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Feb 13, 2009

Katie rated it:

My favourite Fry book. His jumps between narratives and playful use of various lit devices is only possible for Stephen Fry. As usual, you instantly adore the protagonist and watch his every fumbling step with the same paternal-yet-slightly-benevolently-lecherous gaze as Fry. The action in this is perfectly paced, the history glitters with colour, the humanity is raw, the politics aren't preachy or overdone, the love is true, and the voices are clear and exact. Above all of course, is the humour More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Feb 21, 2009

Hugh rated it:

The book started well enough, young chap at Cambridge (Fry's alma mater) immersed in the history of Hitler, working towards spending his life at Cambridge in a paid capacity, is having a tough time with his hard-nosed scientist girlfriend who finally leaves him (I found her more interesting than our hero, stronger, and more capable of carrying a story, and was sorry to see her go). Young man makes a hash of his thesis, dissertation, whatever, by being way too inventive for historical research, More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jun 08, 2008

adventurat rated it:

This amazing novel is a blend of science fiction, history, and time travel, and I thought it brilliant. If you're over the age of sixteen, chances are that you have spent a minute or two - in school or outside of it - pondering what our world would be like if the Germans had won World War II, or if Adolf Hitler had never been born, and that's exactly what this novel is about. Fry explores a spectrum of potential realities: historical, political, scientific, cultural, and sexual, and his speculat More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jun 28, 2008

Lisa rated it:

When I heard the premise behind this book I thought I would really enjoy it. It was ok, but honestly i think I expected so much more. It was clever and inriguing but I still think Fry could have done more with it. Without adding spoilers, I think I can tell you that the idea is that 2 academics (through the magic of a time machine of sorts) change history and try to erase Hitler. Wouldn't the world be a better place? Well you'll have to read it to find out. Maybe its just me, but I would h More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 27, 2007

Shelley rated it:

Slow to get started, but once the set up ended (around page 150), it got completely awesome and very interesting. Michael and Leo try to fix the world by making it so that Hitler was never born, except the world that results is even worse.

I loved the glimpses of the technology in the alternate world. I think the premise that the world ends up in a perpetual state of the 1950s is fascinating. I liked how Michael and Steve's relationship evolved, although I'd have liked to see a bit m More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Oct 15, 2007

Korynn rated it:

Mr Fry's literary style has always been clever, with his characters overflowing with dry comments and witticisms. This novel is hard to place, definitely fiction, with a definite time-travel storyline and a romantic love story stuffed in at the end, dubiously believable. But it is enjoyable, if a bit boggling at times with the different modes of writing, switching from the past to the future to the alternate future to diary to character to movie script (which is possibly the most annoying and ye More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 24, 2011

Haje rated it:

Making History, first published in 1996, is a book written by Stephen Fry, and is essentially a long and thorough answer to the question If you could go back in time and kill Hitler, would you?.

The book is a piece of fiction writing, 600-odd pages long, and is an unusual novel indeed. It interweaves a set of stories: A young history student’s doctoral thesis, a historical account from the trenches of the first world war, and the main story-line, set partially in New Jersey, and partial More...

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Dec 10, 2011

Ensiform rated it:

Much, much better than Fry’s first book, this 550-page SF time-travel historical thriller is engrossing from start to finish. The dialogue is witty and crammed with topical references, the complex plots are weaved together solidly, and the suspense is truly heart-pounding at times. In a nutshell, it tells the story of a Cambridge graduate student and a professor, the son of an Auschwitz doctor, who make sure Hitler was never born. The result is far more horrific than either one of them ever d More...

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Oct 18, 2011

Sjhigbee rated it:

This is the first time I’ve picked up a Stephen Fry novel, and it was an enjoyable, if slightly uneven, experience. Thumbing through the opening pages, I noticed that this book was first published in 1996, which begins to make sense when considering some of the faultlines running through this alternate history offering.

