Product Description

"Talk to the hand 'cause the face ain't listening," the saying goes. When did the world get to be so rude? When did society become so inconsiderate? It's a topic that has been simmering for years, and Lynne Truss says that it has now reached boiling point. Taking on the boorish behaviour that has become a point of pride for some, Talk to the Hand is a rallying cry for courtesy. Like Eats, Shoots & Leaves, Talk to the Hand is a spirited conversation, not a stuffy guidebook. It is not about forks, for a start. Why hasn't your nephew ever thanked you for that perfect Christmas present? What makes your builder think he can treat you like dirt in your own home? When you phone a utility with a complaint (and have negotiated the switchboard), why can't you ever speak to a person who is authorised to apologise? What accounts for the appalling treatment you receive in shops? Most important, what will it take to roll back a culture that applauds rudeness and finds it so amusing? For anyone who's fed up with the brutality inflicted by modern manners (and is naturally too scared to confront the actual yobs), Talk to the Hand is a colourful call to arms - from the wittiest defender of the civilised world.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #78869 in Books
• Published on: 2005-10-24
• Released on: 2005-10-24
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 214 pages

As seen on Richard & Judy, November 24, 2005
'It's a zeitgeist...people are beginning to get really fed up, so maybe we’ll have some kind of quiet revolution.'

Sunday Telegraph, October 30, 2005
'highly perceptive, passionately argued and extremely funny...a brilliantly nailed truth about contemporary life.'

The Observer, October 23, 2005
'Trademark Truss...(very) readable, (very) funny, (very) engaging.'

Customer Reviews

Waste of time
Huge disappointment, even thought twice about donating it to the charity shop for fear of somebody else losing money on this rubbish.

Trash
This is utter trash, I can't really be bothered to write a full review becuase it doesn't deserve it. Its just the snobbish rantings of some self-loving witch who places herself higher than everyone else.

The wrong title
This book should be re-titled 'An old woman's diatribe on (British) manners', because that's basically what it is. It should not be confused with something more substantive or authoritative, because it categorically is not.

Reading the pages of accolades one could easily get the impression this was a book of substance; a well-researched sociological, historical, psychological treatise on manners that would somehow take you up the path to an altogether newer, and more importantly, higher viewpoint. Sadly, although it may make you laugh in places, it offers up nothing particularly enlightening, certainly nothing any inquisitive or enquiring mind will not have figured out for themselves. One therefore needs to decide if it is really worth spending money on a product that can be read in one sitting and that ultimately won't deliver. At this juncture one might offer a fast-food analogy; looks tasty, appears to fill you up, soon hungry. My advice if you feel you must read it, then borrow a copy from your local library.

This book fails for a number of reasons, I will pick up and expand on three points.

Firstly the author is FAR too personally involved in the subject to be either authoritative or rational. Lynn Truss clearly has a good deal of personal issues and carries an enormous amount of baggage that she may or may not be dealing with. Add to that, that she is over-opinionated and she becomes the crazy woman shouting a passers-by. This obsessive and often irrational behaviour might make you laugh but it also destroys the validity of any argument presented and cause here to jump from point-to-point with neither rhyme, reason nor reference. Being an obsessive busy-body, is not, in my opinion, a valid reason to write a book. One cannot help but feel that had she been a 'no-one'; an aspiring author, she would have been given the cold-shoulder by the publishing houses and told to come back when she had fully developed the idea. This point illustrates the problem with publishers in general who take 'name' over substance, and the public who buy 'name' over substance.

As already hinted at, the second downfall is the lack of any real depth of understanding. We get a LOT of Truss' opinions, but as far as I know, she is not a behavioural psychologist, nor sociologist, nor has any real qualification to write a book that masquerades as some substantive body on modern social patterns. Truss uses six chapters to guide us through what and to what destination, I am not quite sure. Incidentally chapter six seems like filler and seems to serve no purpose other than padding; this book has a LOT of padding, and it's only about two-hundred pages short anyway.

Finally, as with all problems, there needs to be a solution. Truss clearly revels is tearing down society, but offers nothing in its place. She is keen to critique and yet fails miserably to offer an alternative manifesto. She hints at the French system, but offers neither empirical data nor extended research to then offer this as a viable alternative. In that regard she is as guilty as the culture she rejects, because she (like her subjects of derision) is merely famous for being famous. She is all bark and no bite.

Addendum.
One point that interest me, and a point which Truss never saw, was the wiser historical context of behaviour. Whilst she hints at the class system (and offers us her distaste) she fails entirely to grasp the point that the British are by and large louts. As she mentioned, Jerry Springer found this out to his dismay. Other nationalities have forever cast the British in the wrong mould; bowler-hats, pinstripe suits and cloudy London. Historical props cast in bronze and without reference placed in the contemporary context. People WANT to believe the British are still gentile (if they ever were). They are a utopic painting hanging over a flickering coal fire in a quaint public-house.
To expand this point. With the exception of the upper and middle-classes British people always were a bit 'spit and polish'. The empire expanded and the gentry travelled, thus the people who encountered the 'British' largely encountered a certain class and not the average man or woman. The average Brit. who provided the sweat for the industrial revolution or the blood for the two world wars is an altogether different animal. It is unwise to credit the British in general for advances in science, medicine, engineering and culture, for it was propagated by a VERY small number of individuals and administered by the masses. That false idolatry is largely why during the 'hooligan' years the world was so shocked, because the Gods were torn down and reality restored. Gone was the refined gentry sipping G&T, and in their place we had the lads and ladesses swilling lager and re-enacting the battles of Europe in football shirts instead of armour.
As the class system begins to erode and as money and status replace it so people travel and so personal freedoms and social freedoms increase. Only fifty years ago when the class system was well and truly in place England really was a different country. Now with access to information, higher education and such, people are much more vocal about their wants and desires and this needs referencing to the historical perspective if one is to find a root cause and maybe a solution.