James Collins (1)Besprekingen

Mixed feelings on this one.

I loved the premise of somewhat star-crossed lovers meeting on an airplane but I struggled with almost everything else. To me, the writing seemed stiff and repetitive and the main characters seemed weirdly one dimensional. I felt like I knew more (and more importantly cared more) about the secondary characters than I did about Peter and Holly and I'm not quite sure why. Holly in particular was just "beautiful and good" and we were told that a hundred times.

I suspect that this would be a pretty good chick flick.

This is one of those books that I read during a slow shift at the library -- not the kind of thing I'd usually pick up, but interesting enough to while away some time between helping patrons.

3.5 stars

Peter always wanted to meet a girl on a plane and fall in love. He meets Holly and does just that, but then... he loses her phone number. Fast-forward 12 years, and Peter is engaged to Charlotte, but he's still in love with Holly, who now happens to be married to Peter's best friend, Jonathan.

I liked this. I could have done without most of Peter's work turmoil, though some of that does play into everything else going on a bit later, but not all of it. The book does follow different characters through different parts of the book, which is kind of interesting, so the reader knows what is going on with everyone.½

I liked this book. This is a book about two people that you hope end up together, but you never know if it will happen. It begins with Peter and Holly meeting on an airplane and falling instantly in love. Peter takes her number, but later finds it gone. So the romance begins. This book takes you through many different areas of Peter's life and the lives of those around him.

This was HIGHLY disappointing. The review on the back compares it to Austen...NOT OKAY TO DO THAT! It's clearly written by a man who doesn't understand women. Oy!

I wanted to read BEGINNER'S GREEK because of the full-page, front-loaded, gushing review it received in The New York Times Book Review. The reviewer compared the book to "a big sunny lemon chiffon pie," to let the reader know that BEGINNER'S GREEK is light and frivolous, yet fit for a gourmet palate and with a pleasing tang. Well, that's accurate enough.

BEGINNER'S GREEK is wonderfully written, with a smooth and luscious style, understated humor, unexpected yet appropriate metaphors, a profusion of biting-yet-not-quite-cruel character studies, and a minimum of frou-frou, "virtuosic" writerly clutter.

BUT. Starting with the prologue, when Peter muses that women who read books by overrated English novelists on a plane are to be avoided at all costs, while readers of THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN are infinitely desirable, it's clear that BEGINNER'S GREEK was written for snobs. It's full of literary references for experienced readers to find, and then pat themselves on the back for catching - but it's also full of discreet contempt for intellectuals...or at least certain intellectuals. The less-perfect intellectuals who try too hard, who struggle to be sophisticated when others achieve it effortlessly.

Talk about biting the hand that feeds.

The hero of the novel, Peter Russell, is presented as an idealized nice guy - handsome, wealthy, athletic, but also charmingly earnest and just a little naive. Very sweet. The problem is, he's mostly nice by comparison. He's nice in comparison to his best friend, a manipulative and deeply selfish philanderer. The friendship alone suggests something might be wrong with Peter - the fact that Peter hates his best friend, but maintains the friendship, confirms it. He's nice in comparison to his boss, a cartoonishly villainous man whose days are spent plotting Peter's downfall. It's hard not to come out ahead in that comparison. And we're led to believe that Peter is nice because he's marrying Charlotte, an annoying and humorless woman he doesn't love...or even like that much. I'm sorry, I don't think that's nice at all.

Especially since meanwhile, Peter is in love with Holly. Holly couldn't be more perfect. She is gorgeous, she is kind, she is smart, she is a good listener, she is thoughtful, she is educated, she is funny. She is a composite of womanly virtues. She also happens to be in love with Peter. But circumstances keep them apart - and that, of course, is the meat of BEGINNER'S GREEK.

In fact, for the first two-thirds of the novel circumstances really go to town on Peter and Holly. Just as it starts to look like Peter and Holly might finally have their chance, some improbable disaster intervenes to separate them. Further events clear the obstacle, but before anything can happen another improbable disaster sunders them anew. This makes for an incredibly anxious reading experience. Perhaps it is to the author's credit, but I would have to call it an unpleasantly anxious reading experience.

BEGINNER'S GREEK is a smart, well-written, frequently insightful book. But the bad impression I had of Peter at the beginning was slow to dissipate, the sly sneers at the reader enraged me, and the plotting was occasionally ridiculous. For me, the negatives were stronger than the positives.

This novel was the perfect vacation read. I wanted something light and enjoyable and easy to get into. Collins' has been compared to Jane Austen and I can see why. This story is very much an updated version of the trials and tribulation faced by Austen's characters, except that we are treated to many more sordid details about infidelity and the ways men and women relate to each other. You could say it's Jane Austen meets Woody Allen.
Collins' prose is elegant and the story was much more sophisticated and literary then I expected.

I am a sucker for love stories. This book made me want run to NY and take a carriage ride through Central Park.

Peter and Holly are the romantic leads in this book. They meet and it's love at first sight but they don't find each other again until Holly begins dating Peter's best friend.

On the surface this sounds like a plot out of a bad romantic comedy. Mr. Collins manages to elevate Holly and Peter's story above that with his words and the wit he infuses throughout the book.

The only flaw, in my opinion, is the epilogue. It didn't fit with the rest of the story.

ehhh.

Well, this was sweet and surprisingly entertaining, although it took a while to get going. And the ending was almost embarrassingly satisfying, which I like.

However, I can't help but think that if a woman had written this, it would have CHICK LIT in big sparkly pink letters on the cover, and be reviewed in Cosmopolitan or something instead of the New York Times.

I'm just saying.