The book is an intriguing premise – two men decide, for very different reasons, to tamper with history by ensuring the one man responsible for the rise of Nazi Germa More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 17, 2011

Blandine rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

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Aug 11, 2011

Elaine rated it:

Как творить Самого Себя
Елена Карпос-Дедюхина
Рецензия на книгу "Как творить историю": Роман (пер. с англ. Ильина С.)
автор: Стивен Фрай
Автор рецензии: Дедюхина Елена
Дата публикации: 20 августа 2005 г.

Великобритания середины 90-х. Среди множества разноплановых событий, шокирующих и не очень, дольше всех оставалось загадкой внезапное исчезновение со сцены в день показа спектакля "Cell Mates" известного актера Стивена Фрая. Как люб More...

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Jul 30, 2011

Paul rated it:

Hmmm. This bopok's blurbs claim it to to be a science fiction comedy, which completely baffled me as to how these two genre could be merged to form a coherent piece of work.
It isn't funny at all, and is a rather tired re-working of H.G Wells' 'Time Machine' that is only used as a vehicle for Mister Fry to show us how much he knows about history, or at least the particular segment of history against which the book is set.
It is a reasonable read, though heavily laden with German phrase More...

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Jul 27, 2011

Jenny Sparrow rated it:

Из всех романов Стивена Фрая я сильнее всего хотела прочитать "Как творить историю". Особенно после того как узнала, что там будут некие махинации со временем и историей - одна из моих любимейших тем.

Читаться роман начинал тяжело. У меня, по крайней мере, всегда так с Фраем - для погружения требуется время. Столько незнакомых имен использует Фрай, столько намеков и аллюзий на британскую и мировую культуру, такая у него специфичная лексика, что так просто и не занырнешь. Заныр More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 19, 2010

Emily rated it:

I could not put this down. I picked it up while staying at a friend's place and despite lots of beautiful scenery going by me on a train, or interesting places to go, I simply couldn't stop reading this book. Damn you, Stephen Fry, your book was too engaging!
I do not want to tell you a thing about it. I had no idea where it was going when I picked it up and where it went was such a lovely surprise. I'll tell you that it starts at Cambridge, features a graduate student (in history) trying More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Sep 20, 2011

Paul rated it:

This is the first Stephen Fry novel I've read. Without giving too much away, its the story in which a Cambridge student and a Professor manage to create an occurrence of an alternative history in which Hitler was never born, this plan, as you can imagine, doesn’t have quite the intended result..

Obviously everyone knows Stephen Fry as a TV personality as well as a novelist, and his famous wit and intelligence is stamped on this book from page one. Funnily I read the entire book, havin More...

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Feb 04, 2009

Laura rated it:

Amazing. My absolute favorite of Fry's excellent works, and one of my favorite books, period. Hilarious, it goes without saying. Intelligent, playful, silly/serious. Romantic. No one but Fry could write a book about Hitler that can make you cry with laughter.
"Sodding pants."

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Feb 14, 2008

Katherine rated it:

Fiction, alternate universe. An ineffectual graduate student at Cambridge thinks that he can save the world from Hitler. Amusing throughout (as one would expect from Fry) but really rather grim as the author brings in the inevitable SF warning: be careful what you wish for. Writing a bit juvenile in parts actually but fortunately the reading is easy enough that you can skip right over it.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 25, 2010

unnarrator rated it:

This may even be a four-starred read...I encountered it while just finishing up my exams, though, and I worry that I'm not a reliable narrator on how good it actually is--that as with Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, it may just be that I'm a slut for all novels set in Cabbage (as Trezza Azzopardi used to call it, based on their being a roadsign off the motorway that directed one toward "Camb'ge"). Hell, I even like Dusty Answer. When there are SOMEDAY decent novels about the G More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 31, 2011

thegift rated it:

This is an interesting book to review, in that it evidences both the best aspects of sf and the worst- the premise is good, the plot is involving, but the characterization neither and the writing, the tone, is both verbose and thin. I could live without the first hundred or so pages, the protagonist even in first person address is less interesting than his girlfriend, and too much time is spent setting up the fateful meeting of physics and fiction. It just does not seem to justify the word count More...

