{"id":488,"date":"2012-09-10T08:10:00","date_gmt":"2012-09-10T16:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/?p=488"},"modified":"2012-09-10T08:10:00","modified_gmt":"2012-09-10T16:10:00","slug":"skios-review-on-goodreads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/2012\/09\/10\/skios-review-on-goodreads\/","title":{"rendered":"Skios\u2014Review on Goodreads"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Skios:<\/a>Skios: A Novel<\/a> by Michael Frayn<\/a><\/p>\n

My rating: 3 of 5 stars<\/a><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a fun, fast farce for you to read on a plane or a boat or a train, in a deck chair, or sprawled on your couch while the last of the summer breezes plays with your living room curtains. But maybe not curled up in your sweater and socks by a fire, cup of hot tea or cocoa nearby. Skios<\/em> is more of a mai-tai or rum tiki kind of novel. It\u2019s set on a fictional Greek island, you see, complete with accented natives, bubble-headed white people, a good looking ne\u2019erdowell and a chubby, gruff old lecturer.<\/p>\n

In other words, not a book for plumbing the depths of character development, or to peek a pique at the human condition. It was only after I read it that I discovered author Michael Frayn is a playwright, and a writer of farces, and this novel falls right into that niche as neatly as its characters fall into the absurdity of their assumptions.<\/p>\n

Skios<\/em> is a sort of a Comedy of Errors<\/em>, but only sort of, as the situation is perpetuated not my mistaken identity and confusion so much as willful misrepresentation and ill-placed certainty. Coincidences stack on top of coincidences, near-misses abound, all of it heading towards an inevitable conclusion that, in the end, we\u2019re saved from by some rather convenient deus ex machina<\/em>.<\/p>\n

But I guess that sort of thing is allowed in a farce. I guess if one\u2019s going to take up the debris left behind by Comedy of Errors<\/em> or even The Importance of Being Earnest<\/em>, one\u2019s allowed to make it all silly, then violently sweep away the anticipated conclusion. And I do mean violently.<\/p>\n

Look for the movie based on this book at some point, starring whatever post-SNL (or the British equivalent) actor looking to bridge from comedy to something taken slightly more seriously. Look for Tom Stoppard to come in and do an emergency re-write, \u201csaving\u201d the story by actually giving it an ending. Look for the bartender when you\u2019re half-way through the book, because even though it\u2019s silly, you won\u2019t want to put it down, but you will want another mai-tai.<\/p>\n

View all my reviews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Skios: A Novel by Michael Frayn My rating: 3 of 5 stars Here\u2019s a fun, fast farce for you to read on a plane or a boat or a train, in a deck chair, or sprawled on your couch while the last of the summer breezes plays with your living room curtains. But maybe not … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Skios\u2014Review on Goodreads”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p24y52-7S","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=488"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":489,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488\/revisions\/489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}