∎ Download Gratis The Walking Tour Kathryn Davis 9780395945414 Books

The Walking Tour Kathryn Davis 9780395945414 Books

Download As PDF : The Walking Tour Kathryn Davis 9780395945414 Books

The Walking Tour Kathryn Davis 9780395945414 Books

"As in real life, it isn't always easy to keep the couples straight..." This line comes from Kathryn Davis' The Walking Tour, but it could just as easily have been written about the book. The novel is a highly-complex, tightly-woven narrative blending ancient Celtic mythology and post-apocalyptic science fiction with a more contemporary tale of love, jealously and betrayal among a group of tourists. Davis' work is highly ambitious, blurring the lines of time and reality, and often forcing the reader to go back and re-read the last few pages to understand what is going on. The interweaving narratives are similar to those in The Hours. The Walking Tour is not quite as elegantly constructed, but it gives the reader the same sense of satisfaction derived from working through a challenging and imaginative text. Davis' use of time as an important element of the novel echoes The Sound and the Fury, and is nearly as skillfully done. The novel's complexity begs a second reading, although just as Susan's investigation raised as many questions as it answered, closer study of The Walking Tour unleashes even more of its mysteries.

Matt Hlinak
[...]


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The Walking Tour Kathryn Davis 9780395945414 Books Reviews

Thirty years ago when I was in college I had to muddle through difficult books. What does the author REALly mean? Who is the main character supposed to portray? I used to sit in the dorm and dream of the days when I could read what I wanted; for pleasure.
I love to read sentences that flow together, about characters that are real and varied, and indulge myself in plots that are interesting yet ones that a chart is not needed to follow.
After 120 pages of The Walking Tour I did not know one character, I did not know what the plot was about and had to force myself to concentrate or else be forced to read the same line 4 times to REALly understand it.
This book struck me as a college read from freshman year. It was cumbersome. The cover flap was intriguing. That was the only intriguing part. I quite and went on to something else, something that I VERY seldom do.
I was fascinated by Kathryn Davis' new story, Duplex, and couldn't wait to read more, but unfortunately, The Walking Tour was something of a disappointment. While the prose is beautiful, the story line lags, hinging on our tolerance for exhaustive details about characters that aren't appealing, or (I thought) even interesting. Moreover, a vagueness kept me constantly confused......are we in Maine or Wales now? I'll still look for more of Davis' books, because I do enjoy her writing. But in The Walking Tour her writing seemed better than the story.
A confusing and, in the end, an unsatisfying read. Susan, the (now) adult daughter of a couple who have long since passed on, goes back through diaries, letters, and other things to sort out for herself (it seems) the day in Wales when her mother died (or was killed?). While the potential was there to give us a romping good mystery, Davis gets the reader all glopped up with unnecessary dialogue and seemingly missing information in our efforts to understand what is happening. The story surrounds two American couples, (with long sordid pasts with each other) the husbands are business partners, who take a trip to Wales for a walking tour of the region. There are other characters involved, a couple of single women, the couple who runs the tours (and the B&B where they are all staying), etc... but they are put forth in an unsatisfactory manner. Finally, there is a very vague undercurrent that suggests that Susan is living in some sort of anarchic or fascist state as, perhaps (we never know) a result of the computer work her father and the other man did. In any case, I agree with one reviewer of this novel who said, it might have been saved with some editing. I found it very hard to follow.
Kathryn Davis's The Walking Tour is an ambitious exploration of the human urge to understand the present as the product of the past. Who writes the histories, tells the stories, makes the myths that humans embrace as they attempt to make sense of existence? The answer, this novel suggests, is that it's just ordinary people who do, ordinary people just like those of us reading the novel.

Susan Rose narrates Davis's complex mosaic of Welsh myth, contemporary painting, computer technology, and the timeless passions of human beings greed, lust, love, envy, the urge to create art. Susan attempts to understand what caused the disastrous and fatal events that transpired during a walking tour of Wales undertaken by her parents, Bobby, a wealthy and powerful internet magnate, and Carole, a world-renowned painter who has struggled with schizophrenia her whole life; and their friends, Coleman Snow, Bobby's business partner, and Ruth Farr, his would-be novelist wife. Relying upon a variety of documentary sources--Ruth's digital journal, Coleman's vacation photos, Carole's picture postcards, and the transcript of a civil lawsuit that followed the tour--Susan struggles to piece together a coherent vision of what happened, why it happened, and what it means.

The novel's brilliance resides in Davis's adept handling of a complex narrative over which she never loses control. The story unfolds as a mystery of sorts, but what makes it memorable is how Davis places her readers in the same position as Susan Rose we too must attempt to create a myth, tell ourselves a story, create a history that will account for the information we encounter. And that's no easy task. The novel invites misreadings and even at times may frustrate us. However, it would be quite a challenge for any reader to dig into her or his own past in the way Susan does without becoming frustrated and confused at times. Why should Susan's search be any easier for readers than it is for her?

The novel's use of Welsh mythology produces a resonance and depth to the story Susan--and her readers--are doing no more and no less than the Welsh themselves when they created the myths that lent meaning to their own past and present. "The Walking Tour" does not serve up a bland, easy-to-digest Happy Meal but instead offers a feast. Readers will need to be alert and will have to concentrate on the text, but for those who do, the reward is a memorable experience. A terrific book for readers who welcome ambiguity and depth in their reading.
Disappointed. It sounded interesting from the description, but I don’t care for the author’s style.
I’m struggling with it, and will try to finish it (in between other books.)
"As in real life, it isn't always easy to keep the couples straight..." This line comes from Kathryn Davis' The Walking Tour, but it could just as easily have been written about the book. The novel is a highly-complex, tightly-woven narrative blending ancient Celtic mythology and post-apocalyptic science fiction with a more contemporary tale of love, jealously and betrayal among a group of tourists. Davis' work is highly ambitious, blurring the lines of time and reality, and often forcing the reader to go back and re-read the last few pages to understand what is going on. The interweaving narratives are similar to those in The Hours. The Walking Tour is not quite as elegantly constructed, but it gives the reader the same sense of satisfaction derived from working through a challenging and imaginative text. Davis' use of time as an important element of the novel echoes The Sound and the Fury, and is nearly as skillfully done. The novel's complexity begs a second reading, although just as Susan's investigation raised as many questions as it answered, closer study of The Walking Tour unleashes even more of its mysteries.

Matt Hlinak
[...]