Dying For The Mail? (Going Postal - Terry Pratchett)

Member Name: karenuk

Product:	Going Postal - Terry Pratchett
Date:	19/12/04 (122 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good characterisation, A jolly good romp

Disadvantages: Not his best novel

Going Postal is the latest release from Terry Pratchett. Being a fan, I was eager to buy this as soon as possible and bought it from Amazon with my vouchers earned from Dooyoo.

Now, fans are allowed to criticise what they love and recently, I have had a few disappointments from Pratchett. I found Night Watch disappointing and The Wee Free Men began well, but trailed off somewhat. Before that, I read Monstrous Regiment and adored it – but I really wanted another Pratchett hit.

Going Postal has many good things about it. The main character is one Moist Von Lipwig – a conman with a helpfully forgettable face and a long list of aliases. After a rather close brush with execution, Lord Vetinari (Patrician of the city of Ankh-Morpork) offers Moist a simple choice – become the city’s new Postmaster or die.

After some deliberation, he chooses to take on the proffered role, but he soon finds out it isn’t going to be the easy ride he imagined. For starters, he can’t escape. Lord Vetinari has issued him with his own personal Golem who will ensure he behaves appropriately and can’t run away.

Resigned to trying out his new job and seeing if he can somehow profit from it, he heads over to the Post Office. He’s in for a shock. The place is in a state of decay. The whole building is full of undelivered mail. All those letters that never got to their destination, all those words that were never read by the intended recipient, all those thoughts and feelings that still want to be heard and wait…

The place is also severely understaffed. Old Tolliver Groat – far too senior for his ‘Junior Postman’ title – and his young assistant Stanley live there with the cat Tiddles. Groat tries to cure his ailing body with unique treatments while Stanley lives only for his pin collection. They continue to follow the Post Office Regulations, because, well, they’re the rules, aren’t they?

Technological advances are also piling up against Moist Van Lipwig. Since the Post Office has been shut, the Clacks have taken over - a network of high towers passing messages between them over the sky line. They are faster than the Post, but not without their own problems. They break down regularly, people have lost their jobs, people have died and things have all got rather shady since they were taken over by Reacher Gilt, a man who has a kind of evil arrogance about him, with more than a whiff of dancer. More like a strong stink, in fact.

Moist Van Lipwig is never one to quit without a fight though. He decides to put on a show. He dons a golden suit and performs to his public, soon becoming a regular feature on the front page of the local newspaper and a rising hero to the folk of Ankh-Morpork. May be he can succeed after all? Maybe he will be able to get the Post Office back on track again? Or maybe not…

I did enjoy the novel and at times, I read chapters and chapters without stopping. (Oh yes, it’s the first Pratchett adult novel with CHAPTERS! Woo-hoo!!) Moist is a great character, far from perfect, but warm and you can’t help but admire his gall.

The book is full of great characters. Groat and Stanley make a great comic double act and even the ‘love interest’ – Adora Bell Dearheart – is brilliantly written, much stronger than a lot of female literary figures and hilariously caustic.

Regular Pratchett readers might be disappointed at the absence of some of the much-loved regulars. The Watch make only brief appearances and there’s only one slight brush with Death. Personally, I would have liked more trolls and vampires, but I enjoyed the focus on the Golems and the lovely Igor, as well as my first encounter with a literal screaming banshee.

There are many layers to the story. The link to our modern day Postal Service (both nationalised and privatised) is an obvious one and the Clacks are very similar to emails travelling through the Internet. But deeper still, we explore the corruption and politics behind big businesses and how the little people (the individual workers) often get chewed up and spat out.

At 352 pages, it didn’t take me too long to read and the use of chapters certainly helped. It is better than Wee Free Men and Night Watch, in my opinion, but nowhere near as good as Monstrous Regiment or my all-time favourite Pratchett – Carpe Jugulum.

I enjoyed it and I would recommend it to all fans of Pratchett’s writing. To a casual reader, I would suggest you pick up something else from his Discworld series instead and try this one a few books in.

Going Postal is a jolly good romp with great characterisation, lots going on, plenty of excitement and it’s unpredictable. It’s not great, but it’s more than adequate.


GOING POSTAL by Terry Pratchett
ISBN 0-385-60342-8
Hardback £17.99
www.booksattransworld.co.uk/terrypratchett

Summary: