Miyuki emerges as a sympathetic character, and what she finds when she returns to Grindl after cutting her holiday short is...
Dubbed one of Granta’s “Best Young British Novelists,” Gold (Don’t Tell Me About Love, 2006, etc.) returns with another fey tale of a misfit’s sojourn in a strange land.
Every January, Miyuki Woodward, a 20-something lesbian who looks Japanese but isn’t, travels to the same seaside town in Wales for a holiday, leaving her girlfriend, Grindl, behind as a test of sorts to make sure they are not too dependent on each other. There again for her eighth year running, Miyuki keeps to her routine: She drinks the local beer at the local pub; reads a book a day; hikes the blustery coastline; and helps Tall Mr. Hughes, Short Mr. Hughes and Mr. Puw in their weekly trivia competition against the other local team, Septic Barry and The Children from Previous Relationships, a rock-’n’-roll band that neither plays nor practices, but spends ample time planning their future “big tour.” One day, Miyuki, who admired a particular rock along the coast on a previous day’s walk, decides to spray paint it gold. For the sleepy off-season village, this vandalism is scandalous. At the pub that night, the incident is thoroughly discussed and repudiated. So much so that no one seems to notice the absence of Tall Mr. Hughes, otherwise a nightly fixture at the bar. Only Miyuki, who ran into him on an early morning walk as she was admiring her rock art, suspects that something might be terribly wrong, and only by confessing her crime can she sound the alarm. In telling this affectless tale, Gold’s third person narrator stands outside the (in)action of his sedate characters, treating them with the same reserved warmth they extend to each other.
Miyuki emerges as a sympathetic character, and what she finds when she returns to Grindl after cutting her holiday short is deftly handled—but don’t blink or you’ll miss it. It’s something that could be said of the whole book.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-84767-016-8
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Canongate
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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