, and a fairly quiet suburban street, which is probably not the best mixture! I found the book quite humorous throughout, and although I didn’t love it, I definitely think Sam Byers is a debut author to watch out for.

My full review at http://www.bibliobeth.wordpress.com