Location: Home > Music, Stage & Screen > General > Moab Is My Washpot

Moab Is My Washpot

Author: Stephen Fry
Publisher: Arrow Books Ltd
Category: Book

List Price: ~~Ł8.99~~
Buy Used: Ł1.96
You Save: Ł7.03 (78%)

New (33) Used (20) Collectible (1) from Ł1.96

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

29 reviews
Sales Rank: 1191

Media: Paperback
Edition: New Ed
Pages: 368
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5.1 x 1.2

ISBN: 0099457040
EAN: 9780099457046
ASIN: 0099457040

Publication Date: August 5, 2004
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: We ship daily from the United Kingdom

Customer Reviews:

Showing reviews 16-20 of 29

« PREV

1 2 3 4 5 6

Wonderfully awfully wonderfull story! August 1, 2007
17 out of 19 found this review helpful

Can't remember when last I laughed and cried as much as listening to Stephen Fry himself narrating his memoirs. What a wonderfully human, honest and true story it is and heartbreaking at the same time as his sense of humour shines through it all. Do read it or listen to it, it will at best make us all a better human beings.

5 out of 5 stars

Totally honest July 3, 2007
18 out of 20 found this review helpful

This was definately one of the best books i have ever read, he is so honest in his difficulties and doesn't brag or big himself up in anyway. it really gave me a greater appreciation of the power of words, and of the relation of one human's experience to another. even though i probably have nothing in common with the author, i found this an extremely powerful and theraputic novel. his memories are particularly vivid and vast in number, spanning from age 3- to about the time he was 19. its also a fascinating insight into public school life and the authors opinions on it.

4 out of 5 stars

This Book has absolutely blown my Mind March 18, 2007
79 out of 83 found this review helpful

OK, this book is therapy. Reading it is, and I suspect writing it was too. I started it at 18:00h in the Dublin rush-hour (it's always advisable to have some good reading material at hand in that predicament) and finished it at 05:00h in the morning not even feeling tired, bladder bursting, dehydrated for lack of tea and grinning like a big, happy loon. I then read it all over again, straightaway. It has left me overwhelmed, chastised, wanting to shout out its virtues in Tesco and giddily, exuberantly happy; happy that such excellent language is still being written, that its creator should walk the earth as my contemporary and share his gifts so generously with all of us and, most of all, that he found redemption.

For, make no mistake, this is a redemption story; redemption not in the religious sense but in the sense of a soul coming to terms with itself. Stephen Fry's love for Oscar Wilde is well publicised, so maybe it's no coincidence that this account of his first twenty years reminded me of Wilde's fairy tales, these delicate, heartbreaking, deeply moralistic stories about love, betrayal, redemption and futility. Sometimes he finds himself cast as the Selfish Giant, sometimes as the Nightingale, sometimes as the ugly dwarf from The Birthday of the Infanta, and - might as well make full use of the Wilde connection here - the story about "Matteo" has taught me more about the true meaning of The Love that Dare not Speak its Name than over twenty years of worship at Oscar's throne.

Redemption is ultimately the result of learning to love yourself, and only once you learn to love yourself you can love others (if you don't believe me, look it up in the Bible). It is no wonder, so, that Moab is my Washpot is brimming with love, in the writing, in the feelings it evokes and between the lines. The deep affection for the people around him that is spilling from these pages is what makes even the worst escapades described on them forgivable and makes you want to offer your shoulder to the lying, thieving, betraying 17 year old Stephen to cry on. Where that school boy would have hurt people to hurt himself, 39 year old Stephen, the adult who had forgiven himself, asked them for absolution and received it.

All that said, this is still Stephen Fry we are talking about, so Moab is my Washpot is anything but a soppy hugfest. There are side-splittingly funny anecdotes in this book, deep literary and philosophical insights, acrid rants, pure, hilarious filth, language as beautiful as a white lily next to profanities that would make a sailor blush, fond asides about his colleague, confidante and Alter Ego Hugh Laurie that hint at the essence of their friendship, and everything else that makes Stephen so uniquely Stephen and us so lucky to have him.

Of course there are authors and influences without whom the book wouldn't have been written, or would certainly read very differently. There is a lot of P.G. Wodehouse in the use of simile, the way Stephen Fry displays his view of the world recalls Douglas Adams, and the whole book owes a certain debt to Graham Chapman's A Liar's Autobiography, a must read for everyone who enjoyed it.

Buy this book! Read it! Read it again! Pester libraries to stock it! Shout its virtues from the rooftops and include a copy in the payload of the next space probe to leave the solar system!

Not the full Five Stars, however, as the carthatic atmosphere that pervades this book occasionally - very occasionally that is - threatens to descend to that of a 12 Steps Confessional. Still, as autobiographies go, it is well and truly the dog's bollocks.

5 out of 5 stars

Truly one of the most amazing men! March 14, 2007
9 out of 11 found this review helpful

I believe that Stephen Fry is one of the most intelligent, funny and inspirational men in Britain, and he never fails to amaze. I have read most of his books and am an avid fan of his comedy, but this book is truly sspectacular! He is a fascinating man, and this book has the capability to open your heart and mind to understanding how what life can throw at you can be soul forming. One of the best autobiographies one can ever read, and a book that could change your life.

5 out of 5 stars

A jolly hoot! February 27, 2007
10 out of 10 found this review helpful

Although his breakdown and decline was rushed at the end of the book, this first volume of Stephen Fry's autobiography was full of delicious one-liners, and, to borrow an expression from one of his comic creations, was ball-bouncingly funny. Read it. You'll love it.