I love the books of William Boyd. His Any Human Heart is one of my top favorite novels, up there with Kavalier and Clay, Atonement and Cloud Atlas. His Ice Cream War, set in the little known African theater of World War One, is among the finest of the war/imperial novels, right up there with anything by JG Farrell. A Good Man in Africa is right up there with Graham Greene's great ones. Armadillo is a well constructed examination of identity and the idea of Englishness.Stars and Bars, which I just read, is not as good as those books. It has Boyd's trademark wit, but it lacks the deeper understanding of people that enrich his other books. The book is the closest thing to pure slapstick that I have yet encountered among his works. Henderson Dores is an Englishmen who longs to be American. The novel opens with him at work at an art house in NYC. He is sent into wildest Georgia to evaluate the collection of an elderly man.Upon his arrival, he finds that most of the family is none too happy to see him. One son threatens to beat his ass with his head and one daughter is given to candid Anglophobia. He makes matters worse by trying to juggle two women, one of whose daughters travels with him to Georgia. There are many funny moments, but the book just feels insubtantial when compared to the others. If this were one of his others, he might try to explore more of how Americans and the English interact. Here, it is mostly, if not entirely played for laughs. It isn't a bad book by any means, but don't expect something like his others.
Tedious, forced, painfully irritating. Wow. I managed to get to chapter 14 and then just gave up. I decided that staring at the horizon until it got dark was a better option. That actually was what I did in the end. I work offshore and the book just ground me down over a day with its weak plot which reads like some form of 1990's sitcom and its improbable (and impressively annoying) character names. I read often and have never submitted a review before. Yet Boyd has changed all that I have taken the leap, used my precious satellite internet connection & signed up (took 30 minutes to load this page!) and written my first review, if it will save just one persons day off from tedium then I have done my bit.my particular copy is somewhere around 4 45.78 N, 5 34.69 W. Only after I launched it over the side did it occur to me that I hadn't weighted it sufficiently to send it to the bottom. Like its content the book proved to light and hollow, enough to remain afloat. I apologize in advance to anyone lost at sea on a raft who finds it, it might just tip them over the edge. Legally I feel responsible.I'm off to stare angrily at myself in the mirror for being drawn in by the reviews...
What do You think about Stars And Bars (1985)?
I have read a few books by Boyd before and have rated Any Human Heart as 5/5 - since then I have read The Blue Afternoon, New Confessions and this, but none of them have lived up to Any Human Heart which I really loved. In some ways I felt that Stars and Bars came closer than the other two, but still wavered between and 3 and a 4 star rating. It gripped me, I found Henderson Dores frustrating, pathetic and overly sexed (as most of Boyd's characters), but just couldn't believe a lot of the situations he found himself in. If you're a Boyd fan I'm sure you will enjoy the normal fabulous prose and wittiness, but it's just not quite his best.
—Manda Graham
I would have liked to have given this tragicomedy or comic tragedy 4.5 stars. But not 5 stars, as it does not quite reach that level of excellence. I enjoyed it, and was unable to put it down.Henderson Dores, a British art-historian works for an art gallery in Manhattan. He wants to remarry his ex-wife, but is also reluctant to give up his relationship with his lover, Irene. His ex-wife will take him back but only when her two adolescent children from another marriage are prepared to accept him. For most people, this set of relationships would be sufficiently troublesome to trouble.Henderson's life enters even more troubled waters when he is sent by his gallery to view a remarkably fine collections owned by a man in one of the southern states of the USA. Unwillingly, he has to be accompanied by his future step-daughter, a 14 year old obnoxious adolescent. They arrive at the house where the paintings are kept, and his problems begin to increase exponentially. The family that live in the house are, to put it mildly, dysfunctional. And, most of them are not at all pleased when he arrives.This out-of-the-frying-pan-and-into-the-fireplace-story is British humour at its best, but in an American setting.
—Adam
