A wistful, brightly imagined tale of a young man on the make.
A young graduate moves from South Africa to England to kick-start his career in Wiles’ debut novel.
Nelson Leatherby has just earned a bachelor’s degree in economics and faces a fairly stifling future in the business world of his native city of Durban, South Africa. He fears that a career based on his old-school ties will become oppressive, despite the plush suburban lifestyle it could afford him. He decides to go to London, selling off his motorcycle and saying goodbye to his home country. The new city, however, turns out to be cold and expensive, and the pay at his job at a shipping company is meager. Meanwhile, Nelson is dying to lose his virginity, and there are a few girls around that interest him, including an Australian neighbor and an attractive English dispatcher at his work. When Rafferty Farnsworth, a male acquaintance from South Africa, surprisingly arrives, Nelson thinks that he may help him open some social and career doors. Rafferty is something of a self-styled playboy, and he’s never dull; unfortunately, he’s gotten himself mixed up with the Mafia, and Nelson is soon drawn into the resulting turmoil. Wiles does an admirable job of creating a young, ambitious character who has very little sense of entitlement. His version of Durban is a hot, teeming port city with smoky trains that “ferried the long-suffering citizens of the Natal south coast—Indians, Zulus, and Xhosas—between home and work,” while London, as the seat of the British Empire, is a place of infinite possibility. Wiles obviously knows South Africa as well as he does Europe, and he describes Nelson’s entry-level work experience in 1960s London with humility and a good deal of savvy about how the city works. This is more a crime novel than a coming-of-age story, though, and the inclusion of Rafferty and other characters gives the story the air of a lighthearted thriller. Some portions of the book could have been more concise, but often Wiles writes strongly about chairmen, aristocrats, and mobsters, placing the action in some appealing European settings.
A wistful, brightly imagined tale of a young man on the make.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5147-8865-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2016
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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