UNPAID DEBTS

Name: UNPAID DEBTS
Author: Antonio Jiménez Barca
ISBN: 978-8494349621

by Antonio Jiménez Barca ; translated by Benjamin Rowdon ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 10, 2015

As a crime novel, this work doesn’t consistently sustain the level of suspense needed for a page-turner, but its reflective...

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A down-and-out debt collector abruptly finds himself at the center of a murder investigation.

Spanish lawyer Pablo Esteban’s life is falling apart, as the business he works for is near bankruptcy and his longtime girlfriend has recently left him for another man. Unexpectedly, he runs into his former best friend, Trendy, on the metro, and the two make plans to meet later to reminisce about their teenage years and fill each other in on the decade-plus since they've last seen each other. Later that night, Trendy is stabbed to death, and police investigator Antonio Roche believes that as one of the last people to see him alive, Pablo is the key to solving the murder. Set in 1998, the story begins slowly but becomes increasingly captivating as Pablo is reunited with his childhood friends at Trendy's funeral and later returns to the barrio of his youth. In between time spent assisting Roche with interviews, Pablo pursues meetings with other inhabitants of Madrid who owe his employer long-standing debts, some of whom also have startling connections to Pablo's old life. Jiménez Barca’s novel won the Silverio Cañada Prize in 2006 for best debut crime novel in Spanish, and his prose, translated by Rowdon, deftly conveys a world-weary tone, especially as Pablo reflects on his teenage years and on Nora, the girl he and Trendy both loved. Investigator Roche deftly interrogates Pablo's and Trendy’s former acquaintances, always keeping one eye on how the past is shaping the present, and the case takes on new urgency as Pablo's own life is threatened.

As a crime novel, this work doesn’t consistently sustain the level of suspense needed for a page-turner, but its reflective moments offer eloquence, even in the well-trodden territory of teenage love triangles and coming-of-age tales.

Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2015

ISBN: 978-8494349621

Page Count: 326

Publisher: Hispabooks

Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2015

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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SUMMER ISLAND

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2001

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...

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Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.

Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.

Pub Date: March 1, 2001

ISBN: 0-609-60737-5

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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LAST ORDERS

by Graham Swift ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 5, 1996

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Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.