Two good Amazon reviews for "MAN STRUGGLING WITH UMBRELLA"
Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars
"An intense and thought provoking read by a talented new author and well worth the effort"
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 15 April 2021
Verified Purchase
I bought this book as I was intrigued by the title and the author’s description of himself. It’s refreshing to read something from a new author who is not following a mainstream formulaic style of writing but engages the reader immediately with his unique style of writing. What is clear is that Man Struggling with Umbrella is very obviously not a novel but an inspired work of often but not always independent short , some very short, autobiographical pieces , fantasies , thrillers and horror fiction that flood your mind with thought provoking images.
The author challenges conventions with his gritty, intense characters and vivid descriptions and each one left me wanting to know more. It is a clever and very well written book . It’s not at all what I expected but very much what I needed and I look forward to the author’s next offering.
One person found this helpful
*****
Bookworm Babe:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"A remarkable piece of work that demands your respect and your full attention"
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 16 March 2021
Verified Purchase
Never read anything like this in my life. Not sure whether to describe it as a fusion or a hybrid. There is no real word for it that I'm aware of. It's pretty radical and uncompromising in its format and thus extremely difficult to describe, let alone pigeonhole. It is pretty damned good though. I read it twice in a week. Not exactly what I was expecting, but I'm so glad I bought it. I would have given it five stars but the second piece in the book was really hard work. Personally I'm not sure it should be in there, but I wouldn't like to presume to know this author's intent. He is full of surprises. It was only 8 pages. I'd suggest you skip it, at least on the first read through. Maybe "Mocha Chocolata..." will make more sense in the light of further books in the series, but right now it stands out as peculiar.
This is NOT a novel. It's more of an anthology. But a lot of the 20 separate pieces contained are connected or intertwined in subtle and / or unexpected ways. It's mostly fiction but there are non-fiction pieces too and even a couple of short poems. It really is difficult to categorise this but right now I would be tempted to describe it as a fantasy-tainted memoir. It's surprisingly music-related, but the main themes I would say are reincarnation, dreams, deja-vu, spirituality, karma and fate. The longest piece in the book (the third one) is like a skeleton upon which the rest of the book (and I would assume the whole series of five books to come) will hang. In his preface, the author describes the book as a museum showcasing the freshly unearthed relics of a lost civilisation. It is the task of the reader to make sense of them. This is just the first layer of discovery. Each book to come will bring forth more discoveries, filling in the blanks but at the same time raising more questions. The book often comes across like some kind of a kind of waking dream. It's hard to know where the line between fiction and non-fiction is drawn sometimes. And the timeline is deliberately confused. The book makes no attempt to be linear. In fact it benefits greatly from being exactly the opposite.
There is a lot more to this book than the cover blurb suggests. The love, for one thing. There's a lot of that in here. It's an honest, unvarnished, unconditional love, and a very powerful one too. Most people will never know a love like that.
5.0 out of 5 stars
"An intense and thought provoking read by a talented new author and well worth the effort"
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 15 April 2021
Verified Purchase
I bought this book as I was intrigued by the title and the author’s description of himself. It’s refreshing to read something from a new author who is not following a mainstream formulaic style of writing but engages the reader immediately with his unique style of writing. What is clear is that Man Struggling with Umbrella is very obviously not a novel but an inspired work of often but not always independent short , some very short, autobiographical pieces , fantasies , thrillers and horror fiction that flood your mind with thought provoking images.
The author challenges conventions with his gritty, intense characters and vivid descriptions and each one left me wanting to know more. It is a clever and very well written book . It’s not at all what I expected but very much what I needed and I look forward to the author’s next offering.
One person found this helpful
*****
Bookworm Babe:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"A remarkable piece of work that demands your respect and your full attention"
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 16 March 2021
Verified Purchase
Never read anything like this in my life. Not sure whether to describe it as a fusion or a hybrid. There is no real word for it that I'm aware of. It's pretty radical and uncompromising in its format and thus extremely difficult to describe, let alone pigeonhole. It is pretty damned good though. I read it twice in a week. Not exactly what I was expecting, but I'm so glad I bought it. I would have given it five stars but the second piece in the book was really hard work. Personally I'm not sure it should be in there, but I wouldn't like to presume to know this author's intent. He is full of surprises. It was only 8 pages. I'd suggest you skip it, at least on the first read through. Maybe "Mocha Chocolata..." will make more sense in the light of further books in the series, but right now it stands out as peculiar.
This is NOT a novel. It's more of an anthology. But a lot of the 20 separate pieces contained are connected or intertwined in subtle and / or unexpected ways. It's mostly fiction but there are non-fiction pieces too and even a couple of short poems. It really is difficult to categorise this but right now I would be tempted to describe it as a fantasy-tainted memoir. It's surprisingly music-related, but the main themes I would say are reincarnation, dreams, deja-vu, spirituality, karma and fate. The longest piece in the book (the third one) is like a skeleton upon which the rest of the book (and I would assume the whole series of five books to come) will hang. In his preface, the author describes the book as a museum showcasing the freshly unearthed relics of a lost civilisation. It is the task of the reader to make sense of them. This is just the first layer of discovery. Each book to come will bring forth more discoveries, filling in the blanks but at the same time raising more questions. The book often comes across like some kind of a kind of waking dream. It's hard to know where the line between fiction and non-fiction is drawn sometimes. And the timeline is deliberately confused. The book makes no attempt to be linear. In fact it benefits greatly from being exactly the opposite.
There is a lot more to this book than the cover blurb suggests. The love, for one thing. There's a lot of that in here. It's an honest, unvarnished, unconditional love, and a very powerful one too. Most people will never know a love like that.
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