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Sudden Wealth
Miles, a computer programmer and obsessive cyclist, made tons of money in Silicon Valley but it means nothing to him since he can no longer feel any kind of emotion. Anna, a German car designer can't find a reason to stop sleeping. The two have nothing in common except a radical trauma therapist.
Paperback
First published March 15, 2001
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About the author
Robert Llewellyn
57 books75 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads data base.
Robert Llewellyn is an English actor, presenter, and writer. He is best known for his roles as presenter of Scrapheap Challenge, and as the android Kryten in the hit sitcom Red Dwarf.
Robert Llewellyn is an English actor, presenter, and writer. He is best known for his roles as presenter of Scrapheap Challenge, and as the android Kryten in the hit sitcom Red Dwarf.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
March 9, 2023
This is the first of three Robert Llewellyn books that I picked up as part of a job lot on eBay. I was super happy to find it because Llewellyn played Kryten in Red Dwarf, which is one of my favourite TV shows. I knew that he had an autobiography, but I didn’t know that he’d written a few novels.
Even after finishing this, I’m not entirely sure what I made of it. There are some flashes of genius and some flashes of mediocrity, and it does read like a book written by an actor and presenter as opposed to a professional writer. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
One of the main elements of the plot here is that there’s a therapist who specialises in doing a type of extreme shock therapy. He threatens to kill clients and has fake terror attacks set up to scare the crap out of them. The idea is that if they’re unhappy with their lives, he can make them grateful to be alive by taking them to the point of death.
There’s also a lot of stuff about Europe, the European Union and the Euro, which is interesting to read in a post-Brexit society. We have to bear in mind that this book was written and published in around 2000, and the concept for it came about towards the tail end of the eighties. You can sense that in a lot of the story elements.
The time at which the book was written also leads to some interesting technological references that feel dated today, from references to satellite phones to one of the characters having a high speed dial-up internet connection installed. But in a way, that had to happen, because technology is one of the core themes to the novel.
All in all, I’m glad that I picked this up, but I think that the only reason you’re likely to enjoy it is if you’re a Robert Llewellyn fan and you want to see what his writing is like. So yeah!
Even after finishing this, I’m not entirely sure what I made of it. There are some flashes of genius and some flashes of mediocrity, and it does read like a book written by an actor and presenter as opposed to a professional writer. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
One of the main elements of the plot here is that there’s a therapist who specialises in doing a type of extreme shock therapy. He threatens to kill clients and has fake terror attacks set up to scare the crap out of them. The idea is that if they’re unhappy with their lives, he can make them grateful to be alive by taking them to the point of death.
There’s also a lot of stuff about Europe, the European Union and the Euro, which is interesting to read in a post-Brexit society. We have to bear in mind that this book was written and published in around 2000, and the concept for it came about towards the tail end of the eighties. You can sense that in a lot of the story elements.
The time at which the book was written also leads to some interesting technological references that feel dated today, from references to satellite phones to one of the characters having a high speed dial-up internet connection installed. But in a way, that had to happen, because technology is one of the core themes to the novel.
All in all, I’m glad that I picked this up, but I think that the only reason you’re likely to enjoy it is if you’re a Robert Llewellyn fan and you want to see what his writing is like. So yeah!
April 5, 2019
A plot in search of characters was the phrase that rolled around my head when I had finished this. Very much of its period (late 90s) and focussed (blurrily) on the fin de siecle effects of sudden wealth on ordinary people. The main characters are painted very faintly, but are a dot net startup multimillionaire, a PR guru and a car designer (not sure how she fits into the scheme).
Odd book all round - I read it fairly quickly, but I didn't really care what happened to the characters. Neither, I suspect, did the author.
Odd book all round - I read it fairly quickly, but I didn't really care what happened to the characters. Neither, I suspect, did the author.
March 8, 2020
I enjoyed reading this book, it had an original story fixed firmly in the time it was written and made a refreshing change
August 9, 2011
I enjoyed reading this. Good to have a fresh story line that is beyond expectations.
January 24, 2014
very odd but enjoyable. the ending got a bit confusing (I must be thick)
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews