Book review

[riontel]

Finished reading "Revenge" by Stephen Fry. Basically, it's a retelling of Dumas's "Count of Monte Cristo", which incidentally is one of my favorite books. After Fry's first book, "The Liar", that completely blew me away, and second, "The Hippopotamus", that was at least clever and unusual enough, this one was a bit of a disappointment. The wound up was good and did complete justice to the original, but the resolution was quite lacking. Unfortunately, most of the intricacies of intrigue, the complex intervening of characters, and the brilliant vengeance that Dumas so cleverly depicted were lost behind blood and gore and rather inelegantly boring revenge. Perhaps it's silly to expect the breadth achieved in two volumes (in edition that I own) from a 320 page book (guess nobody paid Fry by the line). I found the ending rather flat, rushed, tired and bleak. The level of optimism and life affirming quality of "Revenge" can be best illustrated by mentioning that the only storyline completely and without trace eliminated from the work was that of Morrels. However, what distressed me the most, was the fact that the ones responsible for the hero's sad fate were not given enough time to fully appreciate what brought on their downfall before they prosaically died their messy but disappointingly quick deaths.

On the other hand, I quite enjoyed the names Fry devised for his characters:

Ned (diminutive of Edward) Maddstone for Edmond Dantes
Oliver Delft for Villefort
Gordon Fendeman for Fernand Mondego (Yep, made him Jewish, no less!)
Ashley Barson-Garland for Baron Danglars
Rufus Cade for Caderousse
and, a personal favorite, Portia instead of Mercedes :)

Also, substituting insane asylum for a Chateau d'If was not a bad idea, very Cold War and Iron Curtain :)

My advice, if you are an open minded person and you want to read something good, read "The Liar". It's beautifully and fantastically brilliant. And then, if you are bored, read the rest of Fry's work.