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UK Holidays - The Angry Island: Hunting the English
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List Price: $27.79
Our Price: $21.68
Your Save: $ 6.11 ( 22% )
Availability: Usually ships in 2 to 3 weeks
Manufacturer: George Weidenfeld & Nicholson
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 305.821
EAN: 9780297843184
ISBN: 0297843184
Label: George Weidenfeld & Nicholson
Manufacturer: George Weidenfeld & Nicholson
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 288
Publication Date: 2004-09
Publisher: George Weidenfeld & Nicholson
Studio: George Weidenfeld & Nicholson
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Editorial Reviews:
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The default setting of England is anger. The English are naturally, congenitally, collectively and singularly, livid much of the time. In between the incoherent bellowing of the terraces and the pursed, rigid eye-rolling of the commuter carriage, they reach the end of their tethers and the thin end of their wedges. They're incensed, incandescent, splenetic, prickly, touchy and fractious. They can be mildly annoyed, really annoyed and, most scarily, not remotely annoyed. They sit apart on their half of a damply disappointing little island, nursing and picking at their irritations. Perhaps aware that they're living on top of a keg of fulminating fury, the English have, throughout their history, come up with hundreds of ingenious and bizarre ways to diffuse anger or transform it into something benign. Good manners and queues, roundabouts and garden sheds, and almost every game ever invented from tennis to bridge. They've built things, discovered stuff, made puddings, written hymns and novels, and for people who don't like to talk much, they have come up with the most minutely nuanced and replete language ever spoken - just so there'll be no misunderstandings. The English itch inside their own skins. They feel foreign in their own country and run naked through their own heads. They are often admirable but rarely loveable. An Englishman's greatest achievement is in resisting his national inclinations and not going crazy with an axe in a cul-de-sac. This book hunts down the causes and the results of being the Angry Island.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: The English through the eyes of a Scot
Comment: Mr. Gill is a Scot, not an Englishman, and he insists on maintaining that distinction even though he has spent most of his life among the English. His observations depend on a sharp eye and a sound historical perspective. His portrayal of the English is full of surprises and his revelations are exhilarating and profoundly funny.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A man and his limitations
Comment: AA Gill is one of the foremost essayists in the English language today and this book proves it - because this is not a collection of essays.
Reading The Angry English, you think of a painter trying sculpture or a boxer moving up two weights in one go. The basic skills are there, the man has a well-earned reputation but.............
The Angry English is a rant and little else. If Gill had condensed this rant into essay length it might have been the funniest and most infuriating piece he'd ever written. Unfortunately, he was persuaded (I cannot believe it was his idea) to go book-length and he simply doesn't have the stamina, variety or content to make it work.
Oh, there are some very quotable Gill-isms in here but you'll have to shovel a lot of dross to get to them. Overall, the author makes much of his Scottish birth as a reason to loathe the English (as if anyone needed to dig so deep for a reason) but it simply doesn't have the legs to carry Gill's rant to the finishing post of a full-length book.
If you're interested in a book about the English, try Paxman's effort - not as acid as Gill but every bit as enlightening and amusing.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Quaaludes for Bonzo
Comment: Someone bring a butterfly net or mind-altering chemicals, in that order, and apply them to A.A. Gill. The man is in extremis and needs help. This book is the literary equivalent of projectile vomiting but it comes apparently from having consumed a meal comprised entirely of rich cynicism, relentless prejudice and very bad company. Those ingredients, metaphorically similar to historical assessments of lousy English cooking, may produce severe nausea--as they apparently did in the author's case. Or was there method to his madness? We'll explore that later.
Gill writes well and wittily, as one might expect of a man with an English (not Scottish) education. His language, vocabulary, syntax and grammar are reasonable but occasionally flawed (his sentence on page 3, "Us natives don't come here without expectations," clearly needs help, but maybe he didn't have an editor). The overwriting for effect is embarrassing, too clever by half, typically an outpouring of rancid bile. Why is he so angry? So critical? So venomous? It is relatively easy to see that, as an experienced newspaper writer, he engages in `jugular journalism' in which hyperbole rules. Cheap shots for ever, eh! That's so darned easy. We learned that in kindergarten.
Gill has apparently led a narrow life since being dragged down to England against his will as a child and seemingly has not had the chance to meet some of the nice people or explore some of the better parts of England. This is a pity because, writing as a 50/50 mixture of Scottish (Isle of Arran) and English (Surrey), I find much to admire and enjoy in both countries. Much to loathe and despise, certainly. Gill concentrates on the latter. Plenty of grist for his mill.
Method to his madness? Could be. Consider modern publishing, in which celebrity and notoriety are the staple ingredients of best-sellerdom (Amber Frye, `Divine' Brown, Cato Kaelin and all the other great `writers' we know and love). Before the reader of this review condemns me as unhelpful, pause and go behind the scenes at Simon & Shuster, who published "The Angry Island" in the U.S., or Weidenfeld & Nicholson, who published it first, in England, in 2005. Be a fly on the wall in London or New York and listen to the pitch or the publisher: "Gill's going to rant and rave. He's got a name-writes for the Sunday TIMES. Give it an outrageous title that'll annoy a lot of people. Wall-to-wall invective. It'll sell a bundle." That's publishing's bottom line, and the contents takes care of itself. Never forget, too, that the author has made an excellent living writing in . . . in the England he pretends so much to despise.
It's sad to have to give the book few stars because Gill, who picks a lot of easy targets and confirms many ingrained prejudices, could have done so much better if he hadn't lunged for the cruel, obvious and negative. Each one of us, and each of our countries, might be found worthy of being hanged if examined too closely or viewed through the wrong colored glasses. Iain Sinclair and Peter Ackroyd (see my reviews) have ploughed much of the same ground and have come up with gold and not Gill's dross. So has Bill Bryson, in his own inimitable way.
PS For a `top reviewer' who can't differentiate between British (related to the British Isles), English (from England), Welsh (re Wales) and Scottish (of Scots origin), my commiserations. Let's not even get into the Irish Question.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Up to the Gills
Comment: A book of disjointed observations on the modern condition of our country's parent isle. It would have been better left as a series of magazine essays---with some of its chapters omitted from the series.
A.A. Gill writes in a style used by many of today's edgy (read: quick, terse, ironic, condescending, black-edged humorous) columnists: it is designed to immediately grab one's attention and provoke a quick laugh. But sustained over the length of a book, this style--based on the author's acrobatic use of language-- wears on a reader.
If you have only time this year for one funny, well-written, and off-beat book tied to England, buy and read Alexander Waugh's Fathers and Sons.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The English In The Crosshairs
Comment: The English have always been the targets of humorous criticism and Mr. Gill's book rightly rakes them over the coals. His extremely witty take makes for enjoyable reading even for Anglofiles. That being said,Gill doesn't know when to stop. The first half is funny , and I assume, true, but he keeps on going telling the same joke over and over again. Enough already!
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