Mr Stone en het riddergenootschap

by V.S. Naipaul, Harry Pallemans

Mr Stone nadert zijn pensioen en besluit de leegte in zijn leven op te vullen met de oprichting van een riddergenootschap.

Genres: Fiction, Literature, Literary Fiction, Classics, Novels, British Literature

141 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1963

About the author

V. S. Naipaul was a British writer of Indo-Trinidadian descent known for his sharp, often controversial explorations of postcolonial societies, identity, and displacement. His works, which include both fiction and nonfiction, often depict themes of exile, cultural alienation, and the lingering effects of colonialism.
He gained early recognition with A House for Mr Biswas, a novel inspired by his father’s struggles in Trinidad. His later works, such as The Mimic Men, In a Free State, and A Bend in the River, cemented his reputation as a masterful and incisive writer. Beyond fiction, his travelogues and essays, including Among the Believers and India: A Million Mutinies Now, reflected his critical perspective on societies in transition.
Naipaul received numerous accolades throughout his career, including the Nobel Prize in Literature, awarded for his ability to blend deep observation with literary artistry. While praised for his prose, his often unsparing portrayals of postcolonial nations and controversial statements sparked both admiration and criticism.

Reviews

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

A story about an elderly bachelor in a dead end job with a fixed routine heading towards retirement. Suddenly he decides to get married to Margaret based on her laughing at his story about a neighbors cat that he is scared of meeting. The story is about loneliness with touches of humor and in parts nostalgic.

They settle into a dull routine and one night he has an epiphany about setting up the Knights Companion a department where retirees from his company visit other retirees to check on their welfare. It is a success but it does not satisfy him. An episode with the neighbors cat teaches him to realize the fragility of life coupled with his sister’s daughter decision.

Essentially a story about a man with no hobbies, selfish who suddenly realizes he has wasted his life and how pointless it has been.

[Luís · Rating 5 out of 5]

That's a slice of London life in the early 1960s.
It is a well-established routine that secures and regulates Richard Stone's life.
Man has his quirks, his habits, and his hatreds. An ordinary man, in a way, with whom the reader will live for a while.
The interest of Mr. Stone is this dull color that adorns him, just like his friendly or professional relations. It is the art of Naipaul to hook his reader with this extraordinary banality. Even Mr. Stone's wedding appears in a usual greyness, and let's not talk about holidays in Cornwall.
But every hero is entitled to his moments of genius, and Stone will know his hour of glory with the Companions Knights, of which he will launch the idea and the deployment before this retirement, which he apprehends like a first death.

[Judy · Rating 4 out of 5]

V S Naipaul is one of the authors I am following in My Big Fat Reading Project. His fifth novel marks a change in his life but maintains the themes of his first four novels which were set in Trinidad, where he was born as a descendant of people brought there by the British from India and indentured to fill certain positions. This novel is set in London.

What I have liked about Naipaul so far is his incisive, mostly uncomplimentary approach to characters, society, and politics. I will see as I continue to read him, but I suspect it is that quality which garnered him the Nobel Prize. It certainly applies to his 1963 novel.

Mr Stone is so very British, so much so that he is almost a caricature. I felt that Naipaul created him out of a foreigner's viewpoint which indeed he was when he came to Oxford for his university education in the early 1950s. I also felt that he was probably trying to imitate some of the more renowned British writers of those times.

A long-time bachelor in a lowly job, nearing retirement, Mr Stone suddenly marries a widow, the former Mrs Springer, whom he met at a party. A year of adjustment follows in which she takes over his household. One night in his study, he is pondering his approaching retirement and another sudden change comes over him. He creates the idea of the Knights Companion, a sort of fraternal organization of which the members will go about visiting and giving aid to retired men.

After a fevered few nights writing up his idea, he presents it to the head of his company as a program to bring goodwill to the business. He is promoted, becomes a department head with his own staff, and the plan is a huge success. Of course there are still bumps in the road; certain upsets and dishonest actions he must smooth out and a public relations man who tries to and in the end does steal his thunder.

I say that Naipaul's themes remain because once again he has created a hapless male, alternately puffed up and failing, insensitive to and troubled by women, who tries to buck an entrenched system. He is still incisive and tragicomic.

Naipaul in later years has suffered from the ravages of public opinion, labeled as racist and misogynist. I don't doubt the charges. I read him because I am female and he is male. He shows me a male viewpoint of a certain stripe and I find it fascinating no matter how off-putting it may be.

