Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #366279 in Books
• Published on: 1983-05-20
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Review
'When Tom Sharpe turns his attention to a very minor public school... the result is predictably savage. Hoaxes, chases, car crashes, shootings, and general mayhem. Wicked riotous humour' Daily Telegraph 'Wildly hilarious pot-shots at the public school system and the sacred cows of adventure fiction' Observer 'You'll enjoy this wild and, in places, wildly funny story... It is all an hilarious send-up of the Dornford Yates style of thriller with some modernistic Sharpe barbs added' Daily Express 'One of our best contemporary comic writers... very, very funny' Birmingham Evening Mail 'Excellently funny' AUBERON WAUGH, Daily Mail 'Britain's leading practitioner of black humour' Punch 'He has not written a better or more skilful farce' Financial Times

Daily Express
‘… an hilarious send-up of the Dornford Yates style of thriller with some modernistic Sharpe barbs added’

Birmingham Evening Mail
‘One of our best contemporary comic writers… very, very funny’

Customer Reviews

Vintage Sharpe
For the benefit of the easily offended; DO NOT READ THIS.
Tom Sharpe has no respect for the PC culture as all of his best books were produced before anyone had heard of Political Correctness.
For the rest of us... this book is so funny you will embarrass yourself if you read it on public transport.
Sharpe seems to do what all of us have dreamed of, to ridicule, in print, those teachers who gave him a hard time at school and to point out they are all kids, and bullys themselves who never had the courage go out into the big wide world they sent us to.
Just try it!

Laser-sharp satire at the expense of middle-class living.
There is no reason why Tom Sharp could not justifiably be considered one of Britain's greatest living novelists. His novels employ a clever and original brand of laser-sharp satire which, in the case of "Vintage Stuff", is used to attack public schools, intellectuals and, as always, the middle classes. The novel is set against a backdrop of middle-class suburbia which is portrayed as a dangerous place whose occupants cannot control the anarchy that continually explodes around them. Behind the thin, hypocritical veil of respectability, the novel's characters are purely motivated by money, sex and an intense desire to conform. If love exists then it is primal and disturbing, such as Mrs Clyde-Brown's protective, blind love for her murderous, idiot son Peregrine. Despite being characterised by hilarious misunderstandings and sexual innuendo, Tom Sharpe's world is humourless and grim; yet still effectively hits the values promoted in our society right between the legs. However, "Vintage Stuff" is still somewhat disappointing as, compared to Sharpe's South-African novels, it never really gets into gear. There are some hilarious moments towards the end, yet they don't live up to the novel's meandering build-up. If you want to see Sharpe at his brightest, it is probably best to look elsewhere.

Vintage Stuff
Vintage Stuff is a hilarious classic from the best-selling writer, Tom Sharpe.
When Peregrine Clyde-Brown is sent to Groxbourne school by his father, he is in a for a surprise. Peregrine does very well at his new army training school but Peregrines problem is not his forever failing O-levels or his brutal dad's threats but the fact that Peregrine takes everything literally. When Mr Glodstone tells Perry about fantasy adventures in distant countries, Perry is enthralled and when Glodstone starts receiving letters from a mysterious "damsel in distress", Peregrine and Old Gloddie set of on what seems to be the biggest task of them all. But will everything end so happily ever after?