Outside of a Dog: Tan, Shaun: Arrival, The

tikitu

tikitu wrote on April 5, 2008 at 5:05 PM:

Nice review. I stumbled on The Arrival recently and absolutely loved it. I had the same sense of impending doom you did -- the bloke who tells the story of the giants struck me as decidedly sinister, with his kid whispering in his ear and then they take our hero off to the docks and give him a fright and then /there's fire in his eyes/! ... A fairly fundamental misreading, turns out.

Kate

Kate wrote on April 5, 2008 at 7:05 PM:

tikitu, welcome, and sorry your comment was temporarily held for moderation; it shouldn't happen again.

I was interested by your LibraryThing review, especially your comment about the relative lack of detail in depicting the animals--that's something that went right by me, and I'll be considering it on a re-read.

Tikitu

Tikitu wrote on April 21, 2008 at 3:45 PM:

Hey no worries. (Whoo, I'm way late coming back to this...)

The animal detail thing intrigues me because it has to be a conscious decision -- he's clearly capable of making them less cutesy, but he's chosen not to. To me the result looks inconsistent, which is a shame -- especially given the incredibly high bar the rest sets up.

(I'm slowly making my way through your older posts, and my wishlist is growing... so thanks for writing!)

Dan Blum

Dan Blum wrote on April 29, 2008 at 10:16 PM:

Thank you for recommending this. I finally got around to reading it, and it is indeed excellent.

Kate

Kate wrote on April 29, 2008 at 10:19 PM:

Thank you for telling me--I really appreciate it!