The Stars' Tennis Balls by Stephen Fry

Since I forever associate Stephen Fry with Jeeves, as I was reading this book, Hugh Laurie as Bertie kept popping up in my head, saying things like 'I say, Jeeves, this is getting a bit thick!' I would hesitate to say that this book was well-written, but it was clever and interesting, especially in the first third. Some of the characters were very well-executed, others not so much. The whirlwind of disaster and irony in the first third had be absolutely breathless and riveted. The second third was pretty good too, though profoundly depressing. The last part though went all Quentin Tarantino and I didn't feel in touch with it at all. I was very morally torn when reading this, because it's about the good old-fashioned theme of revenge and is an updated version of The Count of Monte Cristo, which I read as a child and barely remember. On the one hand, I wanted the main character to take revenge on the people who ruined his life, but once he got started, I wanted him to stop immediately. But on the other hand, the ways he takes revenge is to make things in people's past 'catch up with them', so it's hard to say that they didn't 'get what was coming to them'. I guess if anything, this book plays with ideas of the moral implications of revenge in a way that I found really unsettling. I felt like the book was seriously running out of steam by the end, and the exciting, witty dialogue and good characterisation of the first half because extremely sloppy and dull. I do have to say that one of the characters, an undercover IRA agent whose son joined the police force, will haunt me for a long time as one of the most terrifyingly evil, cold and ruthless characters I have ever read about.

Also: the title was changed to the very creative Revenge for its American publication, is it because the delicacy of the American public would be offended by the word 'balls' in the title? Or because a quotation from John Webster is considered too high-brow? Either way, ridiculous.