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Emma Carpenter lives in isolation with her beloved golden retriever Laika, named after the Soviet space dog who orbited the Earth in Sputnik 2. She is house-sitting an old beachfront property on the rainy Washington coast, mending a broken heart. Emma thinks it is over, but now strange things are happening where she is staying. She feels as if someone is watching her, could it be her imagination or has the author found her and is seeking revenge? Those seeking a battle of wills as promised by the blurbs are bound to find themselves disappointed with The Last Word, as it simply doesn't deliver. Hanif Kureishi could have used the premise to ask interesting questions. What is the real nature of an artist? Do artists who have created great works need to be great people? Can we truly ever separate an artist from their art? I don't want to give away why she ran away because we don't find it out for quite a while, but I didn't like it (obvi) and I don't know why they were trying to convince her she wasn't at fault because she absolutely was.
Emma was grasping it now. The convenient horror “tropes” for which she’d one-starred Murder Mountain were now her inarguable reality.” When he starts snoring again, I groan and pull the duvet over my head, accepting my fate. It’s my own fault. I know Liam snores and I’ve been meaning to buy ear plugs, but I keep forgetting. I also really wish I hadn’t given him a key. But after last week, I had to. Kureishi is undoutedly skilled at using language, and it is this that saves the book from being unreadable for me. There are also some places in the plot where I felt engaged with what was going on, but they were the exception. A few of the characters are believeable and even interesting, but I found almost every character in the book very unlikeable, although Kureishi does show us some of their redeeming features towards the end.Thoughts: First off let me say, THE DOG IS OKAY. There were so many moments where I got so tense and almost put the book down, but the dog is fine, I promise. This book does include some triggers like suicide and infant death, so be aware of that. This book also has some very specific stereotypes that are a bit basic, like your very classic incel. One caveat: propofol is not effective given orally, but hey this is fiction so I'll let it slide... To this I’d add two things. I found it hard to care about any of the characters except poor scrubber Julia and – to a lesser extent – her mother, who are used up by the main male characters, Harry and Mamood, a pair of unlikeable egotists. I found this book very irritating. I suspect there is something I'm not getting; there are endorsements on the cover from several prominent writers, who describe the book in a way that makes it sound as if they have been reading a different book to me. Some of them comment on how funny it is. I have to say that if it were not for these comments, I wouldn't have realised that it was *supposed* to be particularly funny. She also chooses to aggravate the author when she knows he can be dangerous and makes the situation even worse.
The book juxtaposes a young ambitious biographer against an older, once famous but now declining novelist. The former has been commissioned to write the life of the latter with a view to giving the older man's career a twilight boost in popularity. Harry the biographer goes to stay with Mamoon and his wife at their country mansion, reads the diaries of Mamoon's late wife, travels to meet with the author's past lovers and wants to write a scandalous reputation-ruining account of his lecherous and sado-masochistic past. A game of wits ensues: finely-crafted and hilarious series of incidents that see the novelist resisting the biographer's piercing questions, interviews he's always evading, withholding vital information, not wanting the curtain of secrecy to lift from his past, and basically requiring the biographer to write a loud paean hailing the great services the novelist has rendered to the post-colonial literature. I smile at her. “I’m flattered. But Audrey Abbot notoriously hates journalists. She hasn’t spoken to one, not even to give a quote, since ‘The Incident,’ as you put it. If what you’re saying is true and she has agreed to take a role, I doubt she’ll be doing any press.” Yes, I do understand the irony of rating a book about a killer going after reviewers that gives bad grades one star.I need to go and lie down now as my head is rotating at speed but one thing I can say for sure is that it’s a fun, revengeful entertaining completely different conundrum. Up for the challenge?? Ever read a book and think "why did I read that?" or "why didn't I dnf?" or "that was the worst book I have ever read!"? Have you? I know I have. Ever write a 1-star review? Ever leave a negative review? Have you ever had an author reach out to you after leaving said review? While I can see that there are some aspects of this that not everyone will love, for me, it was pretty much a perfect reading experience. Both men are extremely unlikable characters, whose behaviour has had lifelong repercussions for their families and friends. It is testament to Kureishi’s craft that he allows the reader to empathise with these total shitheels. But when her awful boss hires talented reporter Ryan to be the new Features Editor, Harper is furious. Because the two have met before: a decade ago, they were interns at the same publication, where they fell into a whirlwind romance…until Ryan betrayed Harper, and they never spoke again.
But because Emma is a voracious reader, it stands to reason that she be a step or two ahead of the psycho killer in the horror novel she finds herself within. The Last Word is a terrific game of cat and mouse —except the cat underestimates this clever mouse. The Last Word by Taylor Adams is a highly recommended thriller about repercussions over a one star book review.
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This is a short but brain-hurting little book on reason, and the fallacies of non-rational / subjective attempts at building epistemologies and ethical systems. I won’t bore anyone with the details, and this isn’t a spoiler because he throws out his view right at the start of the book, but Nagel’s basic idea is that any attempt to overthrow rationality, say for example for a cultural relativism for how come to think the way we think, is doomed because to engage in the exercise we are still in the basis of rationality that we are trying to disprove, thus rationality wins. By Nagel’s account all attempts to get around this in pragmatic or positivist ways have failed because they still need to rely on reason to basis their own explanations, and thus reason is kind of irreducible. The kind of fascinating stuff that only a philosophy person would find interesting, and everyone else would ask, so? The setting also amplifies with sweet and sour woodland idyl set amidst the economic exigencies of contemporary Britain. His novel Intimacy (1998) revolved around the story of a man leaving his wife and two young sons after feeling physically and emotionally rejected by his wife. This created certain controversy as Kureishi himself had recently left his wife and two young sons. It is assumed to be at least semi-autobiographical. In 2000/2001 the novel was loosely adapted to a movie Intimacy by Patrice Chéreau, which won two Bears at the Berlin Film Festival: a Golden Bear for Best Film, and a Silver Bear for Best Actress (Kerry Fox). It was controversial for its unreserved sex scenes. The book was translated into Persian by Niki Karimi in 2005. Her days are spent with her dog, Laika, reading a ton of cheap e-books, walking on the beach, doing some drinking and chatting with the only neighbor via a whiteboard and binoculars. You know, the usual winter activities on an abandoned coastline. The author asks her to take the review down but Emma refuses. And then strange things begin to happen. Not just to Emma but to us as the reader of this book. The lines between reality and fiction begin to blur as the maligned author’s excerpts of his writing is inserted in the narrative (much of which exists only in his mind as he would like the events to play out)
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