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High Dive by Jonathan Lee
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High Dive (edition 2015)

by Jonathan Lee (Author)

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23612113,049 (3.73)22
A tale inspired by the 1984 Brighton Hotel bombing assassination attempt on the lives of Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet is told from the perspectives of an IRA bomb maker, a former star athlete-turned-hotel manager, and the manager's teenage daughter. In September 1984, a bomb was planted at the Grand Hotel in the seaside town of Brighton, England, set to explode in twenty-four days when the British prime minister and her entire cabinet would be staying there. Weaving together fact and fiction, the story switches among the perspectives of Dan, a young IRA explosives expert; Moose, a former star athlete gone to seed, who is now the deputy hotel manager; and Freya, his teenage daughter, trying to decide what comes after high school. Over the course of a mere four weeks, as the prime ministers arrival draws closer, each of their lives will be transformed forever.… (more)
Member:herschelian
Title:High Dive
Authors:Jonathan Lee (Author)
Info:Cornerstone Digital (2015), 384 pages
Collections:Your library, Kindle
Rating:***1/2
Tags:IRA, Brighton bombing, hotel life, British politics

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High Dive by Jonathan Lee

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Showing 1-5 of 11 (next | show all)
I was hoping this book would be more thrilling, instead it is the type of book that appeals to the readers and reviewers of the New York Times Book Review.
The story is told by three characters 2 of which were not the least bit interesting to me. Only the bomber from the IRA, was at all interesting but I was hoping for something like a Stuart Neville character, not Dan, the bomber in this book, and there wasn't enough of the book from his perspective to make slogging through the other two viewpoints, worth it.
Oh well. ( )
  zmagic69 | Mar 31, 2023 |
I can't really think of anything I didn't like about this book, and yet it was just a 3 star for me. The characters were engaging and I felt like I really got to know them, and life in Brighton in the 1980's too. I like the author's writing style - it felt effortless to read but not at all fluffy, and I didn't mind that the bombing itself wasn't the central point of the novel. I think maybe it needed a little more narrative tension. ( )
  badube | Mar 6, 2019 |
This is a well-written, character-driven novel. Yes, there's an assassination attempt but the bomb itself often feels tangential to the real story of people just trying to live their lives in a politically fraught time. (Not that that resonates at all these days.) Should make for fantastic discussion in this year's Tournament of Books. ( )
  GaylaBassham | May 27, 2018 |
The time period 1978-1984 was a peak period of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland, what locals call The Troubles. The IRA was branching out into England with bombing, trying to turn popular English opinion into pressure against politicians to leave Northern Ireland.

Dan is a young Catholic idealist who joins the IRA to avenge the death of his father. Over in Brighton, England, Freya has left school and despite stellar A-levels is not sold on going to university. Her father Moose, the deputy manager of a fancy hotel, failed to parlay his young athletic prowess as a diver into a degree, which he blames for both the failure of his marriage and his less-than-prestigious job. He's desperate to convince Freya not to make the same mistake, but in the meantime she spends her days working the reception desk for him.

These days Moose's attention is divided between worry for Freya's future and an upcoming event at the hotel that could finally earn him the promotion he craves to feel that his life has not been wasted. The Conservative Party will hold their annual conference at this hotel. Unsurprisingly, this attracts the attention of the IRA ...

This is one of those books where all the characters are sympathetic and likable, and as I read all I could think was that nothing was going to end well for any of them. The scenes at the hotel with Moose and his staff reminded me of Stewart O'Nan's [Last Night at the Lobster] in the way it offered a peek behind the curtain that most of us never see as guests. Like O'Nan, Lee portrays his somewhat hopeless characters with an empathy that draws the reader in.

On days when ambition and regret got the better of him, when lost opportunities stuck to his shoes like bubble gum gone to ground and created ugly slouching strings that halted progress, he told himself that all human life was here (at the hotel).

Over in Belfast, Lee applies the same empathetic filter to the lives of Dan and his compatriots.

There was the rising sense ... that Belfast's carnage stole not only the victims' lives but large parts of the witnesses too. You disintegrated into the recriminations, the headlines, the pictures. You scattered yourself into proofs, warnings, suspicions, arrests. You rode out into the dark outrage of others, saw human loss shaped toward political ends, and though you hoped for the occasional gleam of uncontaminated compassion it seemed that the world was dimming.

In the end, Lee detonates bombs both externally and internally in his characters, and none of them will ever be the same. Readers might feel the same way. ( )
1 vote rosalita | Apr 18, 2017 |
I was hoping this book would be more thrilling, instead it is the type of book that appeals to the readers and reviewers of the New York Times Book Review.
The story is told by three characters 2 of which were not the least bit interesting to me. Only the bomber from the IRA, was at all interesting but I was hoping for something like a Stuart Neville character, not Dan, the bomber in this book, and there wasn't enough of the book from his perspective to make slogging through the other two viewpoints, worth it.
Oh well. ( )
  zmagic69 | Apr 5, 2017 |
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how difficult it is to remain just one person,
for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors,
and invisible guests come in and out at will.
- - CZESLAW MILOSZ, "Ars Poetica?"
Dedication
FOR ALFREDA MAY LEE
(1915-1996)
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When Dan was eighteen a man he didn't know took him on a trip across the border.
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A tale inspired by the 1984 Brighton Hotel bombing assassination attempt on the lives of Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet is told from the perspectives of an IRA bomb maker, a former star athlete-turned-hotel manager, and the manager's teenage daughter. In September 1984, a bomb was planted at the Grand Hotel in the seaside town of Brighton, England, set to explode in twenty-four days when the British prime minister and her entire cabinet would be staying there. Weaving together fact and fiction, the story switches among the perspectives of Dan, a young IRA explosives expert; Moose, a former star athlete gone to seed, who is now the deputy hotel manager; and Freya, his teenage daughter, trying to decide what comes after high school. Over the course of a mere four weeks, as the prime ministers arrival draws closer, each of their lives will be transformed forever.

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