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Feb 09, 2012

Robin rated it:

A book filled with wit, humour, sparkling prose, rich research, and memorable characters, but it's not entirely without problems.

Some of the early passages, and especially the final act, come across as a little self indulgent on the author's part. Some subplots don't quite gel the way they should. Some of the historical riffing gets a bit dull, just when the main plot is starting to kick off.

But all that pales against the energy, confidence, the sheer command of the English l More...

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Jun 23, 2009

BunWat rated it:

Hmmm well this was clever, and I love Stephen Fry's authorial voice, but somehow it ended up making me sad. Then again I wasn't in the best mood to start with so it may be I would have been more amused if I'd been in a better mood to begin with.

MINOR SPOILERS - Nothing you wouldn't get from reading the blurb.

I liked the premise quite a lot, that preventing the birth of Hitler might not produce a better world after all. Because yeah, Hitler was an evil man but he didn't More...

3 comments like (6 people liked it)

Dec 28, 2007

Todd rated it:

can I give a book zero stars? or negative stars? this was one of the worst books I've ever read. complete crap. and made worse by the fact that Fry's first two novels are absolute classics. don't read this. it's not even funny-bad.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 12, 2011

Alison rated it:

I'm always intrigued by "what if..." and love history so this book with it's "what if Hitler could be stopped?" was always going to appeal to me. It is clever and while often I did think as I read it "which of this is true in our world and which isn't" it wasn't necessary to have a good knowledge of 20th century history to enjoy it.

I was worried that Stephen Fry's "voice" would be overly intrusive as he is so well known and distinctive but I More...

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Feb 13, 2011

Victoria rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

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Oct 24, 2011

01MirandaH rated it:

Life would be grand if Hitler had never been born wouldn't it? That is what Michael "Puppy" and Leo Zuckerman thought. When I first picked up this book, I thought it would be a cute book with a nice world sans Hitler, maybe with some regret about the world not learning a lesson. It was silly to think such a thing would turn out okay, and Puppy accidentaly caused someone worse than Hitler to be born.

"Making History" is set shortly after World War Two, More...

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Dec 04, 2010

Persephone rated it:

My husband brought this home from some kind of fund-raising book sale at work, so I said "What the heck", and placed it by my bed.

It's a pleasant read, following the misadventures of a gawky and rather immature grad student Michael Young who has just finished his thesis on Hitler's early life. The first half of the book's chapters alternate between what is happening to Michael as he attempts to submit his paper, and what is actually written in his paper. The second half of More...

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Sep 07, 2010

Tom rated it:

This book has probably one of the most ingenious plot concepts I've read. I just wish a different author had thought of it.

Fry has a lighthearted style and irrelevant way that drifts off into various pop references and issues around homosexuality that add little to the story. His characterisation is annoying and if the story itself had not been as interesting I would have given up.

As it was, the story is clever and I liked the premise - a lot. So if a serious aut More...

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May 25, 2008

Shana rated it:

I thought "Jeeves" would be a much more skilled writer than proved here, but as much as I had to push myself to finish, I can't deny that I thought about the book long afterward.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 05, 2008

melvinhiddenelder rated it:

What would happen if Hitler were never born? You might think that would be a good thing, but like THE DOCTOR says, some points in history are in flux, some are fixed.

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Aug 07, 2011

Shari rated it:

I adore Stephen Fry, to the point of having a ABOFAL sketch programmed as the ringtone on my phone.* Put simply: I would jump at the chance to be this man's fag hag.

But after starting -- and abandoning -- The Liar twice despite my best efforts, I did not have high hopes for Making History. The only reason I picked it up is because I might, maybe, have succumbed to that weird Gen-Y fixation with the world wars -- and, of course, because any aspiring fag hag worth her salt will readily m More...

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