[Billy O'Callaghan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mr Stone and the Knights Companion is one of V.S. Naipaul's early novels, and it's a bit of a gem. After four previous novels (though one, Miguel Street, is actually a collection of linked stories), this marks his first venture away from Caribbean characters, and tells the story of English middle-class life, as suffered by Richard Stone: a bachelor unhappily bound to a lifetime of service as 'head librarian' of Excal Corporation. Work is a drudge and life is bearably unhappy, existing in a crumbling old suburban London house with an elderly live-in maid, visiting his widowed sister and her obnoxious only daughter, waging occasional war with the neighbouring cat, and waiting out his days in dread of a retirement that is growing increasingly imminent.
One of the year's rare bright spots (not that he particularly views it as such) is a standing invitation from his only friend, a former university buddy, to an annual Christmas party, and it is here that he meets Margaret, freshly widowed and delightfully witty, albeit in a grief-stricken sort of way. They soon marry and get to know one another, though life doesn't brighten very much.
And then, one night, Stone – who has never been the go-getting type – is struck by an revolutionary idea. He works out the details and brings it to the company's head man: put the retired to work, on a voluntary basis, visiting other pensioners connected with the firm who might be in need of assistance. It's decided that such a scheme would reflect well on Excal from a public relations perspective and would cost very little. Stone is put in charge, assisted by a young enthusiast named Whymper; a name – the Knights Companion - is thought up, and the engine set in motion. But it's not long before Stone begins to feel sidelined, as his idea is taken in different directions.
This is a quick and thoroughly delightful read. I am one of those who rank V.S. Naipaul as the finest living English-language writer. On a sentence level, his books are just magnificent. His early novels are full of humour (something that fades from his middle-period novels, though those later books possess an abundance of other strengths), and at least half of this one will be read around a fixed smile:

“In the bathroom, which before had held his own smell, to him always a source of satisfaction, there was now a warm, scented dampness. Then he saw her teeth. It had never occurred to him that they might be false. He felt cheated and annoyed. Regret came to him, and a prick of the sharpest fear. Then he took out his own teeth and sadly climbed the steps to their bedroom.”

The comedy is gentle and yet subtly wicked through the first two or three chapters, but there is also a counteracting sadness, a growing sense of melancholia that's beautifully measured and pitch-perfect in exploring the themes of time's passing, loneliness and self-worth.
The reputation of 'Mr Stone and the Knights Companion' probably got a bit swamped by the novel that preceded it (the masterful 'A House for Mr Biswas'), but it's certainly worth the time of any admirer of Naipaul's writing.

[notgettingenough · Rating 3 out of 5]

Studies in bitter and twisted by Coetzee, Faye and Naipaul.

How do bitter and twisted, lonely, emotionally crippled older men start out? Men whose relationships, if any, have always soured early, men whose jobs are all that sustain them, mediocre jobs with colleagues who never become friends. Men whose strict weekend routines stop loneliness from being more than an uneasy feeling which never quite comes to the surface. Never quite acknowledged.

They start out as bitter and twisted Youth. In this novel by Coetzee, we see the establishment of such a being, a young man who thinks somehow that his cold alienating ways will make him a poet. When it turns out that he has nothing more in him than the capacity to be a computer programmer, and an undistinguished one of those, he sees his future as a hollow meaningless thing. We do not find out if his life remained the mean and nasty existence he portended.

Enter Nagasaki. Here we meet a man who might be the person Youth foresaw. Towards the end of his nondescript career he is alone, as far as we know he has never had a meaningful relationship with anybody, including his relations. When not at work he is at home, when at home, the person he talks to is himself. He has no friends, no interests, nothing about him justifies his carbon footprint. Like Youth, he is given the opportunity to live, to behave with largesse, to give. Like Youth he cannot do that. Both of them experience discomfort, unease at their utter meanness of spirit, but neither is capable of being a new person.

Is this inevitable? Enter Mr Stone of Mr Stone and the Knights Companion.

https://alittleteaalittlechat.wordpre...

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

A life-long bachelor a few years from retirement and without achievement in his career drastically changes everything in a few sudden bursts of inspiration. Mr. Stone and the Knights Companion is a novella by V.S. Naipaul detailing the how an average man achieved the one great achievement in his life.

