Hitman Anders and the Meaning of It All

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Granted the way they go about remedying things is a far cry from anything any of us are likely to try but the reality is everyone at some point has wondered if changing their life is possible and how one earth you’d go about it. In less skilled hands, you end up with an eminently forgettable book full of characters you don’t care about occupying a narrative that seems utterly lightweight and inconsequential. The opening chapters are promising, as translator Rachel Willson-Broyles tries to channel Douglas Adams’ dry humour. And the paragraphs introducing hapless naif Per Persson are are as typically, amusingly Jonasson as anything in the author's hit debut The Hundred Year Old Man, creating absurd levity from a crummy situation: his destructive family, and his job manning reception at a run-down former brothel, now a budget hotel popular with ex-cons and other shady sorts - and the character's everyman name works even better in English.

I think each and every one of us should climb out of our own windows once or twice in our lives. I think those who are afraid of dying are those who have not lived enough. In my books you can climb out of the window in your fantasy.I honestly haven’t laughed as much at this kind of religious irreverence since I read God Knows, by Joseph Heller (who also wrote Catch 22). So the writer of this book, Jonas Jonasson, is in good company indeed. The cover describes the three as “likeable characters pushed into absurd situations”, but in fact only the rather unintelligent hitman fits this description. Both the priest and the receptionist start off OK: robbing gangsters and giving money to charity has a Robin Hood element about it (although the giving is instigated by the hitman, who has found Jesus). But when their money-making scheme targets well-meaning churchgoers, they become much less appealing. Jonasson’s real talent with a book of this nature, that actually does ask some fairly weight questions in amongst the quips, asides, and patently ludicrous but somehow believable situations, is that he neatly balances the serious with the silly in such a way that Hitman Anders never ever feels one joke disposable. The Meaning of It All was generally well received by reviewers, although some said that the lectures did not translate into print very well and complained about the awkward sentence constructions in places resulting from the transcription from the audio recordings. [4] [10] [11]

Well, that's for you to learn, but what you will have gathered is that this is a quite unusual plot. There really does seem no way to pin this down as being akin to anything else. Drink, lapsed religious types, vengeful gangsters and people permanently out of their comfort zone are all ripely given by Graham Greene's entertainments, but this doesn't read like them. It has the warm clarity, gentle character of comedy and over-arching humanist tone of Mitch Albom, but again the style isn't correct. This might well only be categorisable as a Jonas Jonasson book – this being the first of his three I've read I really couldn't properly say. Pure, ingenious fantasy . . . it’s “feel-good” set to stun level’ Guardian (on The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden) The Meaning of It All contains three public lectures Richard Feynman gave on the theme "A Scientist Looks at Society" during the John Danz Lecture Series at the University of Washington, Seattle in April 1963. [3] [4] At the time Feynman was already a highly respected physicist who played a big role in laying the groundwork for modern particle physics. [5] Two years later in 1965, Feynman won the Nobel Prize in Physics with Julian Schwinger and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga for their work in quantum electrodynamics. [6] I was expecting a farce and so didn't have any issues with the ludicrousness of events, but I can imagine some readers may find the continued and escalating daftness annoying. One final warning should go to Christians who get upset by anyone poking gentle fun at their religion: steer well clear of this and The 100-Yr-Old-Man.

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The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist". Open Library. May 5, 2010. Archived from the original on October 17, 2012 . Retrieved February 3, 2011. The Meaning of It All is non-technical book in which Feynman investigates the relationship between science and society. Moloney, Daniel P. (November 1998). "Question Everything?". First Things. Archived from the original on November 11, 2014 . Retrieved November 11, 2014. Hitman Anders, recently out of prison, is doing small jobs for the big gangsters. Then his life takes an unexpected turn when he meets a female Protestant vicar (who also happens to be an atheist), and a homeless receptionist at a former brothel which is now a one-star hotel. The three join forces and concoct an unusual business plan based on Hitman Anders’ skills and his fearsome reputation. The vicar and receptionist will organize jobs for a group of gangsters, and will attract customers using the tabloids’ love of lurid headlines.

Summary: The third time this author strikes us with a rarely unusual circumstance doesn't completely follow through with novelty of plot, nor loveable characters.

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I can see The One-in-a-Million Boy by Monica Wood appealing to Jonasson fans – and many other people. Rachel Willson-Broyles also translated The Boy in the Shadows by Carl-Johan Vallgren. Did I think it was funny? I guess so, but more like amusing than hilariously funny. Yes, it was zany. Maybe some of the hilariousness was lost in translation and different nationalities often have different senses of humour. To a Swedish person, the book is probably hilarious. To a British person, not so hilarious. Maybe it's because I'm used to Nordic noir and not so used to Swedish comedy.

One in which there is way less maiming and killing and far more love, Jesus and cheap Moldovan wine. For those who have read / listened to either of the author's previous books, there is nothing really surprising here, and if you enjoyed those books, I'd highly recommend this one to you as well. The same unpredictable twisting plot and the same vein of light humour flows throughout this story. Somehow, Allan Karlsson [the protagonist in The One-Hundred-Year-Old Man] became less worried about everything the more I worried about everything. I wouldn’t like to be like him because he’s a political idiot but still, up to this day, he’s sitting on my shoulder when I get worried telling me “Just calm down”. He’s my therapist. Maybe you’ll find the answers you seek, and maybe you won’t – even with the happy ending of sorts that graces the book, no one gets to live a fairytale which is the way of things if we’re going to be brutally honest – but like Hitman Anders and his thoroughly pragmatic and often unwilling partners in life-changing crime, you may find that life has a way of serving you up just you need at the exact moment you figure it’s given up on you for good. When Anders gets Christianity, he says “Hosanna” a lot without knowing what it means – that’s the “comedy” by the way. If you laughed then, you’ll love this book because it’s full of, ahem, “jokes”, like that. Maybe when Anders becomes pastor of his church Jonasson is saying organized religion is run by crooks? Never heard a sentiment like that uttered before… Criticising Christianity is so passé these days – aren’t we over this yet? I’m not religious at all and firmly believe religion does more harm than good but I’m extremely bored with people pointing and laughing at Christianity. It’s easy and it’s been done people, move on or else have something original to say about it, which Jonasson doesn’t.All in all, if you want to read a novel that doesn't take too much effort and, in a diverse way (considering the subject matter), does have a feel-good factor rather like watching a farce on television or in the theatre, then give this a go. I suspect the author delivers some underlying messages about the meaning of it all. But don’t ask me what they are. I’m just not that deep. Humour beside, it's a clever plot, with plenty of twists, turns, and double-crossings. The discussions between the hitman and the priest about God are priceless. In fact, I like the banter and dialogue best.