The Hippopotamus: Fry Stephen

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The story is of Ted Wallace (Roger Allam), an old poet, brilliant despite his toxic personality and propensity for whisky. Fired from his job as theater critic, he meets an old acquaintance who proposes him an unusual job, to investigate the mysterious going-ons at an estate of a family he used to be friends with .. before he destroyed their relationship in a drunken fit. Some may say it’s contrived – I’d say well of course it is, the level and complexity of the contrivance is what makes it so hilarious! All the possibly psychological analysis aside, The Liar is a racing novel of thrilling heroics, less-than-tender romantic encounters, and staggeringly fabulous Wildian wit.

Hippopotamus Audiobook - Stephen Fry - Listening Books The Hippopotamus Audiobook - Stephen Fry - Listening Books

The pace and humour are good, and the hero is perfectly smashed and detached. The weakness is in the supporting characters - not the performances, but their drama and the necessity of their presence. No great turns or lines, and I guess that's down to the original writing. Poet Ted Wallace is summoned to his friend's country manor to investigate a series of unexplained miracles.Ik lees Het Nijlpaard van Stephen Fry. IN VERTALING. De omvang van deze ramp dringt slechts langzaamaan tot mij door. Het betekent dat ik nooit, NOOIT meer deze orgie van schuttingtaal, grotesk cynisme en platte seks, deze in vitriool, drijfmest en tien jaar oude whisky gedrenkte bladzijden voor de volle 100% zal kunnen smaken in de oorspronkelijke taal. Ik moet onmiddellijk stoppen met lezen tot ik een Engelse versie heb. MAAR IK KAN NIET STOPPEN! Nevertheless that I didn't enjoy particularly the reading experience with the book, I think that it was a book presented in a very unique way, that always it's a good thing. This novel is shown as something made of several kind of documents, like poems, newspaper articles, letters, etc... with obviously too some standard novel prose parts. My Love Affair With Marriage’ Review: An Animator’s Tough and Zingy Musical Exploration of Womanhood Well well, it certainly was juicy and saucy on the surface, but beneath in all its misogyny and cynicism a praise for simple, pure, forgiving, patient love. This is how I actually read it. The title draws comparisons between the animal as described in the poem and the main character, Ted Wallace, a slovenly man who enjoys long baths. (Hence cover designs picturing an actual hippopotamus or Fry himself in a bathtub.) The title and epigraph imply as well one of the novel's themes: the practicality of poetry and how that helps Wallace, a poet, regard the "miracles" in the story with a sceptical eye. [3] Synopsis [ edit ]

The Hippopotamus - Rotten Tomatoes The Hippopotamus - Rotten Tomatoes

Weekend Box Office Results: Five Nights at Freddy’s Scores Monster Opening Link to Weekend Box Office Results: Five Nights at Freddy’s Scores Monster Opening The best bit was when the professor caught the student at plagiarism. I did think I might hurt myself laughing. But these bits were too infrequent. Well, my bookclub hated it. The librarian had suggested it thinking it was light and amusing. Most of our ladies were put off by the first chapter, which was lewd, filthy and self-indulgent. I marched womanfully into the next chapter which was charming, floridly written, tense and sympathetic as the boy sabotaged the shooting event of hundreds of pheasant for sport.Edit een dag later: het onontkoombare gevolg is, dat ik het boek nu uit heb. Dit is het meest hilarische boek dat ik in jaren gelezen heb. Maar niet voor romantische zielen of personen die nog enig geloof in de mensheid hebben overgehouden. Die zouden zich maar geschoffeerd voelen. I also have a fondness for anti-heroes, but they have to be intelligent and/or witty and I must empathize with them. This book's protagonist, Ted Wallace, is a "sour, womanizing, cantankerous, whisky-sodden beast of a failed poet and drama critic" - what's not to love? Not everyone will relate to him. I think if you've spent enough time around writers, or are one yourself, you might have more compassion for him. But that's the kind of character I like, a messy and imperfect one. We have been christened by spunk inspired by Stephen Fry. Perhaps not miraculous. Perhaps always pompous. Perhaps always hilarious. It's a shame, really, because the plot is fairly decent, and Fry raises some interesting questions about faith, but the writing is really unpardonably sloppy. The Hippopotamus is not for the faint-hearted or prudish. Fry’s description of his characters’ intimate encounters are very explicit, but this same objective scrutiny and satirical dissection applied to characters’ motives and behaviours yield some brilliantly funny passages. Add to the sparkling and witty prose, the narration by Fry himself, and the result is me giggling like a crazy person sitting by myself in my car during peak hour traffic.