The titular character is a middle management lifer in the late 1950s/early 1960s London with retirement slowly getting closer when he suddenly falls for a twice widowed woman and during a holiday finds inspiration to create a program for retirees for his company. Naipaul creates a mediocre man living an eccentrically self-regulated life that suddenly changes everything up not once but twice and sees how things turn out. The pacing is pretty good and the second characters alright, but Naipaul excelled in portraying his main character’s arc which was both triumphant—albeit all too brief—and sad all too predictable when you look at the whole novella.

Mr. Stone and the Knights Companion is only 126 pages long, but V.S Naipual shows the humdrum of a middling man whose one burst of inspiration is just a blip in his life.

[Julian Worker · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a thin book that is slightly difficult to read as it contains a lot of self-contemplation by Mr Stone on how he's reacting to the presence of other characters. Rather than showing us, the author tells us, often in turgid details so it's like wading through a small bog, you can get through it but it's an effort. This seems to be a feature of certain writers such as Virginia Woolf, Joseph Conrad, and now VS Naipaul.

At the age of 62 Mr Stone is a confirmed bachelor and enjoying life. Then he meets a recent widow and decides he wants to wed her. They call each other 'Doggie' as a term of affection, a way of accessing each other's loving feelings if they've had a falling out. This marriage seems to change Mr Stone and he conceives an idea 'the Knights Companion' for his company and puts the plan into action with the help of a man called Whymper who ends up trying to take the credit and getting the daughter of Mr Stone's sister in the family way.

I'm glad I read the book, but I'm not sure I'll read any other books by VS Naipaul, even though he did win the 2001 Nobel Prize for Literature.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this to be a rather odd little book. It concerns itself with a number of themes: self-perception, aging, creativity, social mores, frienship, work, marriage, or, more simply, life and what one makes of it before a gradual fade to death.
Mr. Stone is no longer a young man but initially believes himself to be happy/satisfied with the world he has created for himself as a bachelor, employed in a modest role with a large company. He slowly comes to believe (perhaps) that he is not quite as happy/content as he thought. He marries and involves himself in the creation of a major project at work, both life-altering actions. Doubt and perhaps regret follow. The world Mr. Stone felt himself so aligned with, the quotidian things which structured that world (a cat, now euthanised; a tree he contemplated daily, taking note of its gradual changes through the seasons, continues to change while he realizes there will no longer be a Spring for him;daily rituals which once gave strucure if not meaning to his life are now gone).
Mr. Stone changed his life out of sincere motivations, only to realize "Nothing that came out of the heart, nothing that was pure out to be exposed...Nothing that was pure ought to be exposed...All action, all creation was a betrayal of feeling and truth. And in the process of this betrayal his world had come tumbling about him. There remained to him nothing to which he could anchor himself....In the routine of the office, as in the rhythm of the seasons, he could no longer participate." Ultimately, Mr. Stone emerges as a very sad figure, once happy, perhaps content, now adrift from all that had previously held him. Again, an odd little book, an interesting, highly original tale on ancient themes.

[Joyce · Rating 3 out of 5]

V.S. Naipaul is now regarded with the highest esteem in the world of literature and this slim little book is one of those that built his reputation. Originally published in 1963 and really more of a novella than a novel, Mr. Stone is clearly but tenderly rendered as our hero. He's a librarian for a large British company who is swept out of his sedentary and almost curmudgeonly life first by the woman who becomes Mrs. Stone, and second by one great idea which lifts him from the library into a new world at the "head office." These two sequential events, coming at age 62, give him much to absorb and reflect upon as we listen to his thoughts over the two years prior to his retirement.

Naipaul excels at the details of characterization; the telling tics and quirks of Mr. Stone's household, which consists of Margaret and an elderly maid, Miss Millington, his friends and family are revealed slowly and sincerely but with the brilliance of a harsh single spotlight. As a longtime fan of Naipaul's, I thoroughly enjoyed this brief foray into Mr. Stone's life.

[John Mccullough · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book a long time ago whilst in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. It was a pleasant book, the kind you want to curl up with on a cold night. Good show. Apparently not one of his best, but really good - what you would expect of a Nobel Laureate.

Added 12 August 2018:

A stated above, I read this book many years ago whilst in England and strangely several days ago I had a desire to reread the book. It was only this afternoon that I discovered that Naipaul died yesterday (11 August 2018). Strange coincidence.

