In this novel, as in everything else he touches, Stephen Fry alternately entertains, amuses, provokes and alarms, and I found the novel to be part silly, part thought-provoking, part brilliant.We follow Ted Wallace, a 60-something has-been journalist-cum-poet, who is outwardly and verbally a cynical misogynist. He travels to a country house in an attempt to unravel some rather strange goings-on in a family and finds a bit more than he bargained for. He goes there because he is the godfather of a son of said family, though he had practically forgotten this fact, and because he has to help out a niece of said family, who is his goddaughter, which he had also more or less forgotten. You get the picture. I didn’t really like any of the characters for a long time, but that wasn’t necessary to enjoy the novel nor, I suppose, was I meant to. The reader’s feeling towards the narrator, Ted, change, however, and I enjoyed how this was done – the tone and story balancing strangely between sentimentality and cynicism.And yet, just as I was thinking to myself that I was becoming positively addicted to Fry and his crazy, wordy ramblings, he threw in a perverse ‘sex’ scene which, frankly, I could have done without (it can hardly be called sex, which is impossible to understand unless you’ve read the book, and I don’t want to include a spoiler here). This over, he took a detour to Hungarian farming (!), and my previous shock was soon replaced by delight when he then departed into a fantastic German-Hungarian accent when suddenly giving us background information about one of the characters’ father (the Hungarian farmer), who rambled on about World War II, Judaism, England and what-not. I loved it, and this alone makes me want to hear, rather than read, everything that Fry writes. On that note, I agree with another reviewer in here that Stephen Fry could read aloud an IKEA instruction manual and I would probably still be enthralled. His language often strikes me as so much verbal bravado, underlined by his English public school pronunciation in the audio version, yet he can get away with it; in fact, I suppose that is his style, really. And it’s not just words. There are hundreds of facts, opinions and questions, all idiosyncratically Fry-esque, squeezed into the dialogue that I almost had to push the stop button a few times simply to digest something before moving on (just as I had to stop it once in a while when I didn’t catch what he was saying because I had started laughing).The novel has a cynical and ironic tone which only a British novel can have, but it ultimately also has a heart. And despite the fact that the novel is twenty years old, it doesn’t feel dated. The sign of a good read, surely, is also that the reader immediately wants to read something else by the author, and this is exactly how I feel right now. As much as I enjoy (nay, love) reading, however, I would prefer an audio-version again when it comes to Stephen Fry’s writing; his reading aloud is simply priceless. Finally, the language is superb. Not a page goes by without Fry employing some interesting, quirky, witty or occasionally just plain wonderful turn of phrase, and for that alone I could easily listen to it all over again. Marvellous; I mentally genuflect before him.4,5 stars (the half star deducted for that one nasty episode, which I do acknowledge had a role to play, but it still grossed me out).
Since I enjoyed so much reading The Gun Seller by Hugh Laurie, and due Stephen Fry is a very good friend of Laurie, and it seemed that Fry's style in novels can be quite similar to Laurie's, I thought that it could be a good idea to try some book by Stephen Fry.I think that The Hippopotamus wasn't the best first choice. And while I didn't enjoy it so much, I still want to read some other book by Fry in the future. Maybe Making History would be a good option. When I'd read it, I will let you all to know if it was so.Nevertheless that I didn't enjoy particularly the reading experience with the book, I think that it was a book presented in a very unique way, that always it's a good thing. This novel is shown as something made of several kind of documents, like poems, newspaper articles, letters, etc... with obviously too some standard novel prose parts.What it helped me while I was reading this novel, was that I knew to understand the Laurie's style of commenting controvertial topics that while Fry's way isn't done is such effective same form than Laurie's, it did help me to understand that in several moments, you don't have to take him so seriously and so by-the-letter, since many comments are sarcastic and purposely out of tone.Still, the book didn't have a good rhythm, making the advance in the story so dense that I am not surprised that some readers would feel alienated by the book. However, as I commented before, if you didn't enjoy this particular book by Fry, still you should try some other novel, at some point in the future, to have a better appreciation of his work.
What do You think about The Hippopotamus (2004)?
This had a sort of P.G. Wodehouse feel to it, but raunchier. Then I got to page 18, where the narrator Ted thinks: Sometimes, in my dreams, I imagine a world in which women enjoy sex: a world of heterosexual cruising areas in parks and promenades, heterosexual bars, heterosexual back rooms, heterosexual cinemas, heterosexual quarters of the town where women roam, searching for chance erotic encounters with men. Such an image is only conceivable in one's fantasising bedroom, jerked into life by an angry fist and a few spastic grunts. If women needed sex as much as men did then - duck, Ted, duck, run for cover - then there wouldn't be so many rapists around the place.Ah, rape culture. How undelightful. I put this down immediately and haven't trusted Stephen Fry since.
—Punk
Do not bother with this book if you are easily shocked. It features lots of swear words, sexual references and bestiality......it is also very entertaining and kept me gripped right up to the end. The story is told from the point of view of Ted Wallace. He was once a promising poet but hasn’t written anything in years and is now old, cynical and grumpy. He drinks a lot. He also sounds exactly like Stephen Fry. As I read his words I just couldn’t help hearing Stephen Fry in my head. The other characters have their own distinct ‘voices’ too. I suppose if you don’t like Stephen Fry this might get irritating but I found it made me feel very sympathetic towards cantankerous Ted, despite his faults.Ted has just been fired from his newspaper column and is set a mission by his goddaughter Jane. He is to visit his old friend (her uncle) Lord Logan and report back to her on the strange things that have been going on at Swafford Hall. I found the writing style easy to read and the story entertaining. It was funny in some places, poignant in others. I particularly enjoyed the histories of the characters and the relationships between them.I totally recommend this book – but not to children, maiden aunts etc
—Vanessa
I really really liked this book in the beginning. I enjoyed the cranky, whiskey-drinking poet narrator.Then it got . . . weird. I was okay with the weird.Then at the end there was a big detective-story reveal. You know, the whole explain-everything-at-dinner rigmarole. Which was vaguely tedious. And then the very VERY end was anti-climactic. It was all, "oh no, possible tragedy! What will happe-- END SCENE. Epilogue: everything turned out fine!"All in all, I still enjoyed the book a great deal, even if the second half wasn't as enjoyable as the first. And Stephen Fry is a fantastic narrator (natch.) If you would like to read this book in some form, I recommend the audiobook version.
—Kerry
