Cute Read About Love and Life (B Grade) | Beginner's Greek: A Novel

Highly recommended! | Beginner's Greek: A Novel | James Collins

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	• Beginner's Greek: A Novel James Collins Little, Brown and Company, 2008 - 448 pages average customer review:based on 130 reviews view larger image
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A comedy of manners, a dramady of errors

This spirited novel gets off to a questionable start. I believe it is intended that way, until you fall into its rhythm. At about page 60 I was hooked. By that time, I really grokked the narrator's flow and the prose became so natural that it was like I was living the story. The low-star reviewers did not get it. This was not "zany" or "40's style" or vacuous. The narration is intentionally tongue-in-cheek and subversive. And yet...and yet. The Woody Allen movie, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, had a similar style of narrator. It winks at you and yet it rings true. It is agile and poised and yet disarming.

James Collins' story is like a painting or a beautiful photograph. Do you know how a painting or photograph, although depicting something real, can seem fantastical because of the play of light and shadow and mood and atmosphere? Do you know how a painting can be something unearthly, unreal, but because of the emotional rendering and quality can seem more genuine than a realistic interpretation? That is how this novel unfolds. It reveals itself through the crevices of the seemingly obvious story. It is like this big paradox. From the (wink wink) outer story the aperture widens, or even narrows simultaneously. You are holding a camera and you focus it on a field and in this field is an array of images. If you choose to look at it shallowly, then you will only see genus and species. But if you are sympathetic to your surroundings, there is a whole palette of beautiful colors and tones and textures to capture and captivate.

This is a page-turning love story. The characters are not meant to mimic "real" life. It is a romantic tale that hovers above reality but is an equipoise between absurd and exquisite. It is very human with spare but striking prose. His "big words," as some reviewers complain about (they need to get back to their James Patterson, I guess) are not pretentious or overblown. The author has an elegant, clean, and precise but artistic flow of metaphors and imagery. I do not see one false note in this story. Yes, the characters are almost bigger than life in its broad strokes. But it is the small and eloquent strokes that give it its invigorating originality and artistic merit. There is a skeptical and farcical outer shell harboring a thumping big red heart.

This is a classic bildungsroman. It is also refreshing, clear as glass, never canned. There is moral ambiguity and well-wrought characterizations, a noirish tale of bright and beaming sunlight. The whole unfolding is done in the colors of paradox.

I actually felt slapped by the bad reviews because they were so far off the mark. They read like bully reviews. It reminded me of people criticizing Picasso's art by saying, "It is just a bunch of squares." It is OK to dislike and criticize a work of art--each to his own--but when something that ignorant is said about a work of art that the viewer does not even understand, then it reflects more on the reviewer.

The beauty of this novel is that it is sublime but direct, sly but open-hearted, insouciant but mindful, irreverent but reverent,layered but simple. It does have a similar tone to a British comedy of manners but it is so much warmer and more generous.

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Cute Read About Love and Life (B Grade)

Beginner's Greek is written from a different prospective of that being the male protagonist and his search for love. Peter Russell thinks he has found the love of his life on a flight. But because he loses his love's phone number, he questions if he will ever be able to fall in love with another woman. Peter moves on with his life, until his friend introduces him to another woman, Holly, who he marries. From there his life will never be the same again

James Collin's should appeal to readers who like romance and some witty dialogue. I found it to be an enjoyable read and there are some twists you will not see coming. Keep a special eye on Peter's wife Holly because she is the reason for most of the action that may surprise the reader by the end.

For some nice laughs and some insightful thoughts about love and life in general, Beginner's Greek is a book that may have you wondering what life is all about.

Katiebabs

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Highly recommended!

What a captivating novel this was. James Collins' "Beginner's Greek" began with the meeting of Peter and Holly on a plane ride from New York to Los Angeles. Peter believed that it was fate that brought them together as he fell in love with Holly. Peter was invited to Holly's house for dinner, but unfortunately, he lost her contact number. A few years later, Peter met Holly, and this time, Holly was no longer single, but the girlfriend of his best friend, Jonathan. Peter never did forget Holly, but he felt there was just no hope for him. What Peter failed to realize was that, Holly was also in love with him.