The book deals with Mr Richard Stone of London as he slides toward retirement. For 62 years he has lead a well-paced life, mercifully uneventful, steady, filled with small daily rituals aided by the ministrations of his employee, Miss Millington who keeps house and cooks for him with a modicum of attention to detail which well suits the taste of Stone who prefers a moderate touch that does not interfere with his desire for isolation. He works in an office, comes home, eats what the severely aging and increasingly plump Miss Millington places in front of him.

At Christmastime he is invited to his old classmate’s annual party and meets the newly-widowed and extremely lively Mrs Margaret Springer. One thing leads to another and they are quietly married and his idyllic life is disrupted in ways he never planned. In order to secure peace he has a genius idea to begin an organization eventually named The Knight’s Companion. He soon finds himself working with the overly-enthusiastic Bill Whymper and the story takes off from there.

This is a story about reclusive English bachelorhood and its destruction by well-meaning women, about the feeling of uselessness of those facing the end of employment and impending mortality. Naipaul approaches the topic with both humour and pathos. It is about endings and beginnings. It is a comfortable book with a story that does not quite end. It is not a book that cynics or space cadets will like. On a cold, foggy winter night, grab a Guinness, as Mr Stone would do, relax, pick up he book and read to your heart’s content.

B: 11 Aug 2018
E: 12 Aug 2018

[Aaron · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found Mr Stone And The Knights Companion to be an interesting read, particularly in Naipaul's construction of Mr Stone as a sort of everyman who struggles with the torpidity of his existence. I believe the challenge of Mr Stone is still relevant even almost 60 years after the novel was published. The issues of meaning, fulfilment, self-perception, and loneliness are all still experienced by the generations of today, and indeed are themes that have been explored by authors throughout history. Naipaul's exploration of these topics in Mr Stone And The Knights Companion must have been especially relatable for readers when it was published in 1963.

I've found it interesting to think about how we might construct Mr Stone in the 2020s. Would the ubiquity of social media connect him with society (or isolate him further)? Would he be more compelled to live as opposed to just surviving? Would he even be the same age?

As someone who straddles the generational boundaries of the Millennials and Generation Z, I found myself relating to Mr Stone throughout the novel (perhaps sans some of his sociopolitical views). With Mr Stone having gone through this journey at the tail end of his life, perhaps I, at the start of my adult life, might learn from him how best to live my life.

This was my very first introduction to Naipaul, and I'm looking forward to exploring some of the other works in his canon – would appreciate any recommendations!

[Lynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

With the impending publication of Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death by Martin Yalom, it may be time to look at some attempts in fiction to answer questions about the terror of death.
Mr. Stone has just retired (at an age that would seem quite young to most Americans) and he is terrified at the bleakness of his life without his job as a librarian for an insurance company.
With a deftly underplayed hand, V.S.Naipaul leads us through the late-blooming creativity in the Mr. Stone's bachelor soul that takes him out of his tiny, safely ordered world and into unaccustomed relations with others. He marries for the first time and starts an organization of retirees dedicated to mutual assistance (the Knights Companion of the title).
There is no sentimentality here and Mr. Stone is not spared by his inventiveness. Instead, his life becomes a suffused with meaning and he lives it a bit more fully. This is a beautifully moral tale without the burden of parable. I reread it this week, and being twenty years closer to the inevitable than I was when I first read it, I found it especially and gently moving.

Lynn Hoffman, author of the raucously uplifting bang BANG: A Novel and the thoroughly voluptuous The New Short Course in Wine.

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

An utterly charming little book. Equal parts bittersweet and hilarious. Mr. Stone is approaching retirement age, but before he gets there, his life is about to be thrown into a bit of an upheaval. An aging bachelor used to living in relative obscurity, content to watch the seasons pass while defending his garden from the neighbors' terrifying cat (which he attempts to lure into a trap with cheese, before realizing that it's rats and not cats that would be likely to go for this), he finds himself with a sudden restlessness brought about by fear of his own mortality. So he decides to marry. And then he hits upon an idea, one that is to develop into the defining contribution of his career...although he might not receive all of the credit for it.

Is there a better comic writer alive today?

Recommended if you enjoy Coen brothers films like A Serious Man or Inside Llewyn Davis, which strike me as having a similar darkly comic tone.

[Jo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ouch! This was such a wry book, with little social vignettes and situations that were so - British. Philosophical and perceptive; a reflection on life and its passing. Not a plot-driven novel - the characters and their place in the world is all. Very spare and precise, but not depressing. Worth reading if you are in the mood for reflection and re-evaluation.

