Ratings4
Average rating3.3
A complex and fiercely contemporary tale of inheritance, enlightenment, life, death, desire and family trees, The Seed Collectors is the most important novel yet from one of the world's most daring and brilliant writers. Great Aunt Oleander is dead. To each of her nearest and dearest she has left a seed pod. The seed pods might be deadly, but then again they might also contain the secret of enlightenment. Not that anyone has much time for enlightenment. Fleur, left behind at the crumbling Namaste House, must step into Oleander's role as guru to lost and lonely celebrities. Bryony wants to lose the weight she put on after her botanist parents disappeared, but can't stop drinking. And Charlie struggles to make sense of his life after losing the one woman he could truly love. As Henry James said of George Eliot's Middlemarch, The Seed Collectors is a "treasurehouse of detail" revealing all that it means to be connected, to be part of a society, to be part of the universe and to be human.
Reviews with the most likes.
Family as a cross-pollination experiment. Thomas is great at moving you from one sentence to the next (I went through this one in two days flat), but the bigger story here falls a bit flat, circling round an unsatisfactorily explained void, both in the family at the books heart and the plot. It's very entertaining, with some smart characterisation, and may benefit from a reread, but right now I feel a little disappointed with it. Props for the robin, though. He's aces.
Tsja, beetje raar boek over een zeldzaam zaad waarmee je nirvana kunt bereiken, een zweverig retreat (met een soort-van huis-roodborstje dat ook af en toe een duit in het zakje doet), een toch wel heel erg op sex gefocuste extended familie, met daarin uiteraard een en ander aan geheimen, etcetera.
Met enige regelmatig grappig (zoals wanneer oma op internet op zoek gaat naar clocks, en daar een typefout maakt), maar uiteindelijk me teveel alle kanten opschietend om het meer sterren te geven.
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