Críticas:
"This is the modern world as Swift or Voltaire might have depicted it, a world just as wicked and corrupt, of course, as it has always been-and will continue to be till genetic engineering breeds our lowlifes and scumbags out of existence. Eccentric, mordantly ironic and unashamedly (not to say a little tastelessly) bawdy, "If Only" presents the reader with a gallery of lowlifes and scumbags and seethes throughout with a bitter hatred of human stupidity, which, as Flaubert said, is infinite. Vizinczey has caught the beastliness of this perennially wicked and corrupt world and rendered that beastliness with style and eloquence." - Eric Bond Hutton; "This is a fantastic novel. It is in many ways the culmination of the writing powers of Stephen Vizinczey; combining in its wonderful story the intimacy of In Praise of Older Women and the universality of An Innocent Millionaire. The protagonist, Jim Taylor, take us on a journey that crosses not only oceans but boundaries of imagination and explores the depths of human nature as well as its inherent frailty. We may all make different wishes but in essence we all want the same; to live forever and to be happy. With this wonderful novel Vizinczey has surely achieved both of those aims!" - Conor Bowman; "I am totally overwhelmed by [If IOnly], so much so, that after finishing it (at 4 AM) I started all over again from the beginning. It is like some favourite classical music, the more you hear it, the better it gets. You just can't put it down it takes you completely, flowing smoothly - I cannot describe it better. I just had to express my being awed by the style, the story the characters-everything is so perfectly written" - Ibi Gabori
Reseña del editor:
"More people commit suicide during their holidays than at any other time. It's strange but it makes sense. The rest of the year they are too busy, too harassed, too tired to think seriously about anything. Only when they get away from home and work do they have the leisure to reflect at length on their misery and abandon themselves to despair. It's only then that they have the energy to rouse themselves without the aid of habit and do something out of the ordinary."If Only is the story of Jim Taylor, a gifted young man who dreams of becoming a great musician, but tired of poverty and homelessness, gives up his vocation. 'I want to enjoy life before I'm too old for it,' he says when he finds a well-paid job working with the first computers. He meets Lesley at a concert and they have a disastrous affair, but "each felt guilty, each felt the other was innocent - they were in love" and they get married. Lesley is the sun of Jim's life, the light of this otherwise dark story. 'You turn your head and a decade is gone." Jim is the Senior Vice-President of the UK's biggest software company.A decent but weak character, ('he had a mortgage - he wasn't a free man') he became the best of the worst kind of villains. If only he had stuck to music! If only he had known, if only he had understood.
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