[Ken McDouall · Rating 3 out of 5]

Compact little novel that features Naipaul's always impressive powers of description, but the character development here is a bit confused. We're still not sure just what to think of Mr. Stone at the end of the novel, though he has succeeded in surprising us.

[Dave · Rating 3 out of 5]

Entertaining. How well by this time Naipaul has assimilated England to be able to have such fun with 'normal British society' in this very short novel !

[Sean Meriwether · Rating 4 out of 5]

When Mr. Stone, a confirmed bachelor and exemplary curmudgeon, looks into the lonely maw of his supposedly golden years he decides, seemingly on a whim, to take a wife, the vivacious widow, Margaret. His goal at the outset of the novel is outsmarting and assassinating the nasty neighbor’s unnamed black cat, an animal who plays an outsized role in this short book and is as cantankerous as Mr. Stone (but more successful with the ladies). The story of this failed assassination is parlayed into a joke to impress his future wife at a dinner party (and there are an inordinate number of dinner parties with equally awkward jokes filling these pages). Once Margaret moves in his quiet ordered life is invaded by women, including his distant sister and her odious child, Gwen, and his underappreciated maid, Mrs. Millington. Mr. Stone escapes to his study (much like an author) to draft a plan to create a society of men, retirees of his company, who, like his near-future self, have lost their life-defining work. The project, the Knights Companion of the title, quickly gains success and publicity and he tastes, for a brief moment, the thrill of success for the one novel idea in his life. This thunder is stolen by an odious and awkward younger man, Mr. Wymper, who is credited for the idea. The last laugh in this dark comedy is that not only does Mr. Stone not get credit for his plan, but will soon be one of the men relegated to the dust bin of his company and a Knights Companion himself. The cat, with whom he had established a report, is euthanized in the end because the family no longer wants him, foreshadowing the possible demise of Mr. Stone. A sad ending for an unlived life. In some ways this is reminiscent of The Old Man and the Sea, in which an older man (and novelist) is not valued for his contribution.

[Bert van der Vaart · Rating 3 out of 5]

I still believe VS Naipaul is a superbly gifted writer, but increasingly I am convinced he was a deeply unhappy man. While in his nonfiction books, his analytical intelligence and sense of irony reveals deep contradictions en route to uncovering essential truths, in his novels (like A House for Mr Biswas or the Suffrage of Elvira), he tends to paint a pretty bleak picture. So does he do in Mr Stone and the Knights Companion. In the tail end of a comprehensively mediocre career, Mr. Stone meets and marries a widow. Around the same time, he takes the unheard of step of submitting a plan to his English corporate employer's CEO/Chairman of a volunteer army of ex-Company pensioners, who are to follow up with other pensioners and find minor ways of helping them and checking also that they are alive (therefore entitled to collect their pension funds) or have in fact passed away (and should be stricken from the pension rolls). Successful, Mr Stone should be happy at his late achievements--but instead his brooding nature and sense of self-entitlement reduces his happiness and (re)turns him to the mediocre self he had formerly been. Not unbelievable, but at the end of the book, one has to ask oneself: why did I read this? Maybe as a strong example of how man can snatch joy from the jaws of his existence? Or that we always find a way to find discontentment in the midst of what could otherwise be happiness and fulfilment? Noticing the leaves on the tree outside his bathroom window, the (anti)hero notes: "They were only a reminder of the even flowing of time, of his mounting experience, of lengthening past." Not exactly inspirational.

[André · Rating 5 out of 5]

