What do you think?
Rate this book
Billy Moon: A Novel
Billy Moon was Christopher Robin Milne, the son of A A Milne, the world-famous author of Winnie the Pooh. A veteran of World War II, a husband and father, he is jolted out of midlife ennui when a French college student revolutionary asks him to come to the chaos of Paris in revolt. This realist novel tells his story.
272 pages, Kindle Edition
First published August 27, 2013
13 people are currently reading
576 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 38 reviews
September 28, 2013
If you are looking for a book of "faction"(a novel based on the biography of someone) on Christopher Robin Milne, the son of Winnie-the-Pooh creator A.A. Milne, this is not the book. Although some facts of Christopher Robin's real life are woven in here (and some turned upside down), it is not frequently germane to this surreal labyrinth, a unique story of identity, dreams, and time. It isn't just "Who am I?" but, more, "Who am I", relative to a personal and social world in flux, and a life trying to forge an identity outside of a character in your father's books. This tender, compassionate, genre-bending novel is more imagination than a re-imagining. History, childhood, philosophy, revolution, memories, dreams, identity --and the memories and history that fold up in time--that is what this story is about.
In Part 1, we are introduced to Christopher Robin, his wife, Abby, and his autistic son, Daniel (in truth, Christopher had a daughter with cerebral palsy). The title Billy Moon comes from Christopher's childhood nickname. As an adult, he owns a minor bookstore in Dartmouth, England, but he is loathe to sell Winnie-the Pooh-books. As a child, he was mercilessly teased about being Christopher Robin. He desperately seeks liberation from the fake Christopher Robin that his father created. In 1959, he is 38, and at a crossroads of purpose. He takes long walks and straddles the line between reality and fantasy, where, for example, a stuffed cat becomes animate. In 1961, a poster mysteriously appears in his store, with Pooh as a symbol of protest against the French authorities, of a Paris uprising six years into the future, 1968. Between the poster and a letter from a Parisian college student named Gerrard Hand, Christopher is compelled to take his family on a trip to Paris. He enters an unreal world of time and space, where the ground beneath his feet has turned to a pool of mud. (What a perfect metaphor for the historic Paris or "Lutetia--"city of mud" of ancient civilization.)
When Gerrard was ten-years-old, his father told him, I'm working on reality, but the world won't meet me halfway." Gerrard, who has a brilliant imagination, discovered that "in dreams, the past is hidden inside the present."
All this wordplay from Portland Author Douglas Lain helped me dissolve the concrete world of dimensions. As Abby says, "Sometimes in order to be realistic you have to accept the impossible." And that is what happens inside this novel. While keeping us fastened to Christopher Robin, Gerrard, and Gerrard's girlfriend, Natalie, as well as other peripheral characters, the reader is taken on a journey of juxtapositions and metaphors that lead us to a place where poetry is perilous and the imaginary is real.
In Part 2, Gerrard and Natalie lead Christopher to the Situationist movement in Paris, a (failed) revolution against advanced capitalism, made up of artists and intellectuals (such as Guy Debord, who is a also a peripheral character in the novel) who believed that social alienation and commodity fetishism had degraded everyday lives. Instead of responding to directly felt experience, individual expression was now encumbered by a desire for objects, or objects that replace legitimate action and interaction with each other. The revolutionaries wanted to create moments of authentic experience, to construct situations that reawakened our genuine desires. Lain was also alluding to today's Occupy movement.
I could point out all the political, social, and philosophical aspects of the text, but the aspect of the narrative that really stands out is the coming-of-age of these characters. Natalie tries to live "authentically" by acting out the life of Cécile in Françoise Sagan's Bonjour Trisstesse and following the tenets of Debord, who believed that a real revolution had to be total. Gerrard's fate becomes linked to Christopher Robin's, and both have issues with their parents to muddle through. But, events occur that are often impenetrable in the real world. But--and this is what struck me about Lain--it stops mattering! He pulls us into his magical realism by always anchoring his characters emotionally, so that the reader is connected to each of their secret histories. And a bear. Yes, there's a bear, and a Paris zoo.
"History has chosen us. Not the grand history of kings, and of wars, or of dates in textbooks, but rather our own secret histories. The history of our childhood, and our grandparents' childhoods, that's what has chosen us. History has chosen us, chosen us to take part in the creation of memories out of the present."
