Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #29851 in Books
• Published on: 1999-09-02
• Binding: Paperback
• 258 pages

Synopsis
Tusker and Lily Smalley stayed on in India. Given the chance to return 'home' when Tusker, once a Colonel in the British Army, retired, they chose instead to remain in the small hill town of Pangkot, with its eccentric inhabitants and archaic rituals left over from the days of the Empire. Only the tyranny of their landlady, the imposing Mrs Bhoolabhoy, threatens to upset the quiet rhythm of their days. Both funny and deeply moving, "Staying On" is a unique, engrossing portrait of the end of an empire and of a forty-year love affair.

From the Publisher
From the author of the Raj Quartet - dramatised for Radio Four

About the Author
Ernest Hemingway was born in Chicago in 1899, the second of six children. In 1917, he joined the Kansas City Star as a cub reporter. The following year, he volunteered as an ambulance driver on the Italian front, where he was badly wounded but decorated for his services. He returned to America in 1919, and married in 1921. In 1922, he reported on the Greco-Turkish war before resigning from journalism to devote himself to fiction. He settled in Paris, associating with other expatriates like Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein. He was passionately involved with bullfighting, big-game hunting and deep-sea fishing. Recognition of his position in contemporary literature came in 1954 when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, following the publication of The Old Man and the Sea. He died in 1961.

Customer Reviews

A beautiful book
A tremendously moving and elegiac book that somehow manages to cover British colonial life in a way that does not sound insulting or racist in a post-colonial world. I read this on holiday along with a stack of books from more contemporary (and award winning) authors writing on similar themes and thought that in its subtle and gently amusing way it could give all of the young guns some lessons in how to write a book which covers both big themes and small affairs of the heart. The ending was almost unbearably sad. The only reason it's not a five-star rating is that like some of the other reviewers I got a bit impatient with some of the stream-of-consciousness sentences that were supposed to represent the characters when they were thinking - but otherwise this is a wonderful book.

Good, if you like the writing style
I didn't fall in love with this book, but this is largely due to personal preference to do with style. It's well written (which I can appreciate even if I don't particularly like the style) and the subject matter interesting. Covering a period of time that is already disappearing into the depths of history, there is a lot of interest in here about India, Britain, and a whole way of life that no longer exists. This was of particular interest to me as a younger reader.

The characters are three dimensional and well drawn, and the book is quite engrossing. There isn't a great deal of storyline, but it's one of those books where the fact that nothing much happens doesn't seem to matter.

My problem with the book was with the style. If you like 'stream of consciousness' type writing - long sentences, with rambling thoughts and lots of diversions from the main topic, and not much regard for punctuation, you will like this. There are plenty of incidences of it, though it does not compose the entire story. I personally do not like this, hence my reduced enjoyment of the book. If you like James Joyce or Salman Rushdie, you will probably like this book too. I also found all the jumping around in time a bit confusing.

On the whole, a good read, especially if you like the style, and I can understand why it won the Booker. Definitely a good book to read if you are interested in India, history or colonialism.

Simply one of the best books you will ever read.
Amazing characterisation and atmosphere. I personally think this book is better than those of the Raj quartet.