Blueeyedboy

May 23, 2011 Hattie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: contemporary

There are so many things Joanne Harris does well - sensual language play, twisted yet engaging characterisation, page-turning pacing... and magic realism. And it is only in that last sense that Blueeyedboy falls apart, because those little touches that are explained away by mysticism and magic in books like Chocolat (The Food Trilogy, #1) are missing here. The completely implausible synaethesia, which is so fitting for Harris' style, plants the book in the world of science rather than magic. The...more

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Nov 10, 2010 Nikki rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: contemporary, mystery

I got impatient to read blueeyedboy. You sort of expect Joanne Harris' work to show up in charity shops in short notice: I've found most of the rest of her work there, in my charity shop binges, after all. But I got tired of waiting, and didn't want to wait until Christmas, so I actually bought it for the Kindle app on my phone. That made it very convenient to read a chapter here and there -- even two chapters while I waited for Delta Maid to get off the stage so Seth Lakeman would come on! -- s...more I got impatient to read blueeyedboy. You sort of expect Joanne Harris' work to show up in charity shops in short notice: I've found most of the rest of her work there, in my charity shop binges, after all. But I got tired of waiting, and didn't want to wait until Christmas, so I actually bought it for the Kindle app on my phone. That made it very convenient to read a chapter here and there -- even two chapters while I waited for Delta Maid to get off the stage so Seth Lakeman would come on! -- so that meant I read this quite fast, but in snatches, whenever it was convenient...

The plot is very convoluted. There are so mistaken identities, so many unreliable narrators. The format itself is an unreliable sort of style: it's presented as an online journal-type site, very much like LiveJournal and its offspring, and we all know that people there can fictionalise their lives as much as they want. And you know the narrators are unreliable, and the further on it goes, the more you see that.

I was assured blueeyedboy was a big departure from Joanne Harris' usual. I really don't think so: her writing style bleeds through into the characters, and whenever she writes in first person or third person limited, her style bleeds through. There's something about it -- a hint of flavour, perhaps (appropriate, to be a synaesthete commenting on this book!), something in the phrasing... Anyway, that seemed typically her, and the darkness, the twisted relationships... I can see where in the rest of the work they come from.

blueeyedboy is dark, and not feel-good at all. The theme of food is there, but twisted, where before it's always seemed like a kind of good magic, in Harris' work -- although again, I can see a theme continuing, like the smell of oranges from Five Quarters of the Orange.

Interesting to read, but not so great a departure as I'd been led to believe, although without the comfort I've found in her other books, the way things tend to turn out okay -- changed, yes, but okay, with wounds lanced and poison drained, the danger faced and gone. Not so here. And even that's not new: The Evil Seed ended on a similar note. Not a departure at all, then.(less)

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Jun 12, 2011 Celia Lynch rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: gave-up

I tried several times to get into this book. I never give up on reading a book but I did this time. In fact I brough it with me to France and have left it there. I hope they have better luck than me reading it. An absolute mess it was.
A shame, I had high hopes for it. Even bought it twice. I had lent it to my daughter and then thought I had lost it so I ordered it again. That was how much I wanted to read it. I won't do that again.

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May 05, 2013 S. J. Bolton rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is a very clever book; arguably the cleverest of all Harris’s books and almost certainly too clever for the likes of me. Because I struggled with it, if I’m honest.

Mrs Green has three sons: Black, Brown and Blue. Black is the eldest, brash and aggressive, Brown is the middle child, timid and dull. Blue is his mother’s favourite we are told at the outset, and he is a murderer.

Or is he? Because nothing is quite as it seems in this story.

The unreliable narrator is one of my favourite fictio...more This is a very clever book; arguably the cleverest of all Harris’s books and almost certainly too clever for the likes of me. Because I struggled with it, if I’m honest.

Mrs Green has three sons: Black, Brown and Blue. Black is the eldest, brash and aggressive, Brown is the middle child, timid and dull. Blue is his mother’s favourite we are told at the outset, and he is a murderer.

Or is he? Because nothing is quite as it seems in this story.

The unreliable narrator is one of my favourite fictional devices, and this book has not one, but two. I might have expected to like it all the more but somehow it didn’t quite happen. Much of the time, I really wasn’t sure what was going on. The timelines were confusing, and it was hard to keep track of who knew who in real life or just online. I’m sure if I went back and read it again, it would all make perfect sense, Harris is too good a writer for it not to, but there was too little about the story that was enjoyable for me to want to do so.

Most of the story is told through postings on ‘badguysrock’, an internet forum and Harris exploits to the full our ability to hide behind fictional personas when we interact on-line. We see typical on-line personalities that are all too recognizable: those who over-intellectualise, those who come to life only via a keyboard, those who want to give the world on-line ‘hugs’. It’s clever, I just didn’t find it particularly engaging.

