A mixed bag, worth dipping into—especially for Griffiths.
Down and Out in Cardiff and Abersytwyth, with variations.
Not enough, actually, in this uneven gathering of 18 stories by 12 contemporary Welsh writers, who embody the wavering commitment to ethnic identity discussed in editor Williams’s witty introduction. The volume starts off smashingly with Sean Burke’s “The Trials of Mahmood Mattan,” a rich re-creation of the (historical) false conviction and execution of a Somali immigrant for the murder of a Welsh pawnbroker. Its Dostoevskyan intensity casts a shadow almost instantly defused by an overabundance of sketchy exercises in kitchen-sink realism (though a few might as accurately be labeled “bidet realism”)—framed in gritty tours through man streets and sweaty sheets (e.g., Anna Davis’s “Hiding in Cheesy’s Bedroom,” Rachel Trezise’s “Valley Lines,” Lloyd Robson’s “The Vinegar Mix”). Similar materials are better treated in Trezza Azzopardi’s limpid picturing of an unemployable loner (“Shorthold”) and Tessa Hadley’s Doris Lessing–inflected chronicle of a woman political activist’s empty love life (“The Enemy”). Mordant humor redeems Desmond Barry’s knowing tale of a petty criminal whose “Fresh Start” in America is imperiled by his manic-depressive girlfriend—and strikes refreshing sparks in Malcolm Pryce’s “Human See, Human Do,” a detective-story parody so perfectly calibrated that it makes perfect sense when a search for a missing chimpanzee is complicated by the scientifically created fear of flowers. Editor Williams contributes a lively story about an amusingly cretinous career criminal (“The Colonel and the Mercenary”). Best of all are three stories from Rabelaisian iconoclast Niall Griffiths: a foul-mouthed account of the attempted—and bungled—burglary of a gay couple’s posh digs (“Turd-burglars”); a beautifully crafted ghost story about the ultimate worst in a rented room (“Fran and the Witch and Me”); and a distinctly weird vignette (“Stigmata”) in which a schoolroom tiff escalates into a bloody religious experience (so to speak).
A mixed bag, worth dipping into—especially for Griffiths.Pub Date: April 15, 2005
ISBN: 0-7475-6606-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Bloomsbury UK/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2005
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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