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I first heard of Julian Gough when Neil Gaiman tweeted about The Great Hargeisa Goat Bubble, which is freely available on the author's website. It's a short story which is the best, clearest, and funniest explanation I've seen of the recent financial collapse. As it happens, it's also a chapter taken out of a very hard to describe book entitled Jude In London (or sometimes Jude: Level 2). It's a sequel to another book, but don't worry: the second book won't make any more or less sense for not having read the first. It's a surrealistic stream of consciousness which somehow manages to get in some surprisingly astute observations about modern life, Western civilization, the arts, and many other things while at the same time unabashedly reveling in silliness and absurdity. (I posted a longer review in my LJ last year.)
I so enjoyed reading the story that I went and bought the book. And I so enjoyed that book that I went back and bought the author's first published novel, Juno & Juliet. I so enjoyed that book that I decided I needed to write a review of it.
Juno is beautiful, charismatic, sweet, empathetic, and basically perfect. She knows just what you need and she does it for you, without even really thinking about it, because she's just that nice. This is not her story.
This is the story, in her own words, of Juliet's first year in college and her first year away from the small town in Ireland where she grew up. Who is Juliet, you ask? It's good of you to ask. People tend not to notice her quite as much when Juno is around. Not that she minds, really. She's not nearly so social. In fact, she tends to be rather cynical about people. Which is probably why she does get so much less notice. Because, even though you'd never mistake one for the other, Juliet is Juno's identical twin sister.
I won't tell you what happens. I won't tell you what it's about. Instead, I'll tell you about my experience as a reader.
Reading this book is, I find, much like taking an inner tube ride down a river. It just sort of floats you gently along. Every once in a while, you look over and realize that, actually, there is some depth to the water below you, but then you get swept up in the flow again and leave that behind. Except that there's a distant yet ominous rumble from time to time. But, again, the river's flow pulls you lazily along to something else, and you relax and enjoy. Until suddenly you realize that the rumble is actually a waterfall. Your little raft speeds up and plunges over the edge and everything is chaos and you don't know what will happen and... You land, raft intact, and drift off into the sunset.
Not only is it a great way to unwind, it's organized into short chapters. Each one (ranging from half a page to maybe 20 pages on the outside) is almost a self-contained vignette, picking up a short time after the last. You can pick it up, get right back into the narrative, finish a chapter between stops on the train, and put it down without feeling like you're going to lose your place or stop at a dreadful cliffhanger.
I so enjoyed reading the story that I went and bought the book. And I so enjoyed that book that I went back and bought the author's first published novel, Juno & Juliet. I so enjoyed that book that I decided I needed to write a review of it.
Juno is beautiful, charismatic, sweet, empathetic, and basically perfect. She knows just what you need and she does it for you, without even really thinking about it, because she's just that nice. This is not her story.
This is the story, in her own words, of Juliet's first year in college and her first year away from the small town in Ireland where she grew up. Who is Juliet, you ask? It's good of you to ask. People tend not to notice her quite as much when Juno is around. Not that she minds, really. She's not nearly so social. In fact, she tends to be rather cynical about people. Which is probably why she does get so much less notice. Because, even though you'd never mistake one for the other, Juliet is Juno's identical twin sister.
I won't tell you what happens. I won't tell you what it's about. Instead, I'll tell you about my experience as a reader.
Reading this book is, I find, much like taking an inner tube ride down a river. It just sort of floats you gently along. Every once in a while, you look over and realize that, actually, there is some depth to the water below you, but then you get swept up in the flow again and leave that behind. Except that there's a distant yet ominous rumble from time to time. But, again, the river's flow pulls you lazily along to something else, and you relax and enjoy. Until suddenly you realize that the rumble is actually a waterfall. Your little raft speeds up and plunges over the edge and everything is chaos and you don't know what will happen and... You land, raft intact, and drift off into the sunset.
Not only is it a great way to unwind, it's organized into short chapters. Each one (ranging from half a page to maybe 20 pages on the outside) is almost a self-contained vignette, picking up a short time after the last. You can pick it up, get right back into the narrative, finish a chapter between stops on the train, and put it down without feeling like you're going to lose your place or stop at a dreadful cliffhanger.