This book provides a precise setting of Oxford undergraduate lives. The author tactically presents the whole story in a first person’s viewpoint and leads the way to understand how James, the main character of the book, thinks through his lens. The use of colloquial words and slang in the dialogues are very appropriate such that I had a sense of the people’s characters as well as their interactions among themselves when they face various issues in Oxford as part of their personal growth before they face the outside world, such as unpredictable love affairs, the harsh requirement of tutors and the solemn examination system.
The description of the characters vividly brought me into their mindsets and their lives. The most impressive person in the book is James, a Physics major undergraduate. I can’t say he never thinks about himself and has his own thoughts. But he appears in such a way that he doesn’t sound like the main character: he was always being told what to do and how to do instead of making decisions by himself. Through his observations and expressions as the first person of the story, I full understood the message that he fools around throughout his days in Oxford. And at the very end of the book, his weak characters are directly and honestly pointed out by Mark, an Oxford student who is in another extreme, that people can’t actually sense his existence. At that moment, James is highlighted as a big follower of whoever he can let him follow, as he enters Oxford University mainly because of his sister’s great success in her career after graduation; and he goes to London to find a secondary school teaching post when his girlfriend wants to pursue a musician career after she has graduated in Music at Oxford University.
On the other hand, Mark, as mentioned above, possesses another special character in the story. He is an extremely rich guy who has everything that he wants, including the ability to generously offer a huge house for free to his friends such that they can live with him throughout the studies in Oxford. Being a student with an ordinary family background, James raises a very good question about the meaning of life after knowing Mark for a long time: people are normally working hard in their studies and then their jobs in order to create a better future for themselves, in terms of buying a nicer flat, bringing up their children in a better way, and pursuing a more comfortable lives. This driving force helps them to climb up the career ladder as hard as they can for the sake of being promoted to a higher position in their work. Under the condition that Mark was born as a millionaire that he has got everything which takes more than one person’s life to gain for it, James wonders what his next step should be.
The story ends in a very inspiring way. James has finally found his own direction in life, deciding to stop living in the shadow of people, and worked on his own footprint. His action of taking a train to leave his previous living place, where he was being maltreated all the time, symbolises his strong will to get away from the self-created hindrance and limitation and attempt his own meaning of life. The message of this book is crystal clear: many people are living but not all of them are truly alive.