This third volume of Chekhovian soap opera is every bit as addictive as the first two. Fans will be sad to see any of the...
The third installment in a series concerning the denizens of London’s Corduroy Mansions.
Member of Parliament Oedipus Snark has been appointed Undersecretary of This and That, but his psychotherapist mother Berthea still doesn’t like him. Nor does his ex-lover Barbara Ragg, whose knowledge of his unsavory past gives her an unexpected opportunity for revenge. It’s likely to provide cold comfort from a rift that looms with her fiancé, Hugh, after the confessions they feel impelled to make to each other, or the revenge of his own that Rupert Porter, Barbara’s partner in the literary agency their fathers founded, plots after Barbara decides not to sell him the flat her father left her after all. Wine merchant William French’s son Eddie, financed by his heiress girlfriend, Merle, hires Cosmo Bartonette, the sharpest design eye in London, to decorate a space he wants to turn into a Hemingway-themed restaurant, and in the process he learns a bit about both Cosmo and himself. William’s own quiet life is complicated by an avowal of love as unexpected as it is unwelcome and by the disappearance of his beloved Pimlico Terrier Freddie de la Hay, late of MI6 (The Dog Who Came in from the Cold, 2011, etc.). Caroline Jarvis, William’s downstairs neighbor, wonders whether life will offer her any deeper relationships than the one she enjoys with her best, best friend James. And Berthea’s brother, Terence Moongrove, moves up from his new Porsche to become part owner of a racecar he intends to drive himself.
This third volume of Chekhovian soap opera is every bit as addictive as the first two. Fans will be sad to see any of the plots tied up, even by happy endings, and hope for more complications next season.Pub Date: June 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-307-90723-3
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: April 21, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.
Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.
Written by a Nigerian African trained in missionary schools, this novel tells quietly the story of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior, father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness. But into the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers, teachings so alien to the tribe, that resistance is impossible. One must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of incoherent children. Still, with his guns and persistence, the white man, amoeba-like, gradually absorbs the native culture and in despair, Okonkwo, unable to withstand the corrosion of what he, alone, understands to be the life force of his people, hangs himself. In the formlessness of the dying culture, it is the missionary who takes note of the event, reminding himself to give Okonkwo's gesture a line or two in his work, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1958
ISBN: 0385474547
Page Count: 207
Publisher: McDowell, Obolensky
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1958
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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