This Was a Man: The Clifton Chronicles 07 Hardcover – 3 Nov. 2016

I have loved reading the Clifton Chronicles, eagerly awaiting the next in the series every year. Sadly, I was disappointed with this seventh book. Despite Archer’s inimitable, readable style, I found the story fragmented and forced in places, although still enjoyable for all that. On the whole, I think the saga of the Cliftons and Barringtons had run its course after book six and this was just a bridge too far, a bit like your favorite TV show hitting a wall after the nth series, but ploughing on regardless.Thanks for reading my review. I hope you found it helpful. You can find more candid book reviews on my Amazon profile page.

Bought as a gift, they had read previous books from this author. They were happy with the condition it came in.

A magnificent and masterful final chapter in the Clifton/Barrington saga. Each of the seven books in this epic series left you yearning to turn immediately to the next instalment. The grand finale at the conclusion of "This Was A Man" is possibly the most cleverly crafted endings I've ever read. It lowers the final curtain on what has been a memorable and most enjoyable read over many months. A triumph for both the author and fiction as a whole.

Yes, they are. With 7 books in this Clifton chronicles, it is an epic, a family drama spanning a century. You grow to know them individually. Each of their personality, their successes and failures, their trials and tribulations, their joy and their anxieties. You know them form kids to adulthood. From their living room to the boardroom.The last chapter was so moving, I cried. And I can’t stop crying. I sobbed until the last word was read. I’ve never been so carried away with my emotion with a book. But this series, time and time again, even though I knew that this is a fiction, the author wrote them with such dexterity and deep feelings, I somehow thought that they are real people. And real people get old and die, that’s when I knew I’ll missed them - dearly.The power of storytelling, laying it in the hands of a master storyteller like Jeffrey Archer, becomes so real, it made me weep.This series of 7 books - must read!

First I must start by saying that overall I have really enjoyed reading the Clifton Chronicles series. Jeffrey Archer is a terrific story-teller. With this saga he skilfully draws you in to the lives of the Cliftons and Barringtons that has you wanting to continue reading book after book in the series. I particularly like how he cleverly, and realistically, weaves most of the major events of the twentieth century into these stories in such a way that we see their impact on the lives of individuals, be they rich or poor. I also like the way these stories portray the major factors that can influence our lives: love and loss, power, ambition, greed, personal triumphs and failures.However, I was mildly disappointed by 'This was a Man', the final novel in the series. It may be that my expectations were unrealistically high but I felt the story lacked the pace, twists and turns, and tension of the earlier novels. I was irritated by the number of indirect references to other books that Jeffrey Archer had either recently written or was in the process of writing. I felt the ending was a little too 'convenient', almost as if the author just wanted to bring everything to a close as soon as possible (although I cannot deny that the ending packs quite an emotional punch). Finally, I would have liked to have seen an epilogue that told us briefly what happened in the years that followed to the remaining family members ... but perhaps Mr Archer is keeping his options open in case he wants to write another novel in the series ...So, overall, a super series even though I found this particular novel did not live up to my, possibly unrealistic, expectations.

For the most part I'd enjoyed this series, but this, the final instalment, was a disappointment. From the start it felt as though Jeffrey Archer had lost interest, and filled the book with self-referential elements, such as one character having a health issue shared by the author, and Harry Clifton - himself an author of a series of books about a single main character - talked of his latest book in the series being the final one and his temptation to kill his creation off before writing a bigger, altogether more serious work. The series is rounded off nicely, although I wished one character could have had more of a downfall in the end, and I was pleased that we finally found out if Harry's father had inside the hull of the ship featured in the first book. On the whole though, it felt a bit hurried, and had an air of "will this do?" about it. A weak finale.

A load of badly written drivel. The books in this series got progressively worse until he seemed to run out of ideas and plot lines entirely by the time he started on the final book. Very formulaic and cliched with large irrelevant passages inserted (eg the enthralling and riveting account of a local cricket match which droned on for page after page after page) for no other reason than to pad things out. Perhaps he should have quit while he was ahead after the first book.

I have read The Chronicles from the beginning and thoroughly enjoyed my journey, I believe this may be the last in the series but never is a very long time. The story lines are gently gripping but the intrigue is unbelievable together with politics this should be made into a TVs serial.