Beginner's Greek

A Novel

By: James Collins

Narrated by: Jerry O'Connell

When Peter Russell finally meets the woman of his dreams, he falls as madly in love as you can on a flight from New York to L.A. Her name is Holly. She's achingly pretty, with strawberry-blonde hair, and she reads Thomas Mann for pleasure. She gives Peter her phone number on a page of The Magic Mountain, but in his room that night, Peter finds the page is inexplicably, impossibly, enragingly...gone.

So begins the immensely entertaining story of Peter and his unrequited love for his best friend's girl; of Charlotte and her less-than-perfect marriage to a man in love with someone else; of Jonathan and his wicked and fateful debauchery; and of Holly, the impetus for it all.

Along the way, there's the evil boss, the desirable temptress, miscommunications, misrepresentations, fiendish behavior, letters gone astray, and ultimately, an ending in which every character gets his due.

Both incisive and wonderfully funny, this is a brilliantly understated comedy of manners in which love lost is found again.

©2008 James Collins (P)2008 Hachette Audio

Critic reviews

"Anyone for whom chick lit is a guilty pleasure will find the tone here multiple notches above the usual fare." ( Publishers Weekly)

I Like This Stupid Book :-)

If you could sum up Beginner's Greek in three words, what would they be?

Romantic, silly, fun.

Who was your favorite character and why?

I didn't like any of the characters, but I actually love to hate them. Of them all, I guess I like Julia, the cheating step-mother the most.

What about Jerry O'Connell’s performance did you like?

I did like the way he read the book & tried to change his voice according to character.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

No.

Any additional comments?

It's not some rare literary find, but I really enjoy this book. I like the story, even as improbable & eye-roll invoking it is. I first heard it many years ago on Sirius when I had a rental car, and I've checked it out from the library several times since. I'm happy to now own it.

Complete Cheeseville

Like watching paint dry!

Beginners Greek

Lame - spent a lot of time rolling my eyes

Life’s too short to finish this one

From the intro music slowly fading and making me worry it would persist throughout to the opening lines being read like the narrator had an excess of moisture in his mouth, I had a feeling this wasn’t going to captivate me. It hasn’t. The story is unbelievably coincidental. At times, the author repeats a thought or idea and doesn’t even use a variety of vocabulary; in other words, it’s unimaginatively repetitive. Maybe it’s better when read in one’s head but it’s a stinker as an audio book. I wish I had that hour and a half back.