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teokajlibroj's review
1.0
At his best Fintan O'Toole is a brilliant and deeply intelligent writer. Unfortunately, sometimes he can be overly pompous and obtuse. To my great disappointment, this is worst thing I've read from him.
There isn't a single insight into Brexit in the book, instead there is a lot of wild generalisations and absurd leaps of logic. Basically, this is one of those books that tries to judge a nations character and like all of those books, it's nonsense. Every nation has idiots and geniuses, failures and successes, the honest and the dishonest. Inexplicably, O'Toole cheery picks a few examples of a Brit being an idiot and spends pages wondering why the Brits are such idiots, because apparently those examples were representative.
The book is crammed with literary references as if O'Toole was paid for each one he made. Most of them don't make any sense or are completely unnecessary. He pores over the Charge of the Light Brigade as if this was the core of the British character and every English person loves it, instead of being regarded as a load of antique sentimental rubbish, like much 19th century poetry. You could use his standards to prove any nation (including the Irish) are a crowd of halfwits (there really was a lot of terrible sentimental poetry in the 19th century). For reasons that make sense only to him, he writes that Brexiteers view 50 Shades of Grey as a metaphor where the EU has a whip and they enjoy the pain.
There isn't a single insight into Brexit in the book, instead there is a lot of wild generalisations and absurd leaps of logic. Basically, this is one of those books that tries to judge a nations character and like all of those books, it's nonsense. Every nation has idiots and geniuses, failures and successes, the honest and the dishonest. Inexplicably, O'Toole cheery picks a few examples of a Brit being an idiot and spends pages wondering why the Brits are such idiots, because apparently those examples were representative.
The book is crammed with literary references as if O'Toole was paid for each one he made. Most of them don't make any sense or are completely unnecessary. He pores over the Charge of the Light Brigade as if this was the core of the British character and every English person loves it, instead of being regarded as a load of antique sentimental rubbish, like much 19th century poetry. You could use his standards to prove any nation (including the Irish) are a crowd of halfwits (there really was a lot of terrible sentimental poetry in the 19th century). For reasons that make sense only to him, he writes that Brexiteers view 50 Shades of Grey as a metaphor where the EU has a whip and they enjoy the pain.
_ottavia_'s review
3.0
Buono ma non eccezionale. Alterna capitoli molto interessanti ad altri poco incisivi.
tzurky's review
5.0
Short but meaty. This is a sort of literary analysis of Brexit. It’s not interested in the play-by-play and provides only a rough timeline of events. Instead it gets at the themes of the campaign and the events following it and traces their roots back to the end of WW2 and beyond. It also identifies where they remixed ideas previously expressed both in literature and in political speeches. I found this extremely insightful and it proves to be correct in most of its deductions - it was released long before the dust had settled and the events unfolded pretty much as predicted including the backstabbing.
Sadly, I don’t share the author’s desperate hope that things can recover. Sure, people are angry, but they're still angry at the same things they were before and the politicians have learned zero lessons from it all.
Sadly, I don’t share the author’s desperate hope that things can recover. Sure, people are angry, but they're still angry at the same things they were before and the politicians have learned zero lessons from it all.
davidgilani's review
4.0
Very different and interesting take on Brexit (from an Irish perspective).
I can see how people who voted leave might just hate this book. It starts from a point / argument that Britain has developed a national identity where it wants to see itself as the victim and then works backwards from that to show how the Brexit vote was almost inevitable.
Very interesting perspective and lots of great points made. I kinda wish that it focused on the role of the media a bit more - I felt like it gave too much power to the voice of Boris Johnson and other Conservative party members... when actually, they were in most cases just doing whatever Murdock wanted them to do because they knew anything else would be political suicide.
I can see how people who voted leave might just hate this book. It starts from a point / argument that Britain has developed a national identity where it wants to see itself as the victim and then works backwards from that to show how the Brexit vote was almost inevitable.
Very interesting perspective and lots of great points made. I kinda wish that it focused on the role of the media a bit more - I felt like it gave too much power to the voice of Boris Johnson and other Conservative party members... when actually, they were in most cases just doing whatever Murdock wanted them to do because they knew anything else would be political suicide.
jzarrow's review
challenging
funny
informative
slow-paced
2.75
Read this at my wife's recommendation. It's repetitive in an I-make-the-same-point-in-my-op-ed-every-week-using-different-jokes sort of way, but it's a great way to compare and contrast the current right wing freakouts in the US and the UK.
themorsecode's review against another edition
5.0
Probably the best writing I've read on Brexit; engaging, insightful and frequently laugh out loud funny. O'Toole breaks down notions of English identity and the Brexit ideology, often using examples from films and novels to dig into ideas of how we came to where we are now. Highly recommend.