Part 3 is the most opaque, on the surface. I wonder if Christopher Robin's degree in mathematics, and his father's, may have something to do with Lain's chapters of "probability." So, open the book, let go, follow Lain labyrinth's, and be enchanted by the power of dreams and memories, in and out of time, and some that exist in our imagination. Just imagine.
In Part 1, we are introduced to Christopher Robin, his wife, Abby, and his autistic son, Daniel (in truth, Christopher had a daughter with cerebral palsy). The title Billy Moon comes from Christopher's childhood nickname. As an adult, he owns a minor bookstore in Dartmouth, England, but he is loathe to sell Winnie-the Pooh-books. As a child, he was mercilessly teased about being Christopher Robin. He desperately seeks liberation from the fake Christopher Robin that his father created. In 1959, he is 38, and at a crossroads of purpose. He takes long walks and straddles the line between reality and fantasy, where, for example, a stuffed cat becomes animate. In 1961, a poster mysteriously appears in his store, with Pooh as a symbol of protest against the French authorities, of a Paris uprising six years into the future, 1968. Between the poster and a letter from a Parisian college student named Gerrard Hand, Christopher is compelled to take his family on a trip to Paris. He enters an unreal world of time and space, where the ground beneath his feet has turned to a pool of mud. (What a perfect metaphor for the historic Paris or "Lutetia--"city of mud" of ancient civilization.)
When Gerrard was ten-years-old, his father told him, I'm working on reality, but the world won't meet me halfway." Gerrard, who has a brilliant imagination, discovered that "in dreams, the past is hidden inside the present."
All this wordplay from Portland Author Douglas Lain helped me dissolve the concrete world of dimensions. As Abby says, "Sometimes in order to be realistic you have to accept the impossible." And that is what happens inside this novel. While keeping us fastened to Christopher Robin, Gerrard, and Gerrard's girlfriend, Natalie, as well as other peripheral characters, the reader is taken on a journey of juxtapositions and metaphors that lead us to a place where poetry is perilous and the imaginary is real.
In Part 2, Gerrard and Natalie lead Christopher to the Situationist movement in Paris, a (failed) revolution against advanced capitalism, made up of artists and intellectuals (such as Guy Debord, who is a also a peripheral character in the novel) who believed that social alienation and commodity fetishism had degraded everyday lives. Instead of responding to directly felt experience, individual expression was now encumbered by a desire for objects, or objects that replace legitimate action and interaction with each other. The revolutionaries wanted to create moments of authentic experience, to construct situations that reawakened our genuine desires. Lain was also alluding to today's Occupy movement.
I could point out all the political, social, and philosophical aspects of the text, but the aspect of the narrative that really stands out is the coming-of-age of these characters. Natalie tries to live "authentically" by acting out the life of Cécile in Françoise Sagan's Bonjour Trisstesse and following the tenets of Debord, who believed that a real revolution had to be total. Gerrard's fate becomes linked to Christopher Robin's, and both have issues with their parents to muddle through. But, events occur that are often impenetrable in the real world. But--and this is what struck me about Lain--it stops mattering! He pulls us into his magical realism by always anchoring his characters emotionally, so that the reader is connected to each of their secret histories. And a bear. Yes, there's a bear, and a Paris zoo.
"History has chosen us. Not the grand history of kings, and of wars, or of dates in textbooks, but rather our own secret histories. The history of our childhood, and our grandparents' childhoods, that's what has chosen us. History has chosen us, chosen us to take part in the creation of memories out of the present."
Part 3 is the most opaque, on the surface. I wonder if Christopher Robin's degree in mathematics, and his father's, may have something to do with Lain's chapters of "probability." So, open the book, let go, follow Lain labyrinth's, and be enchanted by the power of dreams and memories, in and out of time, and some that exist in our imagination. Just imagine.
December 11, 2023
Ugh, this may be the worst Winnie the Pooh book I've read yet. It's a literary novel that travels in magical realism territory, meaning it is full of hallucinations and godawful dream sequences.
Christopher Robin Milne, the son of A. A. Milne, is having a midlife crisis of sorts, and travels to France in 1968 to meet a French college student who sent him a mysterious letter. The student wants to subvert Milne's heritage and make him a figurehead of the May 1968 civil unrest, a major turning point on the road to Charles de Gaulle's resignation the next year. The student also wants to get back together with his on-and-off girlfriend, who is currently trying to live her life as if she were the lead character of Bonjour tristesse, a 1954 novel by Françoise Sagan.