Another theme is that of colour. All the principle characters have a colour assigned to them. The narrator sees colours behind words. Again, a clever idea but to my mind the constant references to different shades of blue became annoying.

Selfish, toxic women who live vicariously through their children, doing them immeasurable harm in the process is another theme, particularly Mrs Green, with her relentless ambition for her sons and Mrs White, who needs to believe that her blind daughter has exceptional gifts. Both were deeply unpleasant.

And that, I guess, is the root of the problem. There was nobody in this rather nasty book that I liked and I remained emotionally unengaged.

I don’t want to NOT recommend blueeyedboy, because it is exceptionally clever, and there will be those who love it. But when I read Harris, I want to be moved emotionally, delighted sensually and thrilled by her originality of thinking. This time, it didn’t happen.
(less)

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Nov 03, 2012 Raquel rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: people who like thrillers, people who really like books, people who like surprises

Shelves: on-my-shelf

A história é narrada através de entradas num webjournal publicadas por Blueyedboy e Albertine, que demonstram desde o início ter um passado em comum. Albertine quer esquecê-lo, mas Blueyedboy pretende reavivá-lo.
Nesta espécie de diário cibernético, somos confrontados com factos, ou talvez apenas ficção, que marcaram e mudaram a vida destas duas personagens. No entanto, é difícil distinguir a verdade da liberdade artística.
Blueyedboy, a personagem principal, é um quarentão que vive com a mãe - u...more A história é narrada através de entradas num webjournal publicadas por Blueyedboy e Albertine, que demonstram desde o início ter um passado em comum. Albertine quer esquecê-lo, mas Blueyedboy pretende reavivá-lo.
Nesta espécie de diário cibernético, somos confrontados com factos, ou talvez apenas ficção, que marcaram e mudaram a vida destas duas personagens. No entanto, é difícil distinguir a verdade da liberdade artística.
Blueyedboy, a personagem principal, é um quarentão que vive com a mãe - uma mulher manipuladora e agressiva - numa pequena vila, denominada Malbey. Para fugir à sua própria realidade, bastante aterradora, refugia-se no mundo virtual, demonstrando-nos a dimensão que um ser humano é capaz de assumir quando não está condicionado pelas regras sociais.
A princípio, a história é um pouco confusa, pois não temos a certeza do que é real e do que não é, nem de quem é na realidade cada personagem; mais ou menos a meio do livro, começamos finalmente a perceber o que se passa e a encaixar todas as peças, mas, novamente, somos surpreendidos com uma reviravolta apoteótica. Esta história é, sem sombra de dúvida, imprevisível, além de que engloba crime, romance, drama, humor (negro) e jogos psicológicos, que nos revelam o lado negro do mundo virtual.
O que torna o Blueyedboy especial é o facto de ser sinestésico, isto é, possuir dois sentidos bastante apurados, associando cheiros a situações e cores a pessoas. O azul é a cor que predomina nesta história, estando associado ao crime e a sensações desagradáveis. A música também tem um papel de destaque na narrativa.
Embora exija uma especial atenção, porque é um livro, uma história, que não nos permite deslizes, se pretendemos seguir o fio à meada, é também deveras interessante e desafiador, até porque foge um pouco ao género literário da autora. É um livro muito mais negro e gerou imensa controvérsia: alguns gostam, outros só o conseguem classificar de estranho e ainda há quem o odeie visceralmente. Assim, penso que seria giro se tentassem descobrir em que grupo se inserem e porquê. É um livro que nos ensina que não devemos escolher apenas pelos autores, uma vez que podemos sempre ser surpreendidos (agradeço por, como eu esperava, ter sido positivamente, embora me tenha surpreendido na mesma). Aproveito também para dizer que, neste caso, a sinopse também é capaz de nos induzir em erro. De qualquer maneira, é um thriller maravilhoso, que recomendo completamente.(less)

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Sep 30, 2012 Adair rated it 1 of 5 stars

Joanne Harris, the acclaimed author of Chocolat, departs from sunny characters and a feel-good story in her latest work, blueeyedboy.

‘blueeyedboy’ is the online name of Benjamin Winter, a troubled man who joins a creative writing forum. Group members post chapters of their works-in-progress, comment on those of others, and occasionally get together. Benjamin’s posts are particularly imaginative—and very dark. blueeyedboy’s life is bleak, full of abuse. He’s learned early that lies can save. Ther...more

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Sep 14, 2012 Anna rated it 3 of 5 stars

I thought I would love this, as I recently read Joanne Harris's 'Gentlemen and Players', which I thought was a superb book, and was told this was in the same vein.