'Mr. Stone en het riddergenootschap' uit 1963 is totaal ander werk dan we van Naipaul gewoon zijn. Taal en stijl zijn zeer Brits Angelsaksisch en zijn kritisch oog richt zich enkel naar
de Britten en de Britse mentaliteit. Mr. Stone is een tevreden vrijgezel die het beredderen vanhethuisgezingraagoverlaataan zijn trouwe huishoudster Miss Millington. Eenmaal de `midlife'voorbij vindt hij dat het nu toch wel tijd wordt om de knusheid van een trouwe levensgezellin in huis te halen. Tijdens een oersaaie party ontmoet hij de plichtsgetrouwe maar optimistische weduwe Margaret die ook nog op een schelmse manier met humor kan omgaan. Margaret wordt Mis. Stone en ondergaat een complete metamorfose. Ze wordt de zorgende echtgenote die de plaats van beide echtelieden in ere wil houden. Mr. Stone vindt al die maatschappijbevestigende gezelligheid net iets te veel van het goede. Hij mag er niet aan denken dat hij na zijn oppensioenstelling continu dit huiselijk leventje moet leiden of liever... lijden. Preventief lanceert hij in de firma waar hij werkt de idee om een riddergenootschap op te richten van gepensioneerden die bij de firma betrokken willen blijven. De idee om eenzáamheid en passiviteit bij gepensioneerden weg te nemen slaat bij de firmadirectie goed aan. Hij krijgt een budget en een PR man ter beschikking om het in realiteit om te zetten. 'Mr. Stone en het riddergenootschap' is een zeer goed geconstrueerde roman, waarin alle personages zonder enige uitzondering goed uit de verf komen. Naipaul laat duidelijk blijken dat hij het reilen en zeilen in Engeland zeer goed geobserveerd heeft. De ironie en de karikaturale toon zijn dan ook niet misplaatst of goedkoop.

[Kate · Rating 1 out of 5]

"Mr Stone and the Knights Companion is the story of Mr Stone's last months before retirement from his post as librarian in a large commercial firm. At such a time, however well-regulated a man's life has been, he begins to feel a chill creeping in from the future. Mr Stone, whose life has been well-regulated to the point of eccentricity, becomes so rattled by the intimations of mortality that at sixty-two, in spite of having enjoyed his existence as a bachelor, he gets married. And as though that were not astonishing enough, he goes on to have an inspiration which changes the tenor of his life. The creative spirit seizes him; he conceives an idea, embodies it in a plan, and persuades his firm to turn it into fact. In practice this idea proves to be a success, and incredulously Mr Stone taste the joys of achievement."
~~ back cover

But the joys don't last long, and he becomes more and more disillusioned, and feels more and more "a chill creeping in from the future."

The book seemed disjointed, or perhaps that was only the interior life of Mr Stone. A funny little man, very set in his ways, and branching out in a new enterprise proved to be upsetting in the end. He became wary, and in turn the other employees couldn't warm to him -- he became an object of ... not pity, but aloofness.

I didn't particularly enjoy this book. It was an excursion through a House of Mirrors, which is somewhat what Mr stone's life was like. After he married, of course, and definitely after creating the Knights Companion.

[Margaret Pitcher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully written (of course) story of a middle aged man coming to the end of his dull career as a company librarian.

It is set in a middle class suburb of London that, if it exists, has changed out of all recognition, among a class of people, living in genteel semi-poverty, who do not exist any more.

His preoccupations are his lawn and the neighbourhood cat. He ruins the one in an attempt to prevent damage by the other.

He does somethings about his life and his work - with mixed results- but is ultimately able to mostly make peace with himself and ….?

[AYCIL · Rating 4 out of 5]

The characters are real, troubled, perplexed by life.
Plot is secondary to the characters (perhaps a Naipaul trait?). The reader feels the stultifying atmosphere of the house. Descriptions of the monotony, boredom of Stone's life and relationships with all its ups and downs.

[Arundhati · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book highlights a crucial aspect of human life and what it can cause a man to do. Loved the book by the time I finished it, left an impact. It does get testing in between though. That apart, a good read!

[Suki_econ · Rating 4 out of 5]

What happens when a man who never risked anything in life, suddenly decides to stick his neck out as he is about to retire from his long-held job? Is he rewarded or does it become a joke?

Lovely read. I would highly recommend.

[Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

I think my favorite descriptor from book club was whiplash. Naipaul throws the highlights of the plot and you, then expects you to figure it out. Everything in this book felt very intentional, but I was often left wondering intentional because…and I couldn’t fill in the blanks.

[Justin Howe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nebbish, office drone Mr Stone has a moment of inspiration just as retirement begins to loom heavily on his horizon.

[Mary Bellamy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Proof that the grumpy old man genre did not begin with Ove.The world that Mr. Stone occupies is very cramped, you'd be grumpy living in it too. The victories are small, but carefully observed.

[Gregoire Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really fun vision of a man at the end of his tether with work

[Sharani Venkat · Rating 5 out of 5]

good app

[Jackson · Rating 5 out of 5]

whoa whoa depressing. plenty of food for thought, but cod liver oil, too~