Showing 1-4 out of 4 reviews.

• This literary novel was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and it’s easy to see why. Four interrelated characters, each facing a personal transition, struggles to find his or her way. Through separate first-person narratives, we come to know each one and the subtle and interesting ways that they know each other and the people closest to them. Alice is facing death as her grown but rootless sons struggle to understand who is the Loser and who the Winner in the family circle. Far away in Paris, a Hungarian artist struggles to free himself from the guilt of his wartime past. Each character is beautifully and sensitively drawn, and each journey is ultimately hopeful, but best of all, these people are capable of surprising themselves, their loved ones and the reader.

  4.00 out of 5

  kambrogi

• Andrew Miller, I think, is less assured in this contemporary setting. Although I enjoyed Oxygen, it doesn't quite reach the heights of his two historical novels - Ingenious Pain and Casanova. The oxygen of the title is recurring theme - Alice is dying and dependent on her oxygen supply, her son Alec is translating a play called Oxygen written by an Hungarian called Lazlo Lasar. Larry, her other son is a failed soap star returned from America. Each character is struggling to assert themselves - starved of oxygen. This is still a good read but I would recommend going to Miller's other books first.

  3.50 out of 5

  dylanwolf

• A matriarch succumbs slowly to cancer, providing a focal point for a family crisis. Miller's account of disparate lives, and how we're all bound by life and tragedy, is coolly dispassionate and well-written, but I found the Hungarian section not very engaging.

  3.00 out of 5

  GerhardH

• I'm missing something from this book for it seems that there I should have a greater sense of fulfillment after finishing it. There are two simultaneous stories happening and one would assume that they would come together somehow, but no they both end ambiguously. I didn't feel much love for any of the characters, or interest in their problems.

  1.50 out of 5

  TanyaTomato

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