It has considerable similarities, based again on the idea of concealing your identity, and even set in the same town (the fictional school that formed the setting of 'Gentlemen and Players' also features in this novel). I liked the concept - the idea of characters hiding behind online identities, the blurring of the boundaries between...more

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May 22, 2011 Manda rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2011

Hmmm, still processing this one. I didn't want to give it three star "I liked it", because actually I found this book a discomforting, unsettling read. I was drawn back to it, compelled to read it despite those feelings. And it feels dreadfully strange to comment on a book made up of web entries by writing a web review - it feels too much as if I am trying to emulate the book.

I feel sure that I will be haunted by this book, that as I put all the different pieces together in my head I will be dr...more

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Apr 11, 2011 Keri rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: mystery, thriller

Harris may be better-known for her lighter works of magical realism, but she can write a twisty, dark psychological thriller like almost no one else. Like her earlier Gentlemen and Players , this is a multiple-perspective narrative which toys with the many assumptions readers make about identity, reality and truth in fiction. What seems at first to be a straightforward psychological study of a murderer-- a premise which has proved sufficient to inspire many perfectly good suspense thrillers in i...more

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Feb 23, 2011 harryknuckles rated it 5 of 5 stars

Joanne Harris began her career with two works of dark fiction that in many ways define her style better than the crowd-pleasing 'Chocolat'. She has always been interested in the masks we hide behind, and in 'blueeyedboy' is able to give full rein to these ideas.

I was unsure what to expect as I started to read as I had glanced at a few not so favourable reviews. Anyway, better to get this out of the way at the beginning - there is no chocolate, no magic, no wine and no fruit (except in a vile “v...more Joanne Harris began her career with two works of dark fiction that in many ways define her style better than the crowd-pleasing 'Chocolat'. She has always been interested in the masks we hide behind, and in 'blueeyedboy' is able to give full rein to these ideas.

I was unsure what to expect as I started to read as I had glanced at a few not so favourable reviews. Anyway, better to get this out of the way at the beginning - there is no chocolate, no magic, no wine and no fruit (except in a vile “vitamin-drink” concocted by Gloria).

In this book Harris returns to the northern town setting of Gentlemen and Players. Blueeyedboy is a dark and chilling modern day fable, with a tense and taut plot. We have two narrators; our anti-hero (BB) is a 42 year old janitor at the local hospital. He still lives with his controlling (to put it mildly..) mother Gloria and spends most of his time creating ‘fics’ (stories) online on his site badguysrock which seems to be a haven for social rejects with a taste for violence. He communicates most often with Albertine, who is equally unappealing.

Although we don't have the obvious foodie motifs here, there are plenty of sensations at play, the most intriguing of these being synaesthesia, a neurological condition where the senses overlap. BB has the olfactory/gustatory type whereby he experiences people and places as colours, smells and tastes. Emily, the little blind girl seems to experience music as colours. We're reminded that our senses can fool us and we need to be on our guard. Indeed there is creeping air of tension throughout the whole book - it's very subtle but it's very unsettling for the reader.

None of the characters are likeable. BB's family is a dysfunctional mess and his buddies on badguysrock are social outcasts. Even the little blind girl Emily is living a false life - smoke and mirrors aplenty!

One of the strongest themes here is that of identity and how the boundaries between virtual and real life become so blurred as to become interchangeable so even the narrators themselves are unsure as to what is fiction and what is reality and yes, the reader does have a hard job working that out too! We're never sure whether BB's crowing about the murders he's supposedly committed is just a facade. Just as, on the internet, we are never sure about the true identities of those we communicate with on a daily basis. It's refreshing to not have everything set out in black and white and handed to you on a plate, but to be able to draw your own conclusions whilst being thrown the occasional red herring (or is that just your mind playing tricks on you...).

If you like tidy, linear stories with happy endings this is most certainly not for you.

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Aug 19, 2010 Chris rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: mystery, little-red-riding-hood, fantasy-dark, lit-english, magic-realism, jharris

I usually think of Joanne Harris in terms of food. She's that fine French food I can afford. She's that nice meal prepared by friends in the French countryside (if I had friends in the French countryside). This isn't surprising. After all, she has co-authored two cookbooks. Some of her books are named for food, and food plays a role in the plots.

She, however, then writes book like Gentlemen and Players, which would be suited for a production of PBS' Mystery.

Then, she writes Blueeyedboy where she...more I usually think of Joanne Harris in terms of food. She's that fine French food I can afford. She's that nice meal prepared by friends in the French countryside (if I had friends in the French countryside). This isn't surprising. After all, she has co-authored two cookbooks. Some of her books are named for food, and food plays a role in the plots.

She, however, then writes book like Gentlemen and Players, which would be suited for a production of PBS' Mystery.

Then, she writes Blueeyedboy where she seems to channel Hitchcock, minus his chalk outline.

The story is told by postings on a web journal. The main poster, Blueeyedboy, runs the website, and the story is revealed mostly though his postings. There is also Albertine who may or may not be a victim of Blueeyedboy, and whose posts the reader is also privy to. Harris also includes a comment section after those posts that are marked public.

