At the moment’s crew evaluate is from Cathy.
Cathy blogs right here https://betweenthelinesbookblog.wordpress.com/
Cathy has been studying Value’s Value by Chris Maden
Value’s Value is described as ‘a light-hearted and elegiac mock-memoir’ and I believe that sums it up fairly effectively. Stanley Featherstonehaugh Value spent his childhood in Zimbabwe and his boyhood in English colleges. He had goals of exploration in deepest Africa and past simply as quickly as he got here into his inheritance, which he believed would turn out to be his when he reached his eighteenth birthday. It got here as an enormous blow to find he wouldn’t get something till he was both twenty-five or married. Stanley tried for the second choice however his marriage technique was scuppered when his supposed married another person.
‘Thus, I shaped my creed. What the Fates have in retailer is past the ken of any mortal, however the level is to face their whims with a way of journey and enjoyable. Not fatalism, which is an abnegation of life, however moderately a vicarious acceptance of all that they threw in my path.’
Stanley determined to hitch the military, believing they may be persuaded to fund an expedition. After a 12 months at Sandhurst and one other within the mountains of Nepal with the Gurkhas, he was requested the place he wished to be stationed. Anyplace however Hong Kong was Stanley’s reply. So Hong Kong it was.
Stanley appeared to float by way of life, on the mercy of his needs however lamenting at occasions the non realisation of his goals of exploration. His was a louche life-style fuelled in giant elements by intercourse, booze and the will for wealth. With descriptive prose Chris Maden portrays a vivid image of Stanley’s life in Hong Kong with all its ups and downs, bars, golf equipment, transient (and longer) encounters, companies and wealth made then misplaced.
A really expressive, uncommon and at occasions poignant learn, with a memorable protagonist. I loved it.
Stanley Value has dreamt since childhood of exploring the world. However, when the military posts him to Hong Kong within the Nineteen Sixties, this officer, scoundrel and rake falls for the glamour, the ladies and the gung-ho angle. Swept alongside and seduced by this free-wheeling metropolis, he’s sucked into a pleasant vortex of beer, ladies and bribes. His goals stay ever-present however out of attain. Till, that’s, he falls for a younger woman who might be his redemption – or his nemesis.
