An unrestrained haggis of Rabelaisian raunch, stereotypes, satire and ultraviolence.
When a Scottish family hears that a relative’s homestead in Africa is being threatened by Robert Mugabe’s regime, they try to overthrow the dictator in Parker’s (Escape Route, 2012) novel.
Festooned with gleefully grotesque political, racial and gender stereotyping in the satirical vein of Terry Southern, this book centers on the lowlife Scottish farm clan known as the Flecks. Its three whiskey-swilling brothers pragmatically bought a trio of Navajo mail-order brides from the United States years ago, strictly for procreating. Their resulting three sons, now Iraq War vets, are the most bloodthirsty torturers and murderers ever to be drummed out of Her Majesty’s armed forces. An opportunity arises to indulge the Flecks’ manias for lethal violence, rape and animal cruelty when word comes that their rich uncle in Zimbabwe is under siege by marauding native “Kaffirs,” the result of dictator Mugabe trying to run white settlers off their land. The Flecks decide to go destroy the corrupt regime, picking up a Russian arms dealer and a sex-crazed upper-class British stewardess along the way. Parker makes occasional attempts to insinuate real-world Zimbabwean history and dirty dealings in the country’s capital into the plot. (He even uses the infamous word “disestablishmentarianism” in a sentence, which is pretty fab.) However, these clash with a cartoonish narrative that feels like a cross between a John Waters movie and Al Capp’s Li’l Abner comic strip, featuring bizarre people doing foul things, often for robust shock value. Mugabe himself, when he makes his belated appearance, is a foppish, fey cross-dresser with a bondage fetish and a fantasy that he’s actually of white descent. Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez and Moammar Gadhafi also have cameos, sending the message that as bad as the Flecks are, there are real-world tyrants who are worse—although some readers may disagree. All that’s missing is a cameo by Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi.
An unrestrained haggis of Rabelaisian raunch, stereotypes, satire and ultraviolence.Pub Date: June 6, 2013
ISBN: 978-1481796095
Page Count: 214
Publisher: AuthorHouseUK
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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