Hemingway's Chair

I bought this book because I am a huge Monty Python fan, and Michael Palin is my favorite Python. Coming into the book I was surprised because I expected it to be more, I don't know... silly. But it wasn't. Don't get me wrong, it was brilliantly funny, and I easily fell in love with it. This was one of those rare books that I could not put down. Palin does an excellent job of character development, where you really fall in love with and get to know the characters, (even the small characters, like the old man who frequents the post office every morning). The plot is excellent, and the reader really gets involved and rejoices with the characters' triumphs and commiserates in their misfortunes. I can't recommend this book any higher to anyone.

I kind of wish they'd released this under a pseudonym. (Kind of. There are lots of great, unknown books around.) Deal with it; there ain't no pythons in Theston. (Must be part of that St. Patrick deal.) Palin's style, here, reminds me most of Robert Coover in "The Universal Baseball Association" (also a great read, with a similar sort of spiritual-development-through-fantasy/admiration theme going on.) The book's tightly, carefully crafted, which is also good for we plot-mongers who are fed to the teeth with either exploitative, violent crap and/or the formless, self-indulgent not-quite-poetry stuff that sometimes passes for "real" novels. This one's a must read also, for those of us looking (begging, hoping, praying...) for characters beyond the same ol' stereotypes. There isn't a flat, inhuman, dissed character (male or FEMALE!) anywhere in this story -- even the "bad" guys are complex in motivation and thought processes.

Hemingway's Chair is the story of a man who is a true fan of Ernest Hemingway and how this passion percolates through his life. Martin is an assistant postmaster in a small English town. He doesn't own a car, he uses a bike. He lives with his mother. In short a man who would seem to be quite constrained in his outlook. But this passion for Hemingway is quite at odds with the man we would pass in the street or buy stamps from at the post office. It is this passion that feeds the story that Palin tells with great skill.The writing of Michael Palin is quite at odds with the man of Monty Python skits. For me, Palin struck a chord that might be there in all of us. A desire to be in the same room with a great figure. Palin's charecter to me, doesn't want to be Hemingway, rather he would be quite happy just being in the same room with him. Seeing him, listening to him, basking in the relected glory of the man. Is this a religious zeal? I don't think so. Rather it is almost a love of the man and all he stands for.Palin's cahrecters are all believeable. We all know the bustling new boss who wants to drag a perfectly serviceable work situation into the fast lane of the GPO. To him, this is his opportunity to excel and move up the ladder of success. No matter that there are people already in place who have long service in one office, know all the customers, thier children and their varied stories. To the boss, this is of no value; streamline, moderinize and economize are his watchwords. I don't like him. He ignores the history of the people around him and the place in which he is in the process of destroying. The rest of the charecters are just as true to life, including the American woman who intrudes on Martin's life and eventually awakens in him a Hemingwayesque way of dealing with the turmoil that has so changed his life.I found this to be a book that made me think, not just about Palin's charecter, but my own outlook on life. It is not a book for someone who is looking for a printed version of the goofy charecters from Palin's sketches. Rather it is a thought provoking book that will make you sit and think afterwards and even during your reading of it. This is not a quick read but it is engrossing. It is a book, I hope that people will revisit periodically for a recharge in their batteries, the better to deal with reality.

I have long enjoyed Michael Palin as an actor, comedian and world traveller. I was not expecting much from him as a novelist, however, thinking he would be predictably zany and lightweight.It was a very pleasant surprise to find a book about ordinary people with secret lives -- a topic that always hooks me.Very well written, with British characters that ring true to my experiences in England, I truly enjoyed this book.

I think some people who read "Hemingway's Chair" were expecting a lot of silly, outrageous humor like what Michael Palin helped create in Monty Python. But that's not what this novel is, at all. It's much more serious that I expected, but it really is a great book, and the funny stuff is inserted in there with just perfect timing that made me smile for a long time afterward. This is not an action book, either (though some parts are indeed very exciting). The plot is not very complicated, but it really makes you think, and the characters are very human. The very end of the book may not be quite what the rest was, but I think it was pretty much satisfactory. This is a very sweet and well writen novel, and I very much recommend it to anyone interested in a good read.