Billy Liar - Keith Waterhouse

The exterior of Shadrack's, where I now paused to take my traditional deep breath before entering, showed a conflict of personalities between young Shadrack and old Duxbury, the two partners. Young Shadrack, taking advantage of Duxbury's only trip abroad, a reciprocal visit by the town council to Lyons (described by Man o' the Dales as the Stradhoughton of France), had pulled out the Dickensian windows, bottle-glass and all, and substituted modern plate-glass and a shop sign of raised stainless-steel lettering. Thus another piece of old Stradhoughton bit the dust ad the new effect was of a chip shop on a suburban housing estate. Councillor Duxbury had returned only just in time to salve the old window-dressing from the wreckage, and this remained: a smudgy sign by Stamp reading 'Tasteful Funeral, "Night or Day Service"'  (which, as my other colleague Arthur had said, needed only an exclamation mark in brackets to complete it) and a piece of purple cloth on which there was deposited a white vase, the shape of a lead weight, inscribed to the memory of a certain Josiah Olroyd. The reason Josiah Olroyd's vase was in Shadrack's window and not in the corporation cemetery was the his nae had been misspelled, and the family had not unreasonably refused to accept the goods ordered. The Olroyd vase always served to remind me of a ghastly error with some coffin nameplates in which I had been involved, a business that was far from finished yet, and it was with this thought uppermost in a fairly crowded mind that, nintey minutes late I entered Shadrack and Duxbury.


A decir verdad, poco puedo decir de este libro. Llámenme mentiroso si quieren, pero no me produjo nada mientras lo leí, no retuve nada y, en suma, me aburrió. Puede que sea porque se quedó en su tiempo, en el sentido peyorativo de esa expresión y aunque le pese al periódico The Guardian. Quizás me habría gustado la película, aunque el mismo periódico se encarga de decir de que está sobrevalorada.



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Leelo cuando: hayas visto la peli y llegues a ese momento donde decís: "Seguro que el libro es mejor".

Próximo libro: Q & A (Slumdog Millionaire), de Vikas Swarup