Flat - that's the best word to describe how I felt while reading this book. It's unbelievably repetitious. I have nothing good to say about it

Good writing that bored me to death. Had to abandon.

While I have enjoyed other works by Naipaul, this 300+ paged book is unbelievably boring. Written in five sections (not in chronological order), this "novel" examines Naipaul's stay in rural England. He provides excruciatingly detailed descriptions of a handful of individuals living nearby, as well of minutiae involving the property surrounding his cottage. Why this a "novel," I have no idea. (Google describes a novel as a "long, fictional story told in prose," while this book purports to be a biographical narrative of Naipaul's sojourn. However, wikipedia does refer to this work as "fiction.") The only section that maintained my interest was "The Journey," a description of Naipaul's voyage from Trinidad to England via New York. I certainly see why this is not one of his better-known works.

We learn much about the daily anguish this writer lived in. We get some back story on his early career, and the books he initially became famous for. We hear about excursions feeding the creation of other books, some of which I have read already. I was more inclined towards this book having started reading VS Naipaul material through his "Wounded Civilisation". Be patient in the beginning, the critique I had lobbed at his stereotypes early on in the book were responded to later, and again, much later, with much more compassion. I loved this book for its lyrical qualities, so rare in books written by men, (encapsulated for me in Natalia Ginsberg's book "Lessico Famigliare" (Family Lexicon)). His visions and revisions were familiar to my experience living in farming territory for over 15 years in another country, raising my family while working to survive a combination he does not refer to. The absence of the women in his life in this book, could be either narcissism, or a noble way of keeping their privacy, maintaining confidentiality. I extend to him the latter. It is a book to read, to wonder about, and even not like particularly if you have not known him in this vein. I am glad that I have read Enigma of Arrival.

"The Enigma of Arrival" by V.S. Naipaul left me quite ambivalent, as the writing flows beautifully like a river, but it is also very seldom interrupted by dialogue which makes it, not difficult, but hard to read. It is not a book you read in one setting unless reading with your eyes closed counts. What I did not like about the writing was the way characters are described. Instead of showing and not telling, Naipaul does it the other way around which I do not approve of.

This is without doubt a book I only read because I read it for a course in longer novels, however, I did enjoy the writing as just mentioned. What I did not like was the lack of plot and the fact that the author's own arrogance is shining through his main character. "The Enigma of Arrival" is said to be a somewhat biography which might explains Naipaul's traits in the main character.

The first forty pages are the most difficult to through, but once you have overcome these it gets easier as you get to known the way the author writes and what the novel is about. It reminds me a lot of "Walden" by Thoreau which means I probably will not read it again any time soon.

Purposedly boring, yet purposedly exciting. I used to think it is not possible for a book to be both boring and exciting until I read this autobiographical work.

So far, what I know of V.S. Naipul I got only from this book. His parents were from India who had migrated to the island of Trinidad ( with the other island nearby, Tobago, it completes the country of "Trinidad and Tobago" near Venezuela where the beauty queens are). Since this was before large oil and gas reserves were discovered there, they had lived in relative poverty and want. But Victor (V. S. Naipul) was apparently a bright kid. He got a scholarship and, at the very young age of eighteen, left Trinidad in 1950 for England, alone. He studied for four years at Oxford then began to write. My copy of the book has this golden sticker saying "Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature" but I do not know (as I'm too lazy to google) what year was it when he was awarded this. In any event, he does not mention it here.

Neither does he mention how he got that life-changing scholarship at Oxford, what sort of a brilliant or promising young lad he was, how hard his life was in that impoverished island, the famous/important people he probably had met, or his successes maybe in Oxford and later as a writer. The usual things a writer of an autobiography would not have missed he ignored or played down. He wrote about his dreams, but they were not those general dreams that translate into ambitions like most of us have had during childhood, but dreams during particular nights, dates forgotten, while he was asleep. While in England, he stayed in a countryside cottage. Remembering this quiet, uneventful episode in his life, he wrote about his neighbor Jack, the car-hire man (taxi driver), his landlord he had seldom seen, the manor house caretakers, the gardener, new neighbors, deaths and departures, the changing seasons, the rooks (birds, not chess pieces), the cows which reminded him of the labels of canned condensed milk they had in Trinidad--things or people or events of daily life often ignored or forgotten, the simple annals of the insignificant, merging them with his lonely reminiscences and thoughts on history. Boring, boring, boring. Yet I kept on reading, reading and reading.

So it was that I discovered another great writer and my amazement was complete.

The best novel I'll read this year.

I originally bought this book for a college course on travel writing. On the first day of class, the professor told us the book list had changed, but I had already bought it. Finally got around to reading it.

The book is a little slow on the pacing, which can make reading this seem like a chore at times. But it sucks you in with the stories and the constant pointing out of details that most take for granted as being common all across the world. This book reads very much like a young adult telling you his story, then a middle-aged adult telling his story, and then slowly you begin to realize that this is an old man telling you the stories of his life.

It's a relaxing read overall. A man coming from Africa to quietly observe how the world changes - and how it stays the same - when he travels to England. Nothing more, nothing less, but Naipaul manages to do so much with that space.

Awful!!! V.S. Naipaul is good over all....but this book is boring and I can't figure it out!!!

It is unique in my reading experience that I rate two books by the same author 5 stars and 1 star, respectively.

"A House for Mr. Biswas" (1961) is one of my all-time favourites while I was left stunned by the unspeakable tediousness and pedantry of "The Enigma of Arrival" (1987).

What on earth was he thinking ?

Foi a primeira vez que li V. S. Naipul e acho que fiquei apaixonada por ele. Este livro insere-se na gaveta "Literatura de Viagem" no entanto é um livro um tanto complexo. Talvez tenha sido esta complexidade de o definir/classificar que me prendeu. Tem rasgos autobiográficos, tem rasgos de viagem, de ficção, de fragmentação e até de estilo diaristico. Mas nada disso importa, para ser sincera. É um livro muito bom, um livro sem definição, um livro que nos ensina que as gavetas são ficções e que só podemos viver uma vida plena quando ultrapassamos essas mesmas. Um livro que nos chama a atenção para o perigo de uma "educação abstracta" e de como isso pode trazer consequências.
Naipul tem uma escrita simples, verdadeira no entanto repleta de poesia, ritmo e entrelinhas. Um livro cheio de ironia, filosofia e até elementos cómicos que levam o leitor a pensar, a rir e a colocar-se na posição de Naipul. Muito bom!

A compelling autobiographical book about a period of life where Naipaul lived in a cottage within a manor house grounds near Salisbury. He makes daily walks near Stonehenge.

The book is over descriptive on purpose on the day to day lives of the people and landscape where Naipaul lived. The book should be boring but I found myself memorized and fascinated by Naipaul’s description of the characters and his interpretation of their personalities and lives. It follows how their lives and the landscape are changing.

Jack and his garden, the owner of the manor house was once one of Waugh’s bright young things characters now suffering from several ailments. Mr and Mrs Philips the caretakers of the manor house and carer for the landlord. Pitton the gardener with his routine, Bray the taxi driver and other minor characters. The murder, Stonehenge, the authors walks and study of his surroundings with the changes, deaths, decay and analysis of what was happening.

I fond a paragraph in the final chapter where he talks about the death of his sister and the farewell ceremony which seemed to bring the narrative together.

‘The story has become more personal: my journey, the writer’s journey, the writer defined by his writing discoveries, his ways of seeing, rather than by his personal adventures, writer and man separating at the beginning of the journey and coming together again in a second life just before the end. ‘

Naipaul’s journey from Trinidad to Wiltshire and his philosophical musings on life and change.