Well.....I found it slow to read, though quite a slim book. I think I liked it better once I’d finished it than while I was reading it, if that makes any sense. Once I had the whole concept in view, I found it really quite interesting, but the execution was not so compelling as perhaps it should have been. The brilliance I found in Morality Play is evident here but not complete.I really like the idea that what I read would have been a great swashbuckling romance, if told from the point of view of one of the lovers, but is instead presented in the voice of a person on the sidelines, a person so unobtrusive as to be almost invisible even to those who speak to him. This person, small-souled and self-absorbed, reports events as they relate to him, which reduces the high drama of the other characters’ doings to faint, filtered echoes. As I say, it’s a very good concept, and the more I think about it now, the better I like it. But there are few literary stunts more difficult of execution than making a character both insignificant and central to your story, and Unsworth only partially carries it off. Still better than most other writers can do on their best days.
Unsworth is a phenomenal writer and has a wonderful command of language and the imagery of his descriptions were excellent. However the novel was rather meh. The protagonist is an 'anti-hero' and a lonely, sad, and tortured individual and while he displayed some moments of humor or wit, overall Pascali is not entirely likeable, so it was difficult for me to fully immerse into the story and his environment. The novel is written as a collection of letters and unfold the narrative in the past tense. I understand why the author utilize this, but I wasn't a fan of that approach. By page 60 I realized that the entire novel was going to be written via letters. Overall it gets 3 stars, the writing itself was excellent but the story itself was rather lacking.
What do You think about Pascali's Island (1997)?
Pascali’s Island is a moral tale on the nature of treachery and it demonstrates a very special atmosphere of despondency. A charming Englishman was a professional conman so betraying the trust of the others was his artistry.“I do not believe him. That flower of betrayal, which grows with its own urgency now, outside my control – I feel its petals expand. It luxuriates in my distrust of him, and its scent is sickening, desolating. A swamp plant, Excellency, growing in the corruption of my hopes, just as fantasies have flowered in his, in Mister Bowles’s.”But there always are men of a greater perfidy and eventually they win…
—Vit Babenco
I mesmerized by this marvelous book! Protagonist reminds me ¨Bay Konsolos¨ character of mine...
—Mahmut Şenol