I am unfamiliar with Sagan's novel, the May 68 events and most of the real people sprinkled throughout Lain's novel, so a lot of that is lost on me. But I am familiar with the Milne and Pooh side of things, and that side was pure crap, so I don't doubt the French half is also.
I think this is the type of novel that would be quite enjoyed by the academics and critics satirized in The Pooh Perplex.
(My Pooh Project: I love Winnie the Pooh, and so does my wife. Having a daughter gave us a chance to indoctrinate her into the cult by buying and reading her every Pooh book we came across. How many is that? I’m going to count them this year by reading and reviewing one every day and seeing which month I finally run out. Track my progress here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/list... )
Christopher Robin Milne, the son of A. A. Milne, is having a midlife crisis of sorts, and travels to France in 1968 to meet a French college student who sent him a mysterious letter. The student wants to subvert Milne's heritage and make him a figurehead of the May 1968 civil unrest, a major turning point on the road to Charles de Gaulle's resignation the next year. The student also wants to get back together with his on-and-off girlfriend, who is currently trying to live her life as if she were the lead character of Bonjour tristesse, a 1954 novel by Françoise Sagan.
I am unfamiliar with Sagan's novel, the May 68 events and most of the real people sprinkled throughout Lain's novel, so a lot of that is lost on me. But I am familiar with the Milne and Pooh side of things, and that side was pure crap, so I don't doubt the French half is also.
I think this is the type of novel that would be quite enjoyed by the academics and critics satirized in The Pooh Perplex.
(My Pooh Project: I love Winnie the Pooh, and so does my wife. Having a daughter gave us a chance to indoctrinate her into the cult by buying and reading her every Pooh book we came across. How many is that? I’m going to count them this year by reading and reviewing one every day and seeing which month I finally run out. Track my progress here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/list... )
September 6, 2013
Billy Moon is the kind of book that one simply doesn't expect. As Library Journal wrote in its starred review of it, "Lain's first novel combines two unlikely scenarios to create a tapestry of life in the lat 1960s, when Europe, as well as America, experienced the fervor of youth."
It's not just about that, of course. It's a magic realist novel about the son of A.A. Milne as he tries, in middle age, to deal with the strangeness of being not just a won, a husband and a father, but also that most surreal thing: the living person on whom a world-famous fictional character, Christopher Robin of the "Winnie the Pooh" books, was based.
What I loved about this book most of all was the author's ability to balance what was real in Milne's actual life with the fictional scenario he (Lain) weaves to bring Chris Milne to a place and time where reality itself is strange by any standards. Paris in the Spring of 1968 was not quite like anyplace else in the 1960s, or any other twentieth-century moment. The "manifestations"--the student protests and strike, which led to a general strike that paralyzed France and captured the attention of the entire world--were unique in French history. They didn't cause the actual fall of the government, though they did force elections; they did accomplish a certain amount of sociopolitical change, but not with the kind of wrenching violence of previous French political upheavals. And into this maelstrom of chaos comes Milne, a World War II veteran and the all-too-famous Christopher Robin, there for reasons he's not quite sure of.
It's a remarkable achievement that I enjoyed on several levels. When it was over, I felt as if Lain evoked Milne and the time with great panache, for a most satisfying read. I remember that time (not with Milne); I'll be curious to see how people who don't have direct memories of it react.
It's not just about that, of course. It's a magic realist novel about the son of A.A. Milne as he tries, in middle age, to deal with the strangeness of being not just a won, a husband and a father, but also that most surreal thing: the living person on whom a world-famous fictional character, Christopher Robin of the "Winnie the Pooh" books, was based.
What I loved about this book most of all was the author's ability to balance what was real in Milne's actual life with the fictional scenario he (Lain) weaves to bring Chris Milne to a place and time where reality itself is strange by any standards. Paris in the Spring of 1968 was not quite like anyplace else in the 1960s, or any other twentieth-century moment. The "manifestations"--the student protests and strike, which led to a general strike that paralyzed France and captured the attention of the entire world--were unique in French history. They didn't cause the actual fall of the government, though they did force elections; they did accomplish a certain amount of sociopolitical change, but not with the kind of wrenching violence of previous French political upheavals. And into this maelstrom of chaos comes Milne, a World War II veteran and the all-too-famous Christopher Robin, there for reasons he's not quite sure of.
