Product Description

Winner of the 1993 Sunday Express Book of the Year Award Los Angeles 1936. Kay Fischer, a young, ambitious architect, is shadowed by Salvador Carriscant, an enigmatic stranger claiming to be her father. Within weeks of their first meeting, Kay will join him for an extraordinary journey into the old man's past, initially in search of a murderer, but finally in celebration of a glorious, undying love.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #95623 in Books
• Published on: 2005-10-27
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

About the Author
William Boyd was born in Ghana in 1952. He was brought up there and in Nigeria. He was educated at the universities of Nice, Glasgow and Oxford. He is the author of a number of acclaimed and hugely popular novels and three volumes of short stories, and the recipient of many prizes, including the Whitbread First Novel Award, the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Sunday Express Book of the Year Award. He is married and lives in London

Customer Reviews

Vivid
Deeply touching

In the Blue Afternoon, William Boyd paints a vivid picture of the Philippines in the early part of the 20th century. And within that picture is a touching love story.

So emersed was I in the Philippines, that when the story 'returned' to 1930's Los Angeles it was like emerging into daylight from a darkened room. It takes some minutes of blinking to reorientate.

There are debates about the storylines and the need for the beginning and end, but none of it bothered me. This is simply a very good story, written about a distant place and time with impossible clarity.

William Boyd is an extremely talented author, and this is as good as he has written.

Very good main story- don't think about the intro too much!
The Blue Afternoon rests on a central plot device to create an original and clever tale. I don't agree with some of the other reviwers that the subplots during the main bulk of the story- that of Pantelons flying machine and the murder investigation- are beside the point. The story focussing only on the love story would become insipid- the murders are necessary to create a dangerous atmosphere to contrast with the bliss of the lovers. The flying machine episode, although perhaps the most plodding of the subplots, acts as both an amusing vignette and minor plot device to add to the complexity of the characters relations.
The begining does suffer from disjointedness from the main story and the end doesn't tie in with the sentimentality of the love story. It seems Boyd changed his mind on what The Blue Afternoon was going to be. However I would recomend this as a good read, if one that poses a few questions on its motives.

Confusing intro, but still enjoyable
I found the intro a bit plodding too, but really enjoyed the main story set in the Phillipines - very interesting and some nice subplots - doesn't matter that some small bits didn't add up or were implausible, it was basically a good story, with an unusual ending. It left you wondering what really happened, which surely is the whole point?