classic

beautifully written and perfectly narrated. another Farrell classic. Peter Wickham's range of voices, across class and gender, is remarkable

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Couldn’t wait for the end

Each description was poetry
Beautifully written but intensely boring
Sets the scene and has some merit but not an enjoyable read

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Impressively exciting and dull at the same time.

I thoroughly enjoyed the beginning of this book. I greatly enjoyed the ending of this book. However, by about two thirds of the way through I began to feel that *I* was under seige and that I might never reach the end.

I cannot decide if this was very skillful on the part of the author or very lax on the part of their editor.

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1 person found this helpful

Very good

The story was well told and captured the era and the scene so well . The narration was first class .

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Deeply ironic picture of Empire

The writing has a controlled tone, ironic, cool, sometimes laugh out loud funny. A shocking yet familiar tale of imperial folly. Characters of depth and complexity, revealed through the mores of their time. The story gripped me. The reading was a little jarring, especially the falsetto and drippy women’s voices.

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Carry on at Krishnapur

The Booker Prize winner of 1973. I think a historical novel, set in the India, concentrating on the story of white settlers would struggle to make the long list today. And in someways that's fair - I remember Salman Rushdie criticising The Jewel in the Crown TV series (based on Paul Scott's Raj Quartet) because it considered only the stories of white people to be important. That's certainly true of The Siege of Krishnapur - the most finely drawn characters are white males: Collector Hopkins, Harry the soldier, Fleury the would be poet turned soldier, the 2 doctors, the padre and the magistrate. Less trouble is taken with the white women and few of the native characters even merit a name - Hari, the Maharaja's heir being an exception. So it surprised me to discover that Rushdie considered that, but for Farrell's untimely death at 44, he would have gone on to become "one of the really major novelists of the English Language."

Farrell is not Kipling, his style owes more to the irreverence of Carry on Up the Khyber than to Kim. It's wickedly funny and Farrell does not mourn the passing of the British Empire. The book was also shortlisted for the 2008 Best of the Booker but lost out, appropriately to Rushdie's Midnight's Children.

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Audible: The Siege of Krishnapur

A favourite book, bought in Audible format to refresh myself ahead of a book-group discussion.
Generally a good, gently sensitive reading with a clear voice and diction.
However I was disappointed by the reader’s chosen manner when giving voice to the dialogue of the women characters of the novel. Other male readers/actors often manage this better. He used a very fey falsetto which gave too much of an impression of vacuity; no matter what was being said. Admittedly some of the women are witless, but, by no means all - it tainted all of the female utterances.

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Great tale

I like many things about this. I like the humour and the way Farrell uses the benefit of hindsight, subtly to underline how and why things went so wrong, leading to the mutiny of the sepoys. I like the way the characters are set up and develop. There is quite a lot of bloodshed but it is so matter of fact that I didn’t find it too stomach churning. Farrell could have been a bit more concise - I didn’t really feel the need for a full exposition of John Snow’s epidemiological studies on cholera.

The reading was generally very good but bore out my theory that every narrator has at least one irritating mispronunciation. In this case it was cantonment, a word that must appear on nearly every page of the printed book. Both the Oxford dictionary and I believe it is pronounced can-TONN-ment but it was consistently delivered as can-tooon-ment. Why? Very irritating.

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4 people found this helpful

Colonial tale.

I only listened to this as the author was recommended to me by a recently deceased friend. The background of the story - the imperial, Victorian rule of India - reinforced all my dislike for the British obsession with superiority and empire. It's well written and described in great detail. The narration matches the atmosphere created by the storyline. The author must have done a lot of research as it sounds plausible throughout. Not really my type of book but it kept my interest as I repainted skirting boards and doorframes.

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