The use of public and private posts puts the reader in a boggy and constantly shifting piece of ground. Blueeyedboy seems to confess to multiple murders in the fiction he writes. Is he telling the truth? He lies about one important piece of infromation after all. Is Albertine more trustworthy? Perhaps. She seems more honest, but she has her own dark secrets as well.

It is prudent for the reader to remember that the website is called Badguysrock. There is something about about well played or written bad guy after all. Sometimes it is simple attraction, Richard Armitage being a prime example. Those bad guys usually have a redeemable feature -they were abused, they're really nice.

Sometimes it is simply because the actor is so good. Alan Rickman, anyone? Cancel Christmas!

Other times, it is less about sexual attraction and more about everything else - the acting, the directing, the writing, the make-up. the viewer doesn't want to redeem, let alone met, the bad guy, but the bad guy commands attention. The Joker in either Batman movie is an example of this.

It is this last bad guy that Harris applies to this book. The characters are not likable, believable, but not likable, yet, the reader can't stop reading. Harris seems to be looking at the attraction of evil as well as the ability to be anyone on the Internet.(less)

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Apr 24, 2013 Susan rated it 4 of 5 stars

A difficult read. scary. more than once I wanted to quit. nearly didn't go on reading after the first time but I'm glad I did because I was able to distance myself from what was happening.

synaethesia - words can have colurs, sounds can have shapes, numbers can be illuminated - can be visual, but different kinds - words can translate as tastes or smells, or colours can be triggered by migraine pain

a synaesthete might see music, taste sound experience numbers as textures or shapes. - mirror touch...more

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Oct 10, 2011 Charlotte Phillips rated it 3 of 5 stars

This was ultimately a very confusing book that just seemde to change its mind from page to page. Right at the beginning you think you are sure and positive about the plot, but when you reach about halfway through your suddenly thrown into a new mystery, told your wrong and that actually this is the real plot. So once more you get on with the book, readjust your thoughts and hope that you have got it right this time. But then it once more changes its mind, throws another spanner in the book, and...more This was ultimately a very confusing book that just seemde to change its mind from page to page. Right at the beginning you think you are sure and positive about the plot, but when you reach about halfway through your suddenly thrown into a new mystery, told your wrong and that actually this is the real plot. So once more you get on with the book, readjust your thoughts and hope that you have got it right this time. But then it once more changes its mind, throws another spanner in the book, and by the end of it your not actually sure of what is going on, or who did and didn't do it. But other than the confusion it was an interesting book that does make you think about things in a new perspective. I loved all the focus on the colors and the different shades of colors, because I think that sometimes we dont think about how certain colors can stand for specific things, or have importance in one way or another. Of course the main color focused on in the book was blue, but I enjoyed learning about all the shades of blue, the way they were all given there own personality, almost as if the author was wanting to bring the colors to life, so that you didnt just paint them in your mind, but you actually brought them to life, gave it character and therefore more feeling.

There was a few difficult parts in the book though that truly touched and caught my heart in ways that were close to bringing me to tears. Abuse is always a hard subject to read about, but whenn your reading about it and not reading about anything being done to solve it, it reminds you that this does happen in the real world. there are children out there who are beaten and hurt by those that are meant to love them, and they are quiet and do not tell anyone. Yet the thing that you have to remember with this book is that it is a fictional novel, it is not real, it is just a story and so you have to take it with a level of light heartedness. I wasn't totally sure as to why the book was split up into parts as all parts interlinked well each other and did not, to me anyway, seem to offer a divide in the story. Each chapter followed on perfectly so you were not lost, so why the need for parts? perhaps there was something there that I was missing? perhaps the colors of the parts were significant to the chapters written? who knows.

Either way, it was an enjoyable book, though in many ways also frustrating. the book does seem to be totally focused on murders, and so you get the feeling that it is a crime novel and your the detective meant to figure out who commited the crime and why. But everytime you think you have got it right, it changes and yet right at the very end you are still left unknowing and confused. Its almost as if the reader didnt actually want you to know who the true criminal was. Almost as if she really wanted you to think about it with great depth and care, to put your information gathered together and use your head to piece the puzzle pieces into the correct order. So of course, getting to the endingg and not finding my ending was rather annoying. it left me wanting to chuck the book in a fire, yet at the same time I had this great urge to reread it, feeling as if I really had missed something else out.

I did think and feel though that it was an interesting novel, one that does captivate you and challenges you. its a book clearly not meant to be skimmed over, something totally meant to make you think. a worth while read if your bored and want a challenge.(less)

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Jun 18, 2010 D.M. rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: literature-and-fiction

Now I've finished all 410 pages of this novel, described as a 'thriller' by the publishers, I have mixed impressions.

It is a skillfully-written narrative, that of the lives of two main characters living in an suburban English village, told in their own words in an online web journal. They both have sensitive histories and have been caught up in the dysfunctional world of their families and other people around them.

