Vivid, funny, and with a compassion made all the more moving by the harshness of its military setting
Daily Telegraph
Has the ring of complete authenticity...the mingling of horror and farce are all brilliantly evoked
- A.N. Wilson, Spectator
Engaging slapstick...the Woody Allen of contemporary English fiction
- Jonathan Bate, Sunday Telegraph
An authentic picture of the sordid futility of National Service... I found the total recall agreeably unnerving
- Christopher Ricks, New Statesman
National Service has rarely been better evoked... an extremely well-told, well-organised story
Times Literary Supplement
The novel is stuffed with a dawning sense of class hatred, a sudden awareness that 'an archaic world of privilege' exists even in the bright new dawn of Robbins-principle meritocracy
Guardian
Lodge's vignettes of army life are spiced with a wit that is both droll and mordant, and his characters are deftly rendered...Lodge's novel is a moving glimpse of a world on the cusp of a change: Janus-faced, profound above all in its uncertainties.
- Lettie Ransley, Observer
When it isn't prison, it's hell.
Or at least that's the heartfelt belief of conscripts Jonathan Browne and Mike 'Ginger' Brady. For this is the British Army in the days of National Service, a grimy deposit of post-war gloom. An endless round of kit layout, square-bashing, shepherd's pie 'made with real shepherds' and drills is relieved only by the occasional lecture on firearms or V.D. The reckless, impulsive Mike and the more pragmatic Jonathan adopt radically different attitudes to survive this two-year confiscation of their freedom, with dramatic consequences
When it isn't prison, it's hell.
Or at least that's the heartfelt belief of conscripts Jonathan Browne and Mike 'Ginger' Brady. The reckless, impulsive Mike and the more pragmatic Jonathan adopt radically different attitudes to survive this two-year confiscation of their freedom, with dramatic consequences
Produktdetaljer
Om bidragsyterne
David Lodge (CBE)’s novels include Changing Places, Small World and Nice Work (shortlisted for the Booker) and, most recently, A Man of Parts. He has also written plays and screenplays, and several books of literary criticism. His works have been translated into more than thirty languages.
He is Emeritus Professor of English Literature at Birmingham, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and is a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.