Entertaining, but the milk here is decidedly skim.
In this mordant British comedy, a father determined to protect his sons from the miseries of his own childhood inadvertently initiates new and different ordeals for his family.
At the birth of his elder son Robert, Patrick Melrose, an established barrister married to Mary, wonders why no license is required for parenting, when one is necessary to own a dog or drive a car. By the time Thomas comes along five years later, Patrick has worked himself into a froth of neurotic projections. His sadistic father never failed to raise “the hurdle at the last moment to make sure that Patrick cracked his shins.” How can he keep his own accumulated sadness and rage from affecting his beloved boys? Why does his wife prefer to take their infant son to bed instead of him? And does that give him dispensation to have an affair? Meantime, Patrick’s mother asks him to draw up legal documents that leave all her money and her fabulous French farmhouse to a New Age shaman. (Torn between duty and matricide, Patrick ultimately complies with his own disinheritance.) The tale is told in four sections, each set a year apart, in August, when the Melrose family “enjoys” their summer vacations. The points of view change with each section, beginning with Robert who, even at age five, understands his father better than Patrick does himself; next is Patrick, who quaffs great quantities of liquor in a vain attempt to mute his pugilistic sarcasm, which always results in making things worse; then Mary, who redoubles her dedication to her thriving sons as Patrick self-destructs; and finally, the whole family, as they learn where true wealth lies. St. Aubyn (Some Hope, 2003) touchingly conveys the near-clairvoyance of deep familial attachment—especially between parent and child—but certain plot elements seem to hew to a logic outside the framework of the tale, undermining its emotional impact.
Entertaining, but the milk here is decidedly skim.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2005
ISBN: 1-890447-40-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Open City
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2005
PERSPECTIVES
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
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