Kay is consistently entertaining in this subtle, sad psychological thriller.
Here is le Carré writ small yet still tense in a quiet thriller set amid the less glamorous work of back-office surveillance for the British government.
It’s two weeks before Christmas 1981 in London, and Stephen Donaldson—28, single, and Oxford-educated— is headed for a crisis. He works for the government’s Institute, which bugs people of questionable politics—Reds, revolutionaries, Irish Republican Army operatives. He listens to the recordings and makes note of anything significant. Nothing much is: his “caseload seldom offers the possibility of drama.” That changes when his superior tells him a top-secret case code-named Phoenix may involve disloyalty by an Institute insider, but the case also may be closed if nothing of substance emerges soon. This threat furnishes another sort of drama, for Stephen has become infatuated with Helen, part of the Phoenix equation, merely by listening to her on a daily basis. In his desperation to maintain the connection with her, he begins fudging reports and breaking Institute rules. Will he be caught? Will he bag Phoenix? And who is the friendly, foreign-accented Alberic, met in a pub proscribed by the Institute? Kay (The Translation of the Bones, 2012, etc.) uses fine observation to create the mind of a desperate, faceless bureaucrat in a tedious job. Stephen's past life emerges through his own and his mother’s memories. Perhaps his love for Helen is rooted somehow in the lost twin sister who died shortly after birth or in being raised by a woman alone after his father abandoned them in Stephen’s childhood. His fantasy of love exists at Mitty-esque extremes ranging from chivalry to the heartthrob treacle James Joyce mocked in the character of Gerty MacDowell. Yet Helen brings meaning to a life-eroding job, and like the femme fatale Stephen will never encounter, she represents a danger he cannot help flirting with.
Kay is consistently entertaining in this subtle, sad psychological thriller.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-941040-45-4
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Tin House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2016
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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