I was so keen to read this book in large part because of an NYT review I read comparing it, favorably, to Laurie Colwin's Happy All the Time. After having finished it, I can't think of a better comparison.

I don't usually write reviews with spoliers, but there are some tiny ones coming up, so if you'd like to be completely surprised in your reading of the book, stop here. Just know that it was exceptionally good, and that I would give it four-and-a-half stars.

***spoilers start here*** I didn't like it quite as much as I liked hers, which is one of my favorite books of, well, ever, really. There were some things I wish James Collins had done differently, like not have Jonathan sleep around quite so much. And I wish he'd spent some time with Holly's perspective once she found out that Charlotte had left Peter.

I liked the abundance of secondary characters, though again, I wish that Collins had treated them with more equal attention. I especially enjoyed the epilogue, which tied things up in a neat little bow, while still leaving a tiny bit of room for speculation. Perfect.

I coveted this book from the moment I read the inner flap when it was a hardback. I didn't actually get to it until it was in paperback, but man, it was worth the wait. I loved it.

A story of fated love: Peter and Holly meet on an airplane flying from coast to coast. Both are truly smitten. She gives him her name (first only) and phone number on a scrap of paper, and he loses it. That's the set-up. The rest of this long and excessively wordy book reveals in a painstakingly slow and often difficult-to-believe manner how they come to be together at last.

frustrating, struggled with writing style. Didn't enjoy as much as I hoped given the high reviews. Love story of missed opportunities. I guess that kind of thing annoys me.

A first novel by an experienced journalist -- yet I had trouble gaining any sympathy for any of the characters or situations and ended up skim reading til the end. I think I was looking for a more light-hearted, humorous book based on the jacket description. This was not that.½

As most of the reviewers have said, I found Collin's style to be more than a little pretentious. The two leads are not well rounded (they have no flaws!!) and are hard to connect to, and I found their everlasting love to be a little too cheesy. Even Jonathon with his many flaws, was not developed well enough. The most developed character was probably Julia because I really believed her story to the point where I could imagine her as a person (in contrast to Holly who seems to be some sort of deity).
Despite the problems I had with the book, it was a decent read. . .½

This book is just OK. I listened to it while gardening the other day and it was a nice way to pass the time. I agree with one of the other readers who said that Jonathan was the best thing to happen to this book. Everyone else was just so milquetoast.½

I found the writing style to be off-setting and pretentious. Rather than allowing me to feel any type of warmth to these characters you continue to miss the opportunity of love, I felt alienated. Peter Russell, the romantic stockbroker hero, boards a plane and meets Holly, the smart chick woman who happens to be reading Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain. The book is the bridge to an emotional connection between the two, which leaves them both looking forward to a meet up after the plane lands. Unfortunately, as twist of fate would have it, Peter loses Holly's number and is forced to accept his soul mate has been lost to the universe. That is, until years later, when he realizes that the new girl his best friend is dating is the lost Holly. But rather than manning up and telling this beauty that he has not been able to stop thinking about her or their ONE encounter, he lets his wormy best friend marry her and accepts his fate as hubby's BFF.

And really, folks, when I say that his best friend is wormy, he's like, over the top wormy. As it was, wormy Jonathan was the best thing that happened to this novel. His character struck emotion. I hated, detested, despised him. I wanted to strangle him and make him cry.

http://annotatedreading.blogspot.com/2010/03/beginner-greek.html

USA Today called Beginner’s Greek “a literary love story for grown-ups,” and Library Journal compares James Collins to Jane Austen. With a write-up like that, I wasn’t at all sure what to expect. I have a bad reaction to hyperbole, so I probably wouldn’t even have started to read the book in a bookstore. But Hachette Book Group had included it in a gift parcel that I won from Nights and Weekends, and I’m so glad, or I’d have missed a rare treat.

James Collins writes with the same detachment and attention to detail as Jane Austen, but his characters, relationships and predicaments are thoroughly up to date. From promiscuity to trophy wife to lifelong love and devotion, every shape and form of marriage is represented. And the path of true love is ever tortuous, running through coincidence, calamity, and the capriciousness of fate. Near the end of the book, with too many pages to go, I thought all was about to be revealed between the two love-birds, but a final twist threatened to unravel everything. I found myself wondering how the author would bring it all together, but I knew for sure he would. And of course, he did.

This book is truly a comedy of errors, Shakespearean in its scope, Austenian in its charm, and thoroughly modern in its characters and its world. A fine fun read, and it’ll surely make a fine fun movie one day.

One of the sweetest books I've ever read, and surprising.

The author achieves the tone of a British comedy of manners but I found the characters boring. Everything is done in exhaustive detail, however. The secondary characters are very well developed - for no purpose, unfortunately. He will describe an entire character's life just to explain why they take the one action that actually affects the main characters.
Peter is boring until he attends a special dinner and magically becomes the life of the party, right down to remembering the full text of an obscure poem. A disappointment, given the advance praise on the book jacket.

April '09 Long story about two nice people who fall in love on a plane, marry other people and end up together. Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain ties them together at first and last.

I found this book to be impossible to read and enjoy. My reasons are legion, however my primary stumbling block is the author's style. So in all fairness, here are a few lines. If you like them, perhaps you'll enjoy the book.

"So, as we have seen, however inert the setting might seem to be, tremendous forces were gathered in the cabin of this aircraft. Forces. Tremendous ones. Peter knew that with the smallest effort he could potentiate the situation, with epochal consequences for his life and happiness...."

Potentiate the situation? sheesh!

Tom Wolfe meets Ann Patchett. A wonderful novel of 21st Century urban manners and morals that is startling, insightful and funny. Look for it to be butchered as a Kate Hudson screen adaptation.