Review by (guru) Ro Bennett on show 29th July 2010
I bought this book because I thought it sounded good but I found the humour contrived and it irritated me to distraction. I had to keep putting it down as it was making me feel really bad tempered – at first I thought it was because I had just finished The Girl who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest and this was such a good book it was a hard act to follow. So I put the book aside, but when I tried it again I still felt that the writer was trying too hard to be clever and witty and funny and it was still tedious. In the end I read it in between other more interesting books – you know what it’s like when you read a good book and want a little break before starting another one – I’d pull out The Mobile Library and read a couple more chapters until I couldn’t bear it any more. So it took me ages to finish.
This is the blurb from the back of the book:
Israel is an intelligent, shy, passionate, sensitive sort of soul: he's Jewish; he's a vegetarian; he could maybe do with losing a little weight. And he's just arrived in Ireland to take up his first post as a librarian. But the library's been shut down and Israel ends up stranded on the North Antrim coast driving an old mobile library.
There's nice scenery, but 15,000 fewer books than there should be. Who on earth steals that many books? How?
When would they have time to read them all? And is there anywhere in this godforsaken place where he can get a proper cappuccino and a decent newspaper?
Israel wants answers... "
Smart, funny and heart-warming with a cast of brilliant characters.
Well that’s where I beg to differ.
I found the main character Israel Armstrong so bumbling, pathetic and inept that he got on my nerves. He lurches from chaos to chaos, disaster to disaster, shrieking, moaning and belly aching non stop. On Page six he steps in dog poo and after that it’s all very predictable – you KNOW he’s going to bash his head, you KNOW he’s going to crash the bus, you KNOW he’s going to tread on his glasses and break them - and so on. The dialogue was dreary in the extreme, I didn’t warm to any of the characters and the plot rambled around until I was lost in a fog of disinterest.
Looking at the reviews, there were ten 5 star ratings and eight 1 star ratings. They range from: A marvellous book, superbly written, and boding great things for the future’; ‘hilarious’ and ‘very, very funny’ to: ‘not good. Not good at all.’ and ‘The ending is ambiguous, but contains the horrifying possibility of another installment. This one I won't waste money on.
This one echoes what I thought: He bangs his head; he falls down and injures his ankle; someone punches him in the face; he falls in manure; he steps in manure; he sleeps in manure. Not only not funny, but relentlessly dreary.
This one was very apt: ‘Judging by the reviews here, it seems to be a bit of a Marmite book. Love it or hate it, there is no middle ground’.
Whilst I was browsing through the Amazon reviews, I saw that there was another of Ian Sansom’s Mobile Library books – it was number 4 in the series and was printed in January 2010. My immediate reaction was, ‘Oh my good lord, there are 4 of them!’ This one, The Bad Book Affair had a 2 star rating and the reviewer said that he felt really bad writing the review as he had met Ian Sansom who was ‘entertaining, witty and utterly charming’ – but he just didn’t like the book. He commented: most of this book seems to be taken up with the main character feeling desperately sorry for himself, and little else. And sadly that sums up my opinion of the Case of the Missing Books also. But don’t be put off by my opinion – try it for yourself…
Review by Ro Bennett
happycastaway@btinternet.com
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