The Hippopotamus review – eccentric adaptation of Stephen Fry

A thought experiment to characterize the narrator of this book: What if somehow Oscar Wilde and Howard Stern had a son together? A lot of the comedy comes from him insulting people using very long words, which I found very amusing. He spends too much of the book flexing his encyclopaedic knowledge to no point at all, which is great in the context of a show like QI, but when it’s interspersed with a story you’re struggling to engage with, the result feels like trying to watch a pirated film in the mid-2000’s while constantly swatting away unsolicited pop-up ads. But strange things have been going on at Swafford. Miracles. Healings. Phenomena beyond the comprehension of a mud-caked hippopotamus like Ted. This book was a total mess spanning more than one timeline, without making you feel as if you realized that, because you didn’t, or you did too late. And you realized too late that the idea behind it is much farther than the humour and the ‘game’. I tell you, this book is a chronic liar too.

An ageing writer finds himself caught up in a mystery in this underwhelming adaptation of Stephen Fry's comic novel

Fry makes a big show of asking--and pointedly not answering--big questions about artifice and authenticity in society and human behavior...but guards himself always with the insinuation that he is only asking--and not answering--as a joke. The "hippo" of the title (occasionally referred to as "the happy hippo" and given to wallowing in long baths) is Edward (Ted/Tedward) Lennox Wallace, an aging, lecherous, one-time hell-raising poet, reduced by diminishing poetic talent to working as a theatre critic. The story opens with the aftermath of Ted being fired from his job on a newspaper. If you are a fan of a good mystery, this is not for you. It is really only a mystery in the broadest sense. Mostly it's a comedy of manners. The characters are larger than life let's say, the best element for me was the acting of the ever wonderful Roger Allam.

Hippopotamus by Stephen Fry | Goodreads The Hippopotamus by Stephen Fry | Goodreads

The Liar" has one weakness and that is the spy / espionage subplot that Fry inserts in brief chapters between the longer chapters that depict the linear narrative of the story. They are set off by italics until the subplot and main plot connect up, and I thought that it was a detraction from the text, weakened it almost like Fry did not trust the characters he had created on their own merits, but rather had to make them interesting by inserting them into a spy thriller novel. It was not necessary in my opinion. We follow Ted Wallace, a 60-something has-been journalist-cum-poet, who is outwardly and verbally a cynical misogynist. He travels to a country house in an attempt to unravel some rather strange goings-on in a family and finds a bit more than he bargained for. He goes there because he is the godfather of a son of said family, though he had practically forgotten this fact, and because he has to help out a niece of said family, who is his goddaughter, which he had also more or less forgotten. You get the picture. I didn’t really like any of the characters for a long time, but that wasn’t necessary to enjoy the novel nor, I suppose, was I meant to. The reader’s feeling towards the narrator, Ted, change, however, and I enjoyed how this was done – the tone and story balancing strangely between sentimentality and cynicism.

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The novel has a cynical and ironic tone which only a British novel can have, but it ultimately also has a heart. And despite the fact that the novel is twenty years old, it doesn’t feel dated. The sign of a good read, surely, is also that the reader immediately wants to read something else by the author, and this is exactly how I feel right now. As much as I enjoy (nay, love) reading, however, I would prefer an audio-version again when it comes to Stephen Fry’s writing; his reading aloud is simply priceless. Weird, but compelling, because the main character, poet Edward Lennox Wallace (Tedward), is a cantankerous, misogynistic, drunken snob who becomes the unlikely investigator of a country house mystery.