Blueeyedboy is an online avatar for a grown man who lives with his controlling mot...more

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Apr 06, 2013 Ape rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: england, crime

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

This was quite refreshing in that it didn't fit into the standard mould of all the Joanne Harris books I've read to date - French influence, single mother with hippy tendancies fighting against the establishment, cooking and food.... It's quite a bleak little story in a rather long book, full of dysfunctional and on the whole really quite nasty characters.

It's all told through private and public blogs of two characters who call t...more SPOILERS IN THIS SPOILERS IN THIS SPOILERS IN THIS SPOILERS IN THIS

This was quite refreshing in that it didn't fit into the standard mould of all the Joanne Harris books I've read to date - French influence, single mother with hippy tendancies fighting against the establishment, cooking and food.... It's quite a bleak little story in a rather long book, full of dysfunctional and on the whole really quite nasty characters.

It's all told through private and public blogs of two characters who call themselves blueeyedboy and Albertine. They've grown up in the same town, know each other and in fact go to the same creative writing course. So in this blog it's a mix of diary entries, fiction and ficitionalised versions of what has happened in the past. They are adults now, but a lot of what they are writing about is from their childhood. So in the end, despite the "shockers" you can never be sure who the murderer really is - because is the last version true simply because it's the last version?

Motherhood doesn't come off well in this book. There are three mothers in this story, although the third doesn't really come up to begin with as we're led to believe that there are only two families involved in this rather than three. They're all different, but there seems to be this common schzio personality thing in them where on the one hand they think their child is gifted, brilliant, the best and viciously attacks any other child that may steal away their child's advantages in life. At the same time they hate their child and try to destroy him/her with varying degrees of success. Out of all of them, it's Gloria Green/Winter who is the most evil twisted old troll mother you could hope to meet. She is the mother of the three boys, Nigel (black), Brendan (brown) and Benjamin (blue) - the colours referring to their clothes so that the laundry was easy to sort.

The "shocks" in the book weren't majorly shocking for me. I mean, I was involved in the story so I wasn't overly trying to second guess the book and I didn't see them coming. But when they arrived, I didn't feel shocked either. I mean, the book sets off leading you to believe it's the so-called gifted children Benjamin and Emily who are the two bloggers; then a good way in you find out they died still in adolescence and it's actually the siblings they overshadowed (Brendan, the fat dull middle boy; and Bethan, the secret half sister living next door) who are blogging. Ok, it's a surprise, but so what? As is the surprise at the end as to the third version of the murderer's identity.

Really, the best thing is seeing the story unfold, although it's a miserable little tale of how horrible people can be to themselves and one another. There's all this disappointment in their own lives, projected onto children who can't make it all good for them; jealously and petty rivalry, revenge... and what they do to old Dr Peacock is really quite horrible. (less)

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Jan 17, 2012 Pythia rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: preferiti, non-me-ne-perdo-uno

Johanne Harris è una trasformista che non si può imbrigliare in una categoria precisa della narrativa: scrive romanzi rosa, di magia, di mitologia, thriller, horror e l'elenco potrebbe proseguire ancora perché ciascuno di essi potrebbe venire incluso anche in un sottinsieme, come una matrioska. Un particolare però lega tutti i suoi romanzi, ed è la mostruosa suggestione con cui crea vite. Non personaggi, non caratteri, ma esseri che potrebbero uscire dalle pagine dei romanzi e vivere di vita pro...more Johanne Harris è una trasformista che non si può imbrigliare in una categoria precisa della narrativa: scrive romanzi rosa, di magia, di mitologia, thriller, horror e l'elenco potrebbe proseguire ancora perché ciascuno di essi potrebbe venire incluso anche in un sottinsieme, come una matrioska. Un particolare però lega tutti i suoi romanzi, ed è la mostruosa suggestione con cui crea vite. Non personaggi, non caratteri, ma esseri che potrebbero uscire dalle pagine dei romanzi e vivere di vita propria tanto sono realistici e concreti. A questa si aggiunge la sua bravura nello stravolgere le situazioni di partenza e "Il ragazzo con gli occhi blu" è il non plus ultra: leggerlo è come guardare un quadro di Escher, dove le scale continuano all'infinito e gli uccelli si trasformano in pesci senza soluzione di continuità.
Blueyedboy è uno come tanti, un uomo che si potrebbe definire anche ragazzo per la vita da adolescente che conduce: vive ancora con la madre nonostante abbia un lavoro e quarant'anni suonati, si sfoga nella vita parellela della rete, nel suo blog che in traltà è una tela di ragno dove intrappola i suoi lettori come prede con cui divertirsi. Nasconde la propria verità di imbroglione dietro una maschera di perbenismo, cercando di evitare lo sguardo indagatore della madre soffocante e la curiosità delle sue amiche sempre pronte a fare la spia.
Il libro è un dialogo virtuale a suon di botta e risposta via blog tra Blueyedboy e Albertine, due facce della stessa medaglia che descrivono la stessa verità in due modi diversi eppure complementari. E quando il lettore crede di essere arrivato a capire, la storia viene capovolta, una volta, due , tre... fino alla fine. I punti di riferimento consueti vengono demoliti, il bene non è tale e il male è l'unica soluzione; le scelte di uno influiscono indelebilmente sulla vita degli altri, ma le conseguenze non rispondono alla prima legge della fisica; ciò che viene spacciato per vero, non lo è, o forse sì, o forse no, o forse...?
"Il ragazzo con gli occhi blu" è un romanzo dove la cattiveria trasuda da ogni pagina, mescolata al rancore e all'odio: emozioni così forti che il lettore non ne resta immune e per quanto dica a sé stesso che è "solo una storia" chiude il libro con un senso di inquietudine che non lo abbandona nemmeno dopo l'ultima pagina. I vari pezzi del puzzle si incastrano senza sforzo e senza dare l'impressione di seguire uno schema già stabilito: un unico difetto, forse necessario per descrivere la complessità delle vicende, è la narrazione impostata come un blog, con post e commenti. Peccato che solo questi abbiano la freschezza e l'immediatezza dei messaggi reali, mentre i capitoli-post mancano completamente del linguaggio tipico dei diari on-line: troppo involuti, troppo descrittivi, troppo narrativi e quindi poco credibili. Conoscendo però le magie della Harris viene da pensare che anche questo, in fondo, potrebbe far parte del gioco: come un mago che annuncia al pubblico cosa sta per fare, in modo tale da distogliere l'attenzione degli spettatori, che andranno a concentrarsi su altri dettagli mentre lui, indisturbato, fa esattamente quanto aveva detto. (less)

