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
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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