In this bilious and booze-sodden narrative (winner of the 1986 Booker Prize), Amis once again transforms insult, ridicule, and reaction into high comic art, much of it at the expense of his own kind for a change. But that explains the unusual degree of sympathy also in evidence here for the like-minded Welshmen (and women) who endure, with varying degrees of grace, the onslaught of old age. Malcolm Cellan-Davies, afflicted with bad teeth and bowel problems, spends his retirement translating Welsh verse, and meeting his mates, all ex-members of a defunct squash club, at a pub named "the Bible." These daily "Bible sessions" include Charlie Norris, an overweight, alcoholic restaurateur, and Peter Thomas, also obese, who's always on the lookout for "vulgarity, affectation, and shoddiness." All of which seem to arrive in South Wales with the return, after 30 years, of their old friend, Alun Weaver, a popular poet and, in one friend's words, an "up-market media Welshman" who has made quite a career of pontificating about "things Welsh" on TV. In search of his "roots," this "second-rate bloody ersatz" version of the justly celebrated Welsh poet, Brydan, is more interested in planting than sowing. Malcolm's wife, Gwen, Charlie's Sophie, and a number of other old flames all welcome the vain and selfish writer into their beds, thus bringing out into the open all the pent-up problems of these superannuated swingers. When the white-haired Don Juan dies an untimely death ("a rather raw occasion all round"), his charming and still beautiful wife, Rhiannon, rekindles a long-cherished affection of her own for Peter, who's been stuck for years in a loveless marriage with Muriel, a tart-tongued harridan in the Amis tradition. Plenty of boisterous pub crawls and witty chin-wags add up to vintage Amis.
Pub Date: March 1, 1987
ISBN: 0060971460
Page Count: 294
Publisher: Summit/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1987
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
BOOK REVIEW
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