It's a remarkable achievement that I enjoyed on several levels. When it was over, I felt as if Lain evoked Milne and the time with great panache, for a most satisfying read. I remember that time (not with Milne); I'll be curious to see how people who don't have direct memories of it react.
October 12, 2015
Can political revolution alter the rules of reality itself? Depends on who you ask. If you asked Douglas Lain to outline the parallels between the literature of SF/magic realism/fantasy/escapism and the nature of revolutionary anarchist thought, he'd probably say something incredibly deep and smart -- perhaps on his Diet Soap podcast -- or else he might just hand you this book, in which impossible things happen to beloved and lovable and truly real humans during the brief life of the 1968 Paris student uprising.
In the skill of breathing life into impossible worlds, I don't know anybody writing who's that much better than Douglas Lain. His sheer storytelling talent allows him to bring readers wherever his strange interests take him. Here we have young French lovers who may or may not be insane, or Situationists, or able to travel through time. We have the fully-grown Billy Milne struggling to escape the shadow of his father's Pooh books and his own childhood enshrined in them, to raise an autistic child of his own, and to maintain a rational, grown-up grip on a reality that only gets slipperier as the revolution grows louder.
There is also, no surprise, a bear. But I liked it for more than that, I swear!
In the skill of breathing life into impossible worlds, I don't know anybody writing who's that much better than Douglas Lain. His sheer storytelling talent allows him to bring readers wherever his strange interests take him. Here we have young French lovers who may or may not be insane, or Situationists, or able to travel through time. We have the fully-grown Billy Milne struggling to escape the shadow of his father's Pooh books and his own childhood enshrined in them, to raise an autistic child of his own, and to maintain a rational, grown-up grip on a reality that only gets slipperier as the revolution grows louder.
There is also, no surprise, a bear. But I liked it for more than that, I swear!
September 21, 2013
I have noticed that, with the best novels, I recognize parts of myself in the characters. I’m drawn in and held fast, feeling my fate is tied up somehow in the book, that how the characters behave will make a difference in how I live my life. Billy Moon pulled me in that way, and left me wondering what is my next move.
Reality was slowly falling apart. Christopher found that he could no longer rely on his habitual life, all the routines, to maintain the world of appearances. Gerrard, never sure where his dreams ended and reality began, cast about for ways to transform reality while lacking a good grip on it. Natalie knew everything had to change, was ready to remake her life and the world, but strained to frame her own desires.
Could the French university students of May 1968 make a revolution by following their desires? Could the rebellion of students and workers lead to taking real power? They would try, they couldn’t be sure what was possible or even what they wanted, but they would engage in the adventure as ephemeral as it might be.
Christopher had to accept a shifting reality that isn’t always rational, isn’t sensible, might even be impossible—a reality that demands decisions, demands actions in the face of uncertainty. He had to give up his anti-story (defining himself in opposition to a story initiated by his father) and give up an image of adult life in order to become a real adult, perhaps creating a real freedom even while most of the world seemed stuck with the image of freedom.
Now it’s my turn. Can I let go of my compulsion to make reality sensible, rational, knowable, can I let my routines slip to the side, perhaps even think the impossible, honor my desires, and allow for adventure? Can others do it as well? Let’s find out. Maybe there’s a revolution in our future.
Reality was slowly falling apart. Christopher found that he could no longer rely on his habitual life, all the routines, to maintain the world of appearances. Gerrard, never sure where his dreams ended and reality began, cast about for ways to transform reality while lacking a good grip on it. Natalie knew everything had to change, was ready to remake her life and the world, but strained to frame her own desires.
Could the French university students of May 1968 make a revolution by following their desires? Could the rebellion of students and workers lead to taking real power? They would try, they couldn’t be sure what was possible or even what they wanted, but they would engage in the adventure as ephemeral as it might be.
Christopher had to accept a shifting reality that isn’t always rational, isn’t sensible, might even be impossible—a reality that demands decisions, demands actions in the face of uncertainty. He had to give up his anti-story (defining himself in opposition to a story initiated by his father) and give up an image of adult life in order to become a real adult, perhaps creating a real freedom even while most of the world seemed stuck with the image of freedom.
Now it’s my turn. Can I let go of my compulsion to make reality sensible, rational, knowable, can I let my routines slip to the side, perhaps even think the impossible, honor my desires, and allow for adventure? Can others do it as well? Let’s find out. Maybe there’s a revolution in our future.
