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A Ladder to the Sky edition by John Boyne Literature Fiction eBooks

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A Ladder to the Sky edition by John Boyne Literature Fiction eBooks

A Ladder to the Sky is so hard to describe properly but it's so damn good that I'm going to give it a try: man without scruples (or empathy, or any basic human emotions, really) wants more than anything to be an author. Never mind the fact that he can't write.

Is he a success?

You betcha!

Oh, Maurice. From the start, when a late in life moderately successful author, Erich, sees you and is instantly besotted, you take his time, his money, and a story from his past and boom! You're on your way.

Getting there, you encounter Dash, who also becomes besotted, and use him to make sure you wedge open every door in publishing you can, with an unsuccessful encounter with Gore Vidal (!) along the way.

The brief interlude with Gore Vidal was my favorite (say what you will about Gore Vidal, but he was deeply aware of the human capacity for terrible behavior) until there's the section narrated by:

Edith. Up and coming British author, madly in love with Maurice, and oh! She's my favorite. So full of charm and passion and with such a bright future. And that second book she's working on...

Well.

Maurice, you "help" that along, don't you?

Then, finally, you're a huge success, with an actual literary magazine, Stori (the title seems to have punctuation of some " at the end, naturally) and you have your own other heart's desire, a child. Your very own son, Daniel.

Too bad children are so much work. And so needy! But he's a bright boy and he does love to read. Of course, there's that pesky asthma. Still. Onward! There are more ideas to steal, (convient, to run a magazine every aspiring author appears to want to be in) more novels to write. More fame to be had.

And then, you're older and no longer published but maybe, with this doctoral student, Theo, who has been sniffing around (and who has a big publishing house editor father!), there's still one last idea to be found and appropriated (because, really, it's not the writing that's hard, it's the idea!) perhaps it's time for one more great novel...

Ladder to the Sky is a deft skewering of publishing while still managing to be a love letter to both books and the way the very best of them work, by laying bare some part of what our best and worst selves are.

Oh, and Maurice? The main character, on whose life so many authors enter (and exit)?

Sociopath. (On a good day, mind!)

Ladders to the Sky has to be experienced. It manages to be full of life while its main character is best at stealing it, full of love (again, while Maurice has none), and a love letter to the power of words starring someone with no real facility for them. It's brilliant, it's thoughtful and yes, it's core character has none of these traits.

And the ending! Oh, I laughed out loud as Maurice recounts his last act of "writing." (And how the publishing world receives it)

Ladder to the Sky is, hands down, one of the most twisted love letters to books and their power I've read. IOne of the best books of 2018.


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A Ladder to the Sky edition by John Boyne Literature Fiction eBooks Reviews

I am a huge fan of the novels of John Boyne, from The Heart's Invisible Furies to A History of Loneliness to The Absolutist. His novels are definite page turners suspenseful; well-plotted; full of surprises, and---as in Invisible Furies, for instance, filled with memorable, heart-rending and very well-executed scenes (Amsterdam, the hospital death scene, etc.). However, things happen in Boyne's latest novel A Ladder to the Sky that seem to push the limits of the reader's credibility, although I admire Boyne for striving in this book for something a little more experimental. It is very difficult to believe that a character as diabolical, as clever and as cautious as Maurice would, in the end, be caught in the trap of Theo Field. In fact, some of their pub dialogues just don't ring true. They seem a bit contrived. And the novel's conclusion seems laughable. Is the novel a satire? It doesn't seem so. Nor does it work as a morality tale. Additionally, the Interlude involving Gore Vidal is digressive, albeit brilliant and entertaining. And the development of the relationship between Maurice and his son Daniel doesn't seem drawn well or convincingly. Some shifts in point of view also seem awkward, jarring and unnecessary, such as the switch to Edith's point of view. Overall, I still liked the novel---and I remain a John Boyne fan. It's a book---like his others---that you will find hard to put down. It's intriguing. But it seems a little more---uneven?----than some of his previous works.
From start to finish the lines of this novel are blurred by the relentless pursuit of fame by the protagonist, Maurice. Knowing nothing about the story line I initially found the change of structure unsettling. Indeed, for some many pages, I was not sure whether there was a connection with the various narrators. On the edge of giving up, I realised I was in fact reading a triumphant piece of multi layered fiction, which was on the edge of being a thriller. But what will enthrall is not the dark side of Maurice but his drive to become a writer. John Boyne takes you inside not only his mind but those of his wife, Edith and others as they all yearn to become authors. Towards the end, if I have one criticism, I became rather bored by the London pub meetings Maurice has with Theo, when the dialogue between the two risked loosing my interest but it lead to one of the most extraordinary and powerful endings of any book I have read. I cannot imagine what it must be like for an author to write so technically and critically about.......writing a book. It is a masterclass of fiction and only the second (War & Peace my first) novel that I would ever consider reading again.
A Ladder to the Sky is so hard to describe properly but it's so damn good that I'm going to give it a try man without scruples (or empathy, or any basic human emotions, really) wants more than anything to be an author. Never mind the fact that he can't write.

Is he a success?

You betcha!

Oh, Maurice. From the start, when a late in life moderately successful author, Erich, sees you and is instantly besotted, you take his time, his money, and a story from his past and boom! You're on your way.

Getting there, you encounter Dash, who also becomes besotted, and use him to make sure you wedge open every door in publishing you can, with an unsuccessful encounter with Gore Vidal (!) along the way.

The brief interlude with Gore Vidal was my favorite (say what you will about Gore Vidal, but he was deeply aware of the human capacity for terrible behavior) until there's the section narrated by

Edith. Up and coming British author, madly in love with Maurice, and oh! She's my favorite. So full of charm and passion and with such a bright future. And that second book she's working on...

Well.

Maurice, you "help" that along, don't you?

Then, finally, you're a huge success, with an actual literary magazine, Stori (the title seems to have punctuation of some " at the end, naturally) and you have your own other heart's desire, a child. Your very own son, Daniel.

Too bad children are so much work. And so needy! But he's a bright boy and he does love to read. Of course, there's that pesky asthma. Still. Onward! There are more ideas to steal, (convient, to run a magazine every aspiring author appears to want to be in) more novels to write. More fame to be had.

And then, you're older and no longer published but maybe, with this doctoral student, Theo, who has been sniffing around (and who has a big publishing house editor father!), there's still one last idea to be found and appropriated (because, really, it's not the writing that's hard, it's the idea!) perhaps it's time for one more great novel...

Ladder to the Sky is a deft skewering of publishing while still managing to be a love letter to both books and the way the very best of them work, by laying bare some part of what our best and worst selves are.

Oh, and Maurice? The main character, on whose life so many authors enter (and exit)?

Sociopath. (On a good day, mind!)

Ladders to the Sky has to be experienced. It manages to be full of life while its main character is best at stealing it, full of love (again, while Maurice has none), and a love letter to the power of words starring someone with no real facility for them. It's brilliant, it's thoughtful and yes, it's core character has none of these traits.

And the ending! Oh, I laughed out loud as Maurice recounts his last act of "writing." (And how the publishing world receives it)

Ladder to the Sky is, hands down, one of the most twisted love letters to books and their power I've read. IOne of the best books of 2018.