Product Description

For Ned, 1978 seems a blissful year. Handsome, popular, responsible, and a fine cricketer, life if progressing smoothly, if not effortlessly. When he meets Partia Fendeman his personal jigsaw appears complete. What if her left-wing parent despise his Tory MP father? Doesn't that just make them star-crossed lovers? And surely, in the end, won't the Fendemans be won over by their happiness? But of course, one person's happiness is another's jealous spite. And spite is about to change Ned's life forever. A promise made to a dying teacher and a vile trick played by fellow pupils rocket Ned from cricket captain to solitary confinement, from Head Boy to political prisoner. More than twenty years later, Ned returns to London, a very different man from the boy seized outside a Knights bridge language college. A man implacably focused on revenge, revenge is a dish he plans to savour and serve to those who conspired against him, and those who forgot him.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6058 in Books
• Published on: 2004-08-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Ned Maddstone has it all. He's handsome and talented; he has the love of a beautiful woman and in 1980, he stands at the brink of a glittering future. He rounds off an outstanding public school career with a sailing trip to Scotland, which is where his fortunes enter a terrifying tailspin. Determined to honour the dying wish of his sailing instructor, Ned returns to London, where the schemes of jealous classmates catapult him into a 10-year nightmare. Confined to a solitary Hell, believed dead by all those who loved him, Ned transforms from a terminally nice guy into a creature bent on revenge, a revenge both satisfying and apocalyptic.

Few writers can deliver so much in one package, but here Stephen Fry combines a riotous satire of the privileged classes with elements of the darkest thrillers. While the plot bounces from the sublime to the surreal, his characters remain acutely real. Ned's classmates, slow-witted hedonist Rufus Cade, and the Machiavellian climber Ashley Barson-Garland--who is aroused by the sight of straw boaters--are masterful creations. This novel has nothing to do with tennis, and everything to do with the cruel logic of Fate. Game, set and match to Mr Fry. - - Matthew Baylis

Review
"'We are merely the stars' tennis balls, struck and banded / Which way please them' (The Duchess of Malfi, John Webster)"

Sunday Telegraph
‘A taut thriller… a talent for terror and suspense-writing.’

Customer Reviews

Read this with an open mind...
Don't read this book expecting a rip-roaring, side-splitting romp that you might expect of a man possessing Stephen Fry's ability (as demonstrated in his other fictional works). Do, however, expect some excellent use of language and some well placed wit. If you are expecting a straight forward comedy, then please don't denigrate the book for not being so - it isn't supposed to be, so holding that against it is much like complaining that a car doesn't float...

This book is an interesting read, and one that is difficult (though I will admit not wholly impossible) to put down. The story itself is far-fetched, but this is supposed to be some escapist fiction. The book also manages to ponder the driving factors behind the characters without grinding itself in a psychological bore.

Perhaps the book winds up too quickly - then again, perhaps that in itself is a way of showing the clinicism of the main character following his 'change'. The first half of the book is, however, a solid read, setting up the origins and relationships of the main protagonists and then, somehow, managing to purvey empitness without relenting the pace.

A very good book, an entertaining and thought-provoking read, but it didn't quite have that x-factor that would have persuaded me to give it the full five stars. (Four and a half then).

A Great Thriller, a Great Novel.
Fans of Fry expect humour, and clever ideas but they are in for a shock when they read this.

This a dark book; full of ruminations on the origin of personality and the role of our personal choices upon our lives.

This is a book that came out in year 2000 - so , by law, I have give it the cliched label " etched with millenial fears".

The real shame is this is the last novel Fry has written.

Tragic and touching
As most of my friends know, I am a big fan of Stephen Fry, so I guess it's no surprise that I liked this book. But I have read another of his stories so far, 'Making History,' and I didn't think it was all that good. This one, however, really gripped me - I couldn't put it down.

It is the story of Ned, a schoolboy who has a lovely girlfriend, good looks, intelligence, and is destined for Oxford - the type of person that everyone loves but hates at the same time. A prank played on him by his 'friends' turns horribly wrong, and an arrest over possession of cannabis ends up with him becoming an IRA suspect, and he is sent to an insane asylum to rot. He manages to escape, ten years later, in the 1990s; now a full-grown adult, who has never heard of mobile phones or the Internet. He manages to become a dotcom millionaire, and slowly takes revenge on
those who put him into the asylum when he has the power to do so.

It's quite a tragic story, but entertaining in places too. The only part I was unsatisfied was with the ending (as usual!); it wraps up in just a few pages, and I didn't really understand the reasons behind his final decision. Definitely an interesting story, though, and I'd certainly recommend it to others. A very interesting concept, and delightfully written.