July 7, 2013
I was very pleased to receive a pre-release copy of Douglas Lain's new book for review. The following is an excerpt of a longer review available on my blog: http://sleepingdragon.info/2013/revie...
Due out from Tor Books in August this year, Douglas Lain's "Billy Moon" is a strange, meandering mash-up of Philip K. Dick, magic realism, philosophy and history. It is at once confusing, intriguing and informative, and a vehicle with which Douglas Lain occupies your mind with his obsessive -- yet surrealistically detached -- detail.
Lain cleverly leverages historic characters and events, while taking you on a jaunt into the realm of dreams, the underpinning of identity, political and social upheaval, tricks of perception and -- with echoes of Jostein Gaarder's wonderful novel of philosophy and discovery, "Sophie's World" -- an exploration of a multi-layered existence in which "... in order to be realistic you have to accept the impossible."
It seems to me that "Billy Moon" is a timely novel: it is an exploration, a challenge and a metaphor. However, I warn you, if you try to "unpack" it, the book makes sense on some levels and on others, none at all.
If you'd like to explore this whole conundrum further, I thoroughly recommend a visit Douglas Lain's website: http://douglaslain.net/about/
Do I recommend this book? Yes, but only if you're prepared to buckle in for a ride.
November 9, 2014
Billy Moon is Christopher Robin Milne, a man struggling to be real, for he lives in the shadow of a colossal specter, the shadow of Winnie the Pooh.
He grew up an became a man. He fought in World War 2. He's known love and and he's known horror. He's known friendship and disillusionment, and through it all he's struggled to make a life for himself, despite intrusions from a dreamtime he never made. His father, the author of Winnie the Pooh, played a dirty trick on him, rendered him forever partially imaginary, deprived him of an authentic, human existence. So has the machine the oppresses us all.
This is a novel about derailing the whole damn thing.
He grew up an became a man. He fought in World War 2. He's known love and and he's known horror. He's known friendship and disillusionment, and through it all he's struggled to make a life for himself, despite intrusions from a dreamtime he never made. His father, the author of Winnie the Pooh, played a dirty trick on him, rendered him forever partially imaginary, deprived him of an authentic, human existence. So has the machine the oppresses us all.
This is a novel about derailing the whole damn thing.
August 12, 2013
Brilliantly-conceived novel that imagines how the real Christopher Robin comes to embrace the mythic figure created by A.A. Milne. Douglas Lain crisscrosses the landscape between fiction and reality, and one is never truly sure in which time one resides until the very end. Kudos to Lain for a highly imaginative, quiet yet thought-provoking and philosophical read.
August 23, 2013
I really enjoyed the story, especially given the protagonist, Christopher Robin Milne. Bits of the magic realism, however, were a little confusing. I didn't know how they related to the book as a whole.
November 22, 2015
With this read I have descended so far down the rabbit hole that I found it both difficult to finish and hard to put down. It is a surrealistic, oniric perfection for the enthousiasts of the deconstruction of a novel. One of those reads that stay with you and, in time, ripe in your mind.
July 20, 2013
a wonderful book that I'll have in my library until you ask to borrow and keep for yourself.
November 18, 2013
Combining the real Christopher Robin with the student protests against the French government in 1968 in Paris was a clever premise, but it got to be disjointed and boring.
January 14, 2014
Will have to come back... it is all a bit muddy
May 31, 2022
This book did have some rookie mistakes -- a few typos and certain elements of the writing style -- but overall, it pulled me in. I love that era, the idealism of May 1968. Doug is a thoughtful Marxist writer, and he gets to the essence of the romantic defeat that was May '68.
Surreal. Dreamy. Concerned with identity formation in a way that is interesting. Helps to know a bit about the Situationist International to get on the wavelength of the story.
Surreal. Dreamy. Concerned with identity formation in a way that is interesting. Helps to know a bit about the Situationist International to get on the wavelength of the story.
March 21, 2022
Very intriguing concept, felt I lost my grip on reality & was increasingly disoriented towards the end. Think a lot went over my head but I enjoyed the journey anyway.
April 4, 2022
Such a confusing book.