This was such an engaging read for me. The author was able to draw his characters, and by the end of the novel, I felt like I knew Peter and Holly personally. He was able to describe in details the feelings of both his main characters flawlessly. The writing was clear and conversational, and the plot was intriguing. This romantic novel is a definite winner for me. Highly recommended.

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From S. Krishna's Books

Peter Russell works in finance in glorious New York City. On a flight to California for business, he meets a beautiful, intelligent, and entirely winning woman named Holly. Peter is convinced that their meeting is fate - he has always dreamed of meeting a woman and falling in love on a plane flight - and indeed, by the end of the plane trip, Peter is in love with Holly. She writes her phone number on a page torn from the book she is reading (The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann) and the two go their separate ways. Later, Peter is devastated to discover that he has lost the slip of paper with Holly's phone number - c'est la vie.

Beginner's Greek is the story of Holly and Peter and how they lose one another, only to find each other again years later and in completely different situations. Their silent love for one another stretches for years as they live their lives and endure twists and turns, hoping that they may one day find the chance to be together.

The first striking thing about Beginner's Greek is the way it is written; it's like a classic movie, with Katharine Hepburn as Holly and Cary Grant as Peter. The dialogue in the book is very old-fashioned and doesn't ring true today, but the reader can almost hear those words rolling off the tongue of actors and actress of previous generations. While this is one of the endearing qualities of the book, it also serves as an annoyance for those who are deterred by contrived dialogue. There is no way anyone would naturally speak in the manner that Collins has chosen to make his characters express themselves.

The characters of the book are well written and clear-cut. The reader sympathizes with the "good guys" and hates the characters the author wants them to dislike. While this seems like it might create flat characters without dimension, this is not the case. Characters such as Julia - flawed but entirely sympathetic and believable - illustrate the author's talent for creating personalities within his characters.

The main flaw of Beginner's Greek lies in its length. The author goes on tangents with descriptions and details, leaving the end product a hefty 448 pages. This could be lessened by about 100 pages or so without any real impact on the plot or the characters. The narrative also needs a bit more polish; one last round with an editor would have done some real good.

There is definitely a sweetness to Beginner's Greek that overrules all of its flaws. Peter and Holly's love story is cute and endearing, motivating you to continue reading just to see if these characters manage to make it work. However, the heavy skimming required in order to reach the end does detract from the enjoyment quite a bit.

In the end, Beginner's Greek is a book worth reading. Its charm and wit are ever-present, and while Collins' writing does need some fine tuning, he has crafted an old-fashioned love story as sweet as it is endearing. Any fan of chick lit or lighter novels will probably enjoy this book.

Originally published at Curled Up With a Good Book

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When Peter Russell finally meets the woman of his dreams he falls as madly in love as you can on a flight from New York to LA. Her name is Holly. She's achingly pretty with strawberry-blonde hair, and reads Thomas Mann for pleasure. She gives Peter her phone number on a page of The Magic Mountain, but in his room that night Peter finds the page is inexplicably, impossibly, enragingly...gone.
So begins the immensely entertaining story of Peter and his unrequited love for his best friend's girl; of Charlotte and her less-than-perfect marriage to a man in love with someone else; of Jonathan and his wicked and fateful debauchery; and of Holly, the impetus for it all. Along the way, there's the evil boss, the desirable temptress, miscommunications, misrepresentations, fiendish behavior, letters gone astray, and ultimately, an ending in which every character gets his due.
Both incisive and wonderfully funny, this is a brilliantly understated comedy of manners in which love lost is found again.

"James Collins has written a romantic, funny and insightful page turner about love in modern times, missed opportunities and the wheel of fate (with a blow-out!) that is so engaging and real, you will find it impossible to put down. Peter Russell is an everyman filled with longing, lust and good sense. I promise you will root for him as fate throws him curves aplenty on his path to true love. BEGINNER'S GREEK and Peter Russell are keepers."
-- Adriana Trigiani, bestselling author of Lucia, Lucia and Big Stone Gap (2008)

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