Madness Is Better Than Defeat

by Ned Beauman

Paperback, 416 pages

Published Jan. 15, 2019 by Vintage.

ISBN:: 978-0-8041-7218-9

(3 reviews)

"A wild, astonishing novel (by arguably England's most accomplished young writer) about Manhattan and Hollywood in the 1930s, Mayan gods, and a CIA operation gone terribly wrong--and the Booker short-listed Ned Beauman's magnum opus thus far. In 1938, two rival expeditions descend on an ancient temple recently discovered in the jungles of Honduras, one intending to shoot a screwball comedy on location there, the other to disassemble the temple and ship it back to New York. A seemingly endless stalemate ensues, and twenty years later a rogue CIA agent sets out to exploit it for his own ends, unaware that the temple is a locus of conspiracies grander than anyone could ever have guessed. Shot through with insanity, conspiracy, ingenuity, and adventure, showcasing Beauman's anarchic humor, spectacular imagination, and riveting prose, Madness Is Better Than Defeat teases, absorbs, entertains, and dazzles in equal measure"--

5 editions

Annette C. Boehm reviewed Madness is Better than Defeat by Ned Beauman

Review of 'Madness is Better than Defeat' on 'Goodreads'

1 star

I honestly did not enjoy reading this book. Its central characters are unlikeable, and while there is one likeable female character she is fairly flat. In fact, there's a good deal of misogyny in this book, only part of which, IMHO, can be explained by wanting the (male) characters to have historically accurate views on women. There's gratuitous violence, murder in various forms, revenge-rape, - and the bloated style this is written in does not help. You'll finally see that obscure vocabulary you tried to memorize for the GRE actually being used.

unsquare reviewed Madness is Better than Defeat by Ned Beauman

Review of 'Madness is Better than Defeat' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Ned Beauman is a fascinating author. I love his books, but I just couldn’t get into Boxer, Beetle for some reason, even though it has a similar feel to both this and The Teleportation Accident.

Beauman seems to alternate between madcap ensemble pieces and solo adventures, all populated with weirdos and scumbags. Madness is Better than Defeat is an ensemble piece with a generous helping of metafiction thrown into the mix to keep things interesting.

It’s a novel about an investigation into a failed expedition to make a movie about a failed expedition, and the layers of self-reference only increase from there.

Considering Beauman’s batting average so far, I’ll probably give Boxer, Beetle another chance some day.

WorzelFG

rated it

Nov. 25, 2018