h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

So what did you think?

Some questions:

Was the main character a hero or anti-hero?

What was Veronica's problem?

I loved this book, it reminded me of Brideshead Revisited (Evelen Waugh) or The Liar (Stephen Fry) in atmosphere. It had a sort of classic school story feel to it (I always loved The Chalet school when I was young). It had a nice peaceful pace. I thought it was brilliantly well written.

I found it a bit predictable; Adrian arrives they all have crushes on him; he goes to Oxford. The first suicide is followed by another suicide (with a certain predictability). The mother’s strange foray made it almost inevitable that somebody was going to sleep with her. I must admit I expected it to be the protagonist.

The predictableness of the suicide was interesting, I’ve been thinking about suicide, most of the people who I know who have committed suicide were linked to other people who committed suicide. I was listening to the Freakonomics podcast on suicide, which talked about copy-cat suicides. It also talked about suicide as a rational action; I found myself trying to do a cost-benefit analysis on Adrian’s suicide. I couldn’t quite work out when he committed suicide, before or after the baby was born?

That there was some relationship with the special needs group was also obvious and I found myself thinking that the protagonist was being extraordinarily dense. I thought the ‘knowingness’ of Margaret was irritating.

In terms of the questions- I didn’t think there was anything wrong with Veronica. When we first meet her she is simply a young girl at college who is enjoying a relationship that is as new or alien to her as to him. They are both just playing at it. She seems to be marginally more confident than him but not extremely so, I thought he projected a lot onto her.
She didn’t seem to go out with Adrian till after they split up and given how dull the main protagonist was it seemed reasonable. It had also been set up- he was the catch, the cool one. She was supposed to want to date him before she met him.
Later she clearly acted oddly, but who wouldn’t? Her mother had stolen her boyfriend (presumably splitting up the family) and got her pregnant before killing himself. Our protagonist then turned up, stalked her and then started going on about it, whilst apparently being really thick.

I thought he was neither hero nor anti-hero but narrator. The drama had all happened elsewhere and he was telling their story. He just seemed to think it was all about him.

Ooh...

*the sound of penny dropping* was it explict about the mother and Adrian? I guess it must be.

Thanks. I'm aware that I had read them faster than most and I didn't want to predjudice people by putting all my reviews first.

I think what annoyed me about Veronica was that she didn't actually tell the protagnoist any of the stuff about her mother and Adrian - and rather expected him to guess it. Which I didn't guess, and then

Interesting that the second sucide was almost a copy of the first. I hadn't thought about that until now - the same situation, if not the same method. Suicides do copy each other, a fact that I find depressing because no one should take their own life as part of a trend. I also find it depressing that when the average amount of paracetamol in a packet was reduced less people took overdoses. Apparently suicidal people found it took much trouble to buy several packets of the stuff.

I did find the protagnoist/narrator annoying, and I found it curious that he choose to tell the story through someone who was only involved in such a peripheral way. I wonder if it would have been better if told from the point of view of Veronica's mother.

I don't think people kill themselves as a part of a trend exactly. I think it is more that it becomes a possibility that is no longer unthinkable.

Do any of these books avoid the death of main characters? I could do with reading something more cheerful.

No of the main characters die in 'The sister's brothers' but given that it's about contract killers.. actually it is quite funny.

This book won't be available in the US until October 5, 2011.

Hi Electra - give me an e mail - [email protected].. should you want to read along.

Thanks for the offer, Dr. Zen, but I think we'll give this one a miss as well as Half Blood Blues. The others we might get on our Nook from Barnes and Noble --but there are also time and financial considerations.

No worries just read the ones that you can - we don't have to all read them all.

Thanks for joining in.

I think I judged this book too harshly. Now that it has won I realise the reason I found it so predictable was that I had already heard it late at night on Radio 4.

I had another thought about this book: It was good, very good, and the way the main character was a bit of an anti-hero, and not a very pleasant one at that was original.

It also reminded me of other works involving anti-heros, like Uycelles by James Joyce, well like I image that to be.

Do you think that this will stand the test of time. Will this tell us how people lived in the 2000s in the way that Dickens does.

Interesting question, found it quaint. I already thought it didn't speak of 'our' time but harked back to the golden era of the authors school days.