Home |Register |Sign In Home Top Picks: All Books The Gentleman The Gentleman by Forrest Leo Price: $26.00 (Hardcover) MorePublished: August 16, 2016 Rating: 0.0/ 5 (0 votes cast) From the Publisher: A funny, fantastically entertaining debut novel, in the spirit of Wodehouse and Monty Python, about a famous poet who inadvertently sells his wife to the devil--then recruits a band of adventurers to rescue her.</p><p> When Lionel Savage, a popular poet in Victorian London, learns from his butler that they're broke, he marries thebeautiful Vivien Lancaster for her money, only to find that his muse has abandoned him.</p><p> Distraught and contemplating suicide, Savage accidentally conjures the Devil -- the polite "Gentleman" of the title -- who appears atone of the society parties Savage abhors.</p><p> The two hit it off: the Devil talksabout his home, where he employs Dante as a gardener; Savage lends hima volume of Tennyson.</p><p> But when the party's over and Vivien has disappeared, the poet concludes in horror that he must have inadvertently sold his wife to the dark… Rate This Book Add To Wishlist |Rate/Review Add To Bookshelf Get This Book Personalize / Add More ChoicesGo to your preferred retailer, click to choose a format and you' ll be taken directly to their site where you can get this book.</p><p> What We Say Forrest Leo should be ashamed of himself.</p><p> He has written a thoroughly Unimportant Novel.</p><p> It tackles no great subjects, it wakes the conscience to no societal ills, and I doubt very much whether Leo even considered the merits of theme or motif.In short, it is...amusing. "The Gentleman" is frivolous frippery with its sole purpose being that of humor.</p><p> Comedy is all well and good for the British; their Empire has crumpled and they have nothing to do but sob into their tea or compose light comic novels of the PG (but not P.G.) Wodehouse sort.</p><p> Some turn their talent, such as it is, to television and sketchcomedy. (Monty Python and that ilk spring to mind.) But Forrest Leo is American and humor is not welcome in the robustShare This Book About The Author Forrest Leo Forrest Leo was born in 1990 on a homestead in remote Alaska, where he grew up without running water and took a dogsledto school.</p><p> He holds a BFA in drama fromNew York University, and has worked as acarpenter, and a photographer, and in a cubicle.</p><p> Release Info List Price: $26.00 (Hardcover) Published: August 16, 2016 Publisher: Penguin Press Pages: 304 ISBN 10: 039956263X ISBN 13: 9780399562631American novel.</p><p> Yes, our greatest writer may be Mark Twain and he is -- it must be admitted -- very funny.</p><p> But we pass over that in silence and focus instead on his social satire and admirable atheistic leanings.</p><p> True, Leo was born and raised in Alaska, which perhaps is closer to England than much of America, assuming one doesn't count Canada. (And who would?) In any case, geography is neither here nor there and who can keep track of British territorial holdings, however slim andfailing they may be.</p><p> Suffice to say that Alaska is not England.</p><p> So what possible excuse could there be forthis.,.Wodehousian romp? (That is NOT a compliment.) It features a poet in vaguely Victorian times who has run out ofmoney and marries to get more of it.</p><p> His wife proves a bore and he inadvertently sells her to the Devil. (It happens.) Shamed into action, our hero teams with said wife's adventurer brother, his indomitable little sister Lizzie, an inventor he meets in a bookshop that never closes and an unflappable butler of the sort always populating comic novels but never trulyaround in real life when one needs them. (Think "Jeeves & Wooster" if Wooster wrote poetry and Jeeves were, well,Jeeves.) I suppose I must confess to frequent bouts of laughter, whether it be from our hero's absurd self-regard, thefootnotes of his Johnson, the insult-a-thon that takes place whenever he meets his poetical arch-rival or attempts to complete a poem by pretending "devil" can be crunched into the one syllable word "Dev'l." (It doesn't work but I am chastened to admit I giggled every single time he tried to say "Dev'l" and other characters were obliged to say "what?" or"come again?" or "I've no idea what you're saying.") The novel climaxes with a sword fight over poetry, specifically whetherfree verse is preferable to the demands of meter. (The answer is obvious.) I can't decide whether to call all this nonsense pastiche or parody or simply a new work in the vein of Wodehouse.</p><p> I'll settle for whichever description might prevent Leo from the dangerous folly of ever writing a comic novel again.</p><p> Americans should know better. -- Michael Giltz What Others Say “Leo has a whimsical gift…His characters are rich with personality and eccentricity…Leo brings [them] to life with charm, wit, and pomp, and he builds a fully realized — if not a little wacky — Victorian London teemingwith adventure and mystery…And yet, so much of the novel’s great appeal comes from the hilariously realistic way in which it depicts the quirkiness of writers, the idiosyncratic relationships between them, and the painstaking work of their editors.”— Electric Literature “This novel weaves together a brilliant sense of voice, a classic comedic touch that’s as potent as it is gentle,and a group of characters that could just as easily exist in a ‘Monty Python’s Flying Circus’ sketch as they couldin a P.G.</p><p> Wodehouse novel.</p><p> With his first book, Leo delivers us a story that’s entertaining on about a dozendifferent levels, and he does it with a sense of joy that imbues his often self-serious narrator with a quality thatmakes every page lovable…Endlessly brisk, charming, and most importantly, clever…[The] characters…seem both wholly original yet clearly carved out of the page of a thumping good potboiler.</p><p> It’s a marriage of old and new that’s never tiring,… More What You Say Filter by No Reviews Found ..... about us |faq|advertise |privacy policy |newsletter |contact us ©2018, BookBuddha LLc.</p><p> All Rights Reserved.
