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billd's review
Unfortunately, The Fall Of The Sparrow by Nigel Balchin was a Not Finish (NF) for me. It's too bad because I enjoyed a previous book (The Small Back Room very much. Could I have finished it. Sure, it wasn't too long of a book, 300 pages, but I didn't particularly like any of the characters and really, the story didn't seem to be going anywhere. Too easy to put down.
Basically, the story is about one Jason Pellew and follows his life from childhood to adulthood. It starts with his being in court and sentenced for crime against friends and acquaintances. The story then moves into his childhood and where I gave up, he was in college. The story is told by a childhood friend, Payne, who runs into Jason throughout his life it seems.
Anyway... that's about all I can tell you. It's probably a better book than I give it credit for and ultimately I might have liked it more if I'd finished it. So, No rating (NR) and a DNF from me.
Basically, the story is about one Jason Pellew and follows his life from childhood to adulthood. It starts with his being in court and sentenced for crime against friends and acquaintances. The story then moves into his childhood and where I gave up, he was in college. The story is told by a childhood friend, Payne, who runs into Jason throughout his life it seems.
Anyway... that's about all I can tell you. It's probably a better book than I give it credit for and ultimately I might have liked it more if I'd finished it. So, No rating (NR) and a DNF from me.
muggsyspaniel's review
5.0
What a cracking read, I fairly bowled through this. I don't think it can be said too often that Balchin is eminently readable.
The Fall of the Sparrow concerns Jason Pellew and opens as his friend and our narrator Henry Payne watches as Pellew is on trial and facing a couple of years in prison for various crimes such as stealing a car, passing dud checks and selling the contents of another chaps flat in which he was staying.
Payne then takes us back to childhood when he first meets Pellew. They are near neighbors and end up at the same school. Henry is a couple of years older than Jason and he tries to look out for him without getting too involved. Years later they are at Cambridge together and break up fascist black shirt meetings with the communists. Still later we see them in the blitz and their wartime exploits. Finally after the war there is Jason's marriage to a wholly unsuitable woman. The point of the story seems to be Henry's attempts to understand why Jason should have fallen from grace so completely.
I loved the minor characters and felt genuinely upset at the fate of some of them while the main players are brilliantly drawn messy human beings.
A five star beauty that should be ranked up with The Small Back Room and Darkness Falls From the Air.
The Fall of the Sparrow concerns Jason Pellew and opens as his friend and our narrator Henry Payne watches as Pellew is on trial and facing a couple of years in prison for various crimes such as stealing a car, passing dud checks and selling the contents of another chaps flat in which he was staying.
Payne then takes us back to childhood when he first meets Pellew. They are near neighbors and end up at the same school. Henry is a couple of years older than Jason and he tries to look out for him without getting too involved. Years later they are at Cambridge together and break up fascist black shirt meetings with the communists. Still later we see them in the blitz and their wartime exploits. Finally after the war there is Jason's marriage to a wholly unsuitable woman. The point of the story seems to be Henry's attempts to understand why Jason should have fallen from grace so completely.
I loved the minor characters and felt genuinely upset at the fate of some of them while the main players are brilliantly drawn messy human beings.
A five star beauty that should be ranked up with The Small Back Room and Darkness Falls From the Air.
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