November 10, 2013
Billy Moon follows the life of a grown-up Christopher Robin Milne, better known as the little boy in the Winnie the Pooh books. While his father made him famous with the books, as Christopher grew to an adult, he found himself disconnected from life and the expectations others had of him. They didn't see him as he was in reality; they saw the little boy from the books and expected him to be the same. When he was a small child, he called himself Billy Moon. As a man, he was married and ran a bookstore. This quote from the book demonstrates his remoteness from the life he led:
"Christopher had received scores of fan letters since he's opened the bookshop. Six-year-olds wrote him to ask about his bear. Adults who'd read his father's books when they were young wrote to ask the same questions. Everyone wanted pretty much the same thing, and Christopher couldn't give any answers. He didn't know how to find the Hundred Acre Wood, and he didn't know where childhood went to over the years, or why it was so difficult to feel real joy. He threw almost all of the letters away because they weren't for him at all, but were rally addressed to a boy Christopher's father had made up."
Gerrard Hand was a young revolutionary student in Paris. In 1968, he writes to Chris (as Christopher chose to be named) and asked him to come to France. Chris isn't sure why, but makes the journey. He arrives just in time to be caught up in the student revolution of 1968, where schools, factories and government offices are taken over by the students, who wish to create a more liberated world. Chris gets caught up in the revolution, almost by accident, and it allows him to define the difference between reality and expectation in his own life.
This is Douglas Lain's debut novel, and readers will find it to be an exploration of the world and how we perceive it. It explores the dichotomy between dreaming and lucidity, between liberation and the confines of expectations, between being free or just thinking about it. This book is recommended for readers of speculative fiction.
"Christopher had received scores of fan letters since he's opened the bookshop. Six-year-olds wrote him to ask about his bear. Adults who'd read his father's books when they were young wrote to ask the same questions. Everyone wanted pretty much the same thing, and Christopher couldn't give any answers. He didn't know how to find the Hundred Acre Wood, and he didn't know where childhood went to over the years, or why it was so difficult to feel real joy. He threw almost all of the letters away because they weren't for him at all, but were rally addressed to a boy Christopher's father had made up."
Gerrard Hand was a young revolutionary student in Paris. In 1968, he writes to Chris (as Christopher chose to be named) and asked him to come to France. Chris isn't sure why, but makes the journey. He arrives just in time to be caught up in the student revolution of 1968, where schools, factories and government offices are taken over by the students, who wish to create a more liberated world. Chris gets caught up in the revolution, almost by accident, and it allows him to define the difference between reality and expectation in his own life.
This is Douglas Lain's debut novel, and readers will find it to be an exploration of the world and how we perceive it. It explores the dichotomy between dreaming and lucidity, between liberation and the confines of expectations, between being free or just thinking about it. This book is recommended for readers of speculative fiction.
January 23, 2014
Gerrard wanted to exist in "The House at Pooh Corner". Billy Moon was Christopher Robin. One lived it; the other understood it. Reality is a dream. Somehow this leads to a comparison of the 1968 Paris revolt to Pooh's search for the North Pole. It helps to keep in mind both Gerrard and Christopher are schizophrenic.
Before I got totally confused I looked up an account of Christopher Milne's time in Paris. This is what I found: the story is totally concocted, right down to his wife and child.
Next I thought by reading an interview with Lain about the book I might understand it better. No. It seems this book could have been written about the Marx Brothers in Paris in 1968, just as well as Christopher Milne.
That's my problem here. By the title I thought I would be reading a book about Christopher Robin, but it is really a book about the Paris revolt and about reality and dreams. The book cover does not say "A Transcedent Novel Reimagining the Life of Christopher Robin Milne". If it did, I would not have been so disappointed.
Before I got totally confused I looked up an account of Christopher Milne's time in Paris. This is what I found: the story is totally concocted, right down to his wife and child.
Next I thought by reading an interview with Lain about the book I might understand it better. No. It seems this book could have been written about the Marx Brothers in Paris in 1968, just as well as Christopher Milne.
That's my problem here. By the title I thought I would be reading a book about Christopher Robin, but it is really a book about the Paris revolt and about reality and dreams. The book cover does not say "A Transcedent Novel Reimagining the Life of Christopher Robin Milne". If it did, I would not have been so disappointed.
January 16, 2016
I liked this book from the moment I saw it.A beautiful cover with a synopsis to draw me in.
I was let down though.
As I read, I often got frustrated. The book would go from being written with grace and elegance to becoming completely baffling, and back again. For me, this happened too much. It almost felt like it was each chapter or vignette. I'd be reading, get pulled in and BAM! Completely confused.