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May 02, 2011 La Stamberga dei Lettori added it · review of another edition

Shelves: pythia

Joanne Harris è una trasformista che non si può imbrigliare in una categoria precisa della narrativa: scrive romanzi rosa, di magia, di mitologia, thriller, horror e l'elenco potrebbe proseguire ancora perché ciascuno di essi potrebbe venire incluso anche in un sottinsieme, come una matrioska. Un particolare però lega tutti i suoi romanzi, ed è la mostruosa suggestione con cui crea vite. Non personaggi, non caratteri, ma esseri che potrebbero uscire dalle pagine dei romanzi e vivere di vita prop...more

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Sep 13, 2012 Petty Witter rated it 2 of 5 stars

Brilliantly atmospheric, gripping, insightful, engrossing - just some of the words used to describe Joanne Harris's Blueeyedboy.

Myself, I'd use oddly intriguing and increasingly sinister.

A bit like a car passenger who, on passing a car crash, feels compelled to look, I felt myself drawn towards blueeyedboy. Unable to say exactly why, I can only think I was trying to make sense of it all.

Though mainly narrated by Blueeyedboy posting on the fictional site badguysrock, Blueeyedboy is written as a w...more

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Mar 23, 2012 Lynn rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: psychological-thriller

Joanne Harris has written taut psychological thrillers that keep you guessing. She can really surprise you. Blueeyedboy has a twist, which I expected. Harris surprised me, which I expected. However, I didn't love this book. One reason is that there wasn't any sympathetic characters. Another reason it won't be a favourite Harris book for me was the style of writing. The book is written as a series of web blogs authored by two people. I had to keep going back to the beginning of the chapter to see...more

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Jun 18, 2011 LG rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: hotel pool-side summer reading

Harris’s Gentlemen and Players was a winner, so I couldn’t wait to start this new work by the same author. However …

Tickled pink as I was by its blurb, I was left in a black mood after I red Blueeyedboy. First, the Clue allusions, which also failed to pass mustard with Biogeek. I take umberage at this conceit because it totally teals the limelight from the story. Second, the purpletrator. Not so much a butcher as a blogger, B.B. is a mama’s boy who whites online fiction about his perfect murders

...more

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Apr 15, 2010 Teresa rated it 5 of 5 stars

It was with great trepidation that I embarked on this literary voyage as I had glanced at a few not so favourable reviews (will I ever learn??). Anyway, better to get this out of the way at the beginning – there is no chocolate, no magic, no wine, no fruit except for some rotten fruit juice. I have no doubt that Joanne Harris is ever so slightly ticked off by folk expecting her to continue writing in the same French pastoral vein but I really admire her for exploring much darker territory in her...more It was with great trepidation that I embarked on this literary voyage as I had glanced at a few not so favourable reviews (will I ever learn??). Anyway, better to get this out of the way at the beginning – there is no chocolate, no magic, no wine, no fruit except for some rotten fruit juice. I have no doubt that Joanne Harris is ever so slightly ticked off by folk expecting her to continue writing in the same French pastoral vein but I really admire her for exploring much darker territory in her latest novel although I suspect that the story found her rather than vice-versa.

