Lionel Shriver's The Post Birthday World gets the utmost praise and the soundest of slams from Melissa Katsoulis at The Times:
Utmost praise:
"The power of Shriver’s cool, commanding voice is made even more godly by her tight orchestration of the two stories. She allows certain phrases and details to be replicated in each universe, so that in one version a dinner at the London restaurant Club Gascon is a glorious, foodie celebration and in the other, one of those sickly, unwanted, trials-by-foie-gras to which we can all relate. This is a compulsive, clever, wise and witty novel."
Slam:
"There is, however, a fly in the ointment. And it’s a biggie. It is Ramsey’s bizarre Cockney patter.
We eventually learn that he is actually rather middle-class, but having spent his whole life in snooker halls, among snooker people, he has adopted their way of speaking.
Only nobody English speaks like wot he done. He starts almost every sentence with “Oi”, even romantic ones. Although South London born and bred, he calls women pets, fools, gobshites, and “hasn't a baldy” when he has no idea. Shite is confused with shit, tosser with wanker and, most alarmingly, not giving a monkey’s with not having one. "
And utmost praise + slam =:
"These criticisms might sound petty – Shriver, who is based in London and New York, hasn’t been here long enough to gain an instinctive command of our English, and at least she has the guts to try, and to enjoy herself – but it is rare to be stopped in your tracks during the cleverest book you’ve read in years, by the stupidest thing you’ve heard in your life. "
Remind me never, ever, to write in a language that is not my own without first, you know, checking in with a few folks.
