Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Once upon a time when I was much younger and stupider, I read this book and liked it. It seemed terribly moving, for reasons lost to vanished time and fuddled memory. However, upon rereading this book in my middle age, I realize that I hate it and despise its author. Why? Because he took possibly the greatest tragedy of all time and turned it into a cross between a Monty Python sketch and a soap opera. No, not even Monty Python, because they were actually funny and could pull off a spoof. The humor here, despite its veneer of midcentury upper crusty English charm, is more like an '80s sitcom. All it needs is a laugh track. Mr. White wrung every ounce of grandeur from the characters and switched out tragedy for neurosis. King Arthur, in White's hands, is a sniveling, fidgety capon constantly prating about his grand political vision or wailing about how he musn't let on that he knows his wife and best friend are carrying on like a pair of trashy teenagers, lest someone's feelings get hurt. Everything he does do or doesn't do us in the grand pursuit of being nice. I should have counted how many times the word "nice" was used. Sir Lancelot here is an ugly, grim gargoyle who is in a constant depressed mood when not boinking Her Majesty. Queen Guenevere is a tawdry minx with a bad temper and the morals of a cheap Machiavelli. The two of them spend approximately half the book ecstatically diving under each other's sumptuous bedclothes whilst operatically moaning about what a shame it is that so many good people have to die for their passion. It isn't nice. Nice people got their feelings hurt, Mummy. O woe, o alack alas, o whip off your kirtle again, Queen Jenny, Lance's lance is at the ready. My apologies to those who loved this book. Perhaps it's just me. I give it two stars for the occasional lovely line, and because I liked Disney's version of "The Sword in the Stone".