I have read and loved all of her novels/short stories with the exception of Sleep Pale Sister which is waiting patiently on my bookshelves. The Evil Seed was the only one which failed to impress but I think that was just a case of the publisher reissuing her very first writing for a quick buck.

So, is this a complete lane-change for Ms Harris? Not exactly, as she paved the way with Gentlemen and Players which is set in the same fictional Northern village of Malbry. However, this is a much darker tale with layers of secrets and lies – if Chocolat was Dairy Milk then this is Green and Black's Espresso Dark Chocolate. Our anti-hero, B.B., is a 42 year old janitor at the local hospital. He still lives with his controlling (to put it mildly..) mother and spends most of his time online on his site badguysrock which seems to be a haven for social rejects with a taste for violence.

This is a modern version of the epistolary novel and it reminded me of its ancestor, Liaisons Dangereuses, especially as we again have two unreliable, unappealing narrators, B.B and Albertine who communicate their thoughts, stories via posts on badguysrock and their own personal web journals. One of the strongest themes here is that of identity and how the boundaries between virtual and real life become so blurred as to become interchangeable so even the narrators themselves are unsure as to what's fiction and what's reality and yes, the reader does have a hard job working that out too! We're never sure whether B.B's crowing about the murders he's supposedly committed is just a facade. Just as, on the internet, we are never sure about the true identies of those we communicate with on a daily basis.

None of the characters are likeable. BB's family is a dysfunctional mess, his cronies on badguysrock are social outcasts, even Albertine (reminscent of Proust's character) is not the little Red Riding Hood figure we might imagine. Even the little blind girl, whose murder is at the core of this tale, is living a false life - smoke and mirrors aplenty!

Although we don't have the obvious foodie motifs here, there are plenty of sensations at play, the most intriguing of these being synaesthesia, a neurological condition where the senses overlap. BB has the olfactory/gustatory type whereby he experiences people and places as colours, smells and tastes. Emily, the little blind girl appears to be a synaesthete also but she seems to experience music as colours. Again, we're reminded that our senses can fool us and we need to be on our guard. Indeed there is creeping air of tension throughout the whole book – it's very subtle but it's very unsettling for the reader. I must say that I loved the whole unsettling process! It's very refreshing to not have everything set out in black and white and handed to you on a plate but to come to your own conclusions whilst being thrown the occasional red herring, or is that just your mind playing tricks on you...

So, if you like tidy, linear stories with happy endings this is most certainly not for you. This is the second novel I've read this year which has marked a very different change of tack for the writer, the first of those being The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters which disturbed some of her fans as Ms Waters didn't simply throw on previously worn narrative threads. I loved The Little Stranger on its own merits, nothing to do with previous novels and surely that's how it should be and I am delighted to report that I found blueeyedboy equally gripping. Definitely an A* from me.

PS if you are interested in reading more about synaesthesia I would highly recommend Astonishing Splashes of Colour, an excellent novel by Clare Morall and in non-fiction, Born on a Blue Day by Daniel Tammet – both fascinating and highly enlightening reads.
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Jan 09, 2012 Jaana rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Joanne Harrisin Herrasmiehiä ja huijareita oli yksi parhaista kirjoista, joita viime vuonna luin. Erehdyin jotenkin luulemaan, että Sinisilmä olisi samanlainen jännittäviä käänteitä täynnä oleva mysteeri, missä matto vedetään jalkojen alta juuri kuin kuvittelet päässeesi selville vesille hahmojen ja tapahtumien suhteen. Voi kuinka väärässä olinkaan. Eihän tässä hetkeäkään voinut kuvitella tietävänsä, että kuka on kuka ja mikä on totta ja mikä ei. Uudet jännittävät(?) käänteet aiheuttivat vain tu...more

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Apr 01, 2012 Deana Jacoby rated it 4 of 5 stars

Yes, the book is dark, but a review should also include the literary elements an author has incorporated. Harris writes excellent psychological novels: certainly a modern approach but that means that the hero/heroine will definitely have flaws and that fine line between moral and immoral will not be so clear. Her characters resonate in society, and although that is disturbing, it's reality. Her structure, i.e. blogs, also make me consider what's "out there" on the net, and how easy it can be to...more

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Mar 23, 2013 Glyn Smith-Wild rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I bought this book for my wife for Christmas, knowing that she was a fan of Joanna Harris. She read less than an quarter of it and gave up as she was not drawn into the story and was totally confused.
So she gave it me to read. I have also read all of Joanna Harris's previous novels and thoroughly enjoyed them, so this came as a a bit of surprise to me as well. It annoyed me that having persevered with it, half way through I'm told that it wasn't the person I thought it was writing the blogs, but...more

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May 06, 2010 Natalie rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book is without a doubt the best I've read this year so far!
As with Gentlemen and Players, this one showcases Joanne Harris's dark side, with a seriously sinister undertone playing in this book the whole way through!
The narrators are so unreliable, that even they don't really know what the truth is anymore, and as a reader, I was left reeling on more than one occasion, as just as I thought I had figured things out, the rug was pulled out from under my feet, and I was left reeling, then ju...more

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Apr 11, 2010 Gina rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2010, fiction, own, 4-star

I don't read many thrillers. I prefer my mysteries to be the bloodless sort solved by fussy Belgian detectives or elderly spinster ladies in tiny English villages. To me, thriller writers tend to rely too much on the shock factor of gratuitous sex and violence and don't pay enough attention to the writing.

Luckily Joanne Harris doesn't fall into that category. Not that this book doesn't have a fair bit of violence and disturbing subject matter, but it's much more literary. More subtle and less f...more I don't read many thrillers. I prefer my mysteries to be the bloodless sort solved by fussy Belgian detectives or elderly spinster ladies in tiny English villages. To me, thriller writers tend to rely too much on the shock factor of gratuitous sex and violence and don't pay enough attention to the writing.

Luckily Joanne Harris doesn't fall into that category. Not that this book doesn't have a fair bit of violence and disturbing subject matter, but it's much more literary. More subtle and less formulaic. Since this is her second psychological thriller, there's bound to be some comparison to Gentlemen and Players. Personally, I LOVED Gentlemen and Players and blueeyedboy fell a little short for me, though it was fun to see St. Oswald's boy's school make another appearance. The place is apparently a breeding ground for sociopaths.

This book is extremely dark and creepy. In an interview with Joanne Harris she said that she thinks of it primarily as black comedy. I definitely see the black part. The comedy I'm not so sure about. There were a few instances of very grim humor and I suppose the ending could be considered comical (in a sick, twisted way), but on the whole this is an extremely dark book. Much darker than Gentlemen and Players which had some genuine humor serving as occasional comic relief. Very dry humor, but that's the best kind.

This book is told through a series of blog entries, some public entries presented as fiction (complete with a comments section), others private journal entries understood to be the truth. It becomes clear fairly early on, though, that it's not that clear cut. Neither of the narrators are reliable, further emphasizing the danger of placing too much faith in an online profile and an avatar.

Every time I thought I had a handle on this book there was another twist that would throw a different perspective on things. It was really unsettling to never be able to get my bearings, but in a good, creepy way. Unfortunately I felt like the plot didn't really get off the ground until at least the halfway point, when we started getting a little more information. Right up to the end I wasn't entirely sure what would be considered an ending to this book. It's not a "find the killer" type novel, especially since it was not made clear what murder is even being discussed.

Although this book was not exactly what I was expecting, I really enjoyed it. After the let-down of The Girl With No Shadow, this book was especially welcome. (less)

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May 10, 2013 Regina rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: all-time-best, mystery, crime-story

It was a really nice psychological thriller that kept me on my toes and had more surprising revelations than I care to admit.
I loved how I didn't know how big of part of blueeyedboy's fictions was real and I loved guessing about his relationship with Albertine, but the most fascinating was how Gloria Green's ambitions managed to poison the life of this many people.
I would recommend it only to those who can invest a great deal of emotions into this story and can relate to both blueeyedboy's and...more

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Feb 13, 2013 Sarah Pearce rated it 4 of 5 stars

Wow! I think ambiguous is the word.

As psychological thrillers go, this is up there with the best of them. There are twists at every turn in the complex plot. And nobody can be trusted - not even the narrator.

Of Joanne Harris’s novels, the only one I’d read prior to blueeyedboy was Chocolat. And I found myself utterly gob smacked that this had been written by the same, wonderfully omnivorous, writer.

As the one remaining living son of Gloria Green, blueeyedboy is under a lot of pressure to succee...more

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Sep 10, 2010 Blair rated it 3 of 5 stars

I really wanted to give this book four stars. IT WAS CREEPY. It wil haunt your thoughts long after you close its pages. So many twists and revelations that it does tend to get disorientating towards the end of the novel. That was the only thing holding this back from the ever-elusive fourth and/or fifth star. It could have been great, and there are glimpses of brilliance. I think one of its greatest strengths was the use of several monikers for the characters in the story. This leads to a sense...more

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Aug 06, 2011 Sally Anfilogoff rated it 4 of 5 stars

This surprised me. I read it on holiday as it was in the bookswap shelf in the resort and remembered 'chocolat'. This book is nothing like that - at all, if you want a romance, stay clear - but it was well written and genuinely interesting. The characterisation is good - considering that you do not really 'meet' any of them as they are all discovered via online blogs/forums/journals and none of the events portrayed are shown to the reader as they happen. It is a complicated story and I was taken...more

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