And I'm not crazy.
I read a part to the hubby. As I read, I could visibly see him getting lured into the story, and I also noted the moment the confusion set in.
Maybe this book is too sophisticated for a reader like me, I don't know, but I hope you will take this one opinion for what it is. One opinion. Read the book and formulate your own. You may be more into it than I.
I was let down though.
As I read, I often got frustrated. The book would go from being written with grace and elegance to becoming completely baffling, and back again. For me, this happened too much. It almost felt like it was each chapter or vignette. I'd be reading, get pulled in and BAM! Completely confused.
And I'm not crazy.
I read a part to the hubby. As I read, I could visibly see him getting lured into the story, and I also noted the moment the confusion set in.
Maybe this book is too sophisticated for a reader like me, I don't know, but I hope you will take this one opinion for what it is. One opinion. Read the book and formulate your own. You may be more into it than I.
December 11, 2013
Darn, I really thought I would like this fictional story of Christopher Robin's life. Let down though -- I just couldn't follow the story line. 100 pages in, and the two story lines still had nothing at all to do with each other. I couldn't find a way to care about the other story line that did not have to do with Christopher Robin. I suppose they do end up meeting at some point, but with 7 more books on my nightstand, I'm just not invested enough to find out. I gave it two stars because I really like the idea concept.
February 4, 2017
A fictional tale about a real person who was famous because of fictional childhood version of him? Sounds interesting.
A laugh out loud first chapter featuring a partially existent cat that could have been written by Douglas Adams? Promising.
Students and factory workers protesting in 1968 Paris for reasons about which the author did not or could not make me care? A trudge.
Workers singing The Internationale from the roof-top on page p174? Enough to make me think I should spend my time reading something else.
A laugh out loud first chapter featuring a partially existent cat that could have been written by Douglas Adams? Promising.
Students and factory workers protesting in 1968 Paris for reasons about which the author did not or could not make me care? A trudge.
Workers singing The Internationale from the roof-top on page p174? Enough to make me think I should spend my time reading something else.
May 14, 2014
It's more intellectually stimulating than emotionally gripping. The structure of it is pretty intriguing because it's a story about derailing and dismantling things in an anarchistic way, and the story actually derails and dismantles itself, which is impressive. The characters are somewhat aware of being characters, which is interesting, as it's a story about a man, Christopher Robin, who was both a real person and a character in a book.
December 3, 2016
I just can't wrap my mind around this novel. I would have loved a book about the grown up Christopher Robin Milne dealing with real life & his autistic son...but such a book colliding with a strange, metaphysical dreamscape involving the 1968 Paris riots was certainly not what I was expecting. It's stylishly written, but whatever its ultimate goal, I'm afraid it sailed right over my head. A great pity, especially as I found parts of the book very affecting.
November 18, 2013
What a strange little novel this is.
Christopher Robin Milne is all grown up and runs a book store, but weird, dreamlike things keep happening to him. There's also boy in France who possibly has mental problems. The two come together during the student uprisings of the late 1960s and crazy shit happens.
It's hard to describe.
Christopher Robin Milne is all grown up and runs a book store, but weird, dreamlike things keep happening to him. There's also boy in France who possibly has mental problems. The two come together during the student uprisings of the late 1960s and crazy shit happens.
It's hard to describe.
July 14, 2014
The story was confusing, partly due to my lack of French history, and the rest because I still don't understand the connection between the French history and Winnie the Pooh. The story was jumbled and dream like, I think? Am i missing something? I usually can find my place in a story but I struggled through this.
October 2, 2013
I less finished this book and more stopped reading. I didn't "get" what this book was about and was about halfway through it. I never stop reading books and don't finish them, but this one was just not for me. More power to those folks who love it and understand it.
July 23, 2014
Picked this up because of a favorable review in Library Journal. I should have paid more attention to the use of the word "transcendent" in the subtitle-- this just wasn't for me.
September 2, 2013
Brilliantly-conceived novel that imagines how the real Christopher Robin comes to embrace the mythic figure created by A.A. Milne.
June 23, 2015
Maybe I'm dumb but this book made no sense to me and I was too bored to figure it out.
August 7, 2016
Knowing my own proclivities, I should have put the book down when the acknowledgements noted a debt to Althusser.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 38 reviews