2002; 406 pages. New Author? : No. Genres : British Humor; Humorous Fantasy. Overall Rating: 8*/10.
33-year-old David Perkins vividly remembers his first
bout of puppy-love: long ago, on his twelfth birthday in fact, he was smitten by a beautiful 400-year-old witch. Sorta.
Actually, it was a portrait
of a lady from the Middle Ages, painted by that famous Dutch master, Willem de
Stuivens, and hanging in an art museum that his mother had dragged him to as a birthday present. He’d just stood there staring at it until Mum
said it was time to move on.
The name of his heart's desire was well-known: she was Philippa “Pippa” Levens, who in 1602, at a tender young age,
was accused of witchcraft and burned at the stake. What David remembers most about his first-love encounter years ago was this: as he was turning away to
follow his mum to the next room in the museum, the face in the painting stuck
her tongue out at him.
Now, 21 years later and coincidentally again on his birthday, David is back in the museum back at the painting, and for a good reason. A nearby auction house has a lock of Philippa
Levens’ hair up for sale, and David intends to bid on it, if that’s okay by
her.
The grin she gives him is
all the approval he needs.
What’s To Like...
The storyline in Falling
Sideways abounds in confusing and complex plot twists. It was a blast to tag along with David as he
tries to figure out what’s going on. In short,
the main possibilities seem to be: a.) spacefaring
frogs, b.) a one-eyed deity, c.) humans who clone, d.)
humans who scam, e.) all of the above, f.) some of the above, g.) none of the above.
Tom Holt is British, so lots
of words are spelt funnily (colour, cheque, yoghurt, kerb, grey, cissy) and
there are strange names for lots of everyday objects (Bacofoil, Tube train,
saveloy and chips, Rawlplug, jemmy, VAT, pillowslip, biro, mushy peas,
windscreen). A few British terms were totally incomprehensible to me; they're listed below.
Having taken two years of
Mandarin Chinese classes, I loved the nod to tonal languages, The word “ma” in Mandarin has an
incredible number of meanings, depending on the tone and glyph; here the
equivalent case involves the word “uuuuurk”. I also gained lots of practical tips,
including why telling lies is like tiling bathrooms, why riding in a taxi is a
wicked indulgence, and the best way to determine the atomic number of
beryllium.
The tale is told in 20
chapters, with Chapter 17 devoted to an explanation/backstory for all the
strange goings-on, which untangles everything, assuming you can trust the
person who’s explaining things, which David realizes he can't. You’d
think that would be the book’s ending, but there are still three more chapters to re-tangle and resolve a couple more of the plot threads.
The ending is convenient, convoluted,
and convincing, all of which are positives in a Tom Holt story. Our hero rides off into the sunset with his true love and his six thousand sisters. Falling Sideways is a standalone
novel, and I don't think Tom Holt ever penned a sequel.
Kewlest New Word ...
Banjax (v.) : to damage, ruin, or smash as a
result of incompetence (Irishism).
Others: Saveloy (n.); Bumf (n.), Nobble
(v.); Bolshy (adj.), Shufti (n.); Scudder
(n.), Yonks (n.); Buckley’s chance (n., phrase). (mostly
Britishisms)
Ratings…
Amazon: 4.0*/5, based on 40
ratings.
Goodreads: 3.61*/5,
based on 1,468 ratings and 87 reviews
“Things That Sound Dirty, But Aren’t…
David had never touched a girl’s
foot in his life before, let alone a bare one, let alone a green bare
one belonging to a creature he was responsible for bringing into the world. (pg. 40)
Excerpts...
“You haven’t been around clones as long as
I have, you don’t know what they’re like.
Besides,” he added with a grin, “you’re soft on her. Go on, admit it.”
David smiled weakly. “You guessed.”
“It wasn’t all that difficult,” John
replied. “In fact, it was pretty
obvious. Actually, a blind, deaf man
with a sack over his head—“
“Yes, right,” David said. “I get the point.” (pg. 276)
I have no idea why, but no matter how hard
I tried, I just couldn’t get the idea of a frog-shaped god to catch on with
these people. Gods with wings, yes; gods
with horns, gods with crocodile heads and cat heads and thirty-seven different
heads all arguing with each other; gods in the shape of every other kind of
critter that walks the face of the Earth, in fact, not to mention burning
bushes and pillars of fire, but not frogs.
As far as humanity is concerned, God may move in mysterious ways, but He
doesn’t hop. (pg. 324)
“Like the old
proverb says, a strolling clone gathers no moss.” (pg. 344)
Tom Holt is one of my favorite
authors when I’m in the mood for wry humor and entertaining satire, so it’s no surprise that
there’s little to nitpick about in Falling Sideways.
The cussing is light (13 instances
in the first quarter of the book), with most of it being fairly
mild, there being but a single F-bomb
in those thirteen cusses. There aren’t a
lot of characters to keep track of, although some of them are clones (but are they
really?) which kept both David and me addled. Finally, if there was a reason
behind the title of the book, I didn’t notice it.
That’s all I can think
of. If I’ve counted correctly, Falling
Sideways is my 20th Tom Holt novel (21 if you include one of his
“Lucia” offerings), and I've yet to be disappointed in anything he's written.
8 Stars. A caveat. Falling Sideways is one of Tom Holt’s “let’s see how labyrinthine I can make the plotline” novels, and though it succeeds in that regard admirably, I wouldn’t recommend it being your introduction to his masterful storytelling. Instead, pick one of his mythopoeic ones such as Paint Your Dragon (reviewed here) or Flying Dutch (reviewed here).
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