FOREIGNERS

Name: FOREIGNERS
Author: Caryl Phillips
ISBN: 978-1-4000-4397-2

by Caryl Phillips ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 26, 2007

On balance, Phillips’s fictional touches do not help illuminate the issues of race and identity, which he has dealt with...

bookshelf

Phillips (Dancing in the Dark, 2005, etc.) mixes fact and fiction to examine the sad fates of three very different men of color in England.

Francis Barber, more son than servant to Dr. Samuel Johnson, was one of the best-known black men in London in the 18th century. In Phillips’s first piece (“Dr. Johnson’s Watch”), the unnamed narrator rides in the same coach as Barber, the Doctor’s principal legatee, to the great man’s funeral. Sixteen years later, the narrator, by now a retired financier, travels to Lichfield, Johnson’s hometown, to find Barber’s white wife living in poverty and Barber on his deathbed in a grim infirmary; communication is minimal. Barber’s squandering of his legacy has been well-documented, and Phillips adds no new insights. The second, much longer piece, “Made in Wales,” is a workmanlike third-person account of the life of Randolph Turpin, the mixed-race British boxer whose career highlight was his 1951 defeat of Sugar Ray Robinson to become world middleweight champion. Turpin held the title for 64 days before Robinson reclaimed it at their New York rematch. From there it was mostly downhill for Turpin: woman troubles, money troubles, bankruptcy and suicide at 38. The last piece, “Northern Lights,” is the harrowing story of David Oluwale, a Nigerian stowaway who wound up in Leeds in Yorkshire in 1949. (Phillips’s family emigrated from the Caribbean to Leeds, where the author was raised.) Phillips uses some seven different and presumably invented narrators for his portrait of Oluwale; they track his deterioration, but the man remains an enigma, and the summaries of the city’s history are obtrusive. The Nigerian was a gentle loner whose homelessness made him the target of two rogue cops, who caused his death by drowning and were convicted on assault charges. In death Oluwale’s name became a rallying cry for activists.

On balance, Phillips’s fictional touches do not help illuminate the issues of race and identity, which he has dealt with better elsewhere.

Pub Date: Oct. 26, 2007

ISBN: 978-1-4000-4397-2

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2007

Categories:

HISTORICAL FICTION | GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
ANOTHER MAN IN THE STREET
by Caryl Phillips

- BOOK REVIEW
A VIEW OF THE EMPIRE AT SUNSET
by Caryl Phillips

- BOOK REVIEW
THE LOST CHILD
by Caryl Phillips

bookshelf

THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.

bookshelf

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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- SEEN & HEARD
Salinger Focus of NYPL Exhibit

- SEEN & HEARD
NYC Mayoral Candidates Name Favorite Gotham Books

- APPRECIATIONS
Holden Caulfield: Forever Young

bookshelf

JURASSIC PARK

by Michael Crichton ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 7, 1990

bookshelf

Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.