Minor work from Hassler (The Staggerford Flood, 2002, etc.).
Hassler returns to his old stamping grounds of rural Minnesota in two novellas.
The first is set in Staggerford, more than familiar to Hassler fans, and concerns two long unsolved cases: a murder and a disappearance. It also features five different narrators, of whom the most significant is Grover, 81-year-old desk clerk at the town’s fleabag hotel. Much of the action unfolds in the hotel lobby, so Grover makes a good witness. Nine years before, Neddy Nicholls, a Chamber of Commerce functionary, had been shot dead in front of the movie theater; soon after, his wife Blanche had mysteriously disappeared. Now Blanche’s daughter Penny Jean is on her way home from California to unravel the mystery, and Blanche’s ex-husband George is looking for Penny Jean. The two come together in the lobby, where long-time resident Dusty, a simple-minded retired garbageman, has just claimed he killed Blanche. The facts of the two murders are established quite fast, in a vaudeville atmosphere that climaxes in the hospital where Dusty, stricken by a heart attack, is first baptized with motor oil by his preacher nephew Ollie, then smothered by George (the heavy). The romp is a bit too frantic, and the folksiness is overdone. The second novella is much more dour, unusual for the upbeat Hassler. It’s the story of W.D. Nestor, the title’s nephew, at age 72 looking back at his life. Raised on a prairie farm and frequently whipped by his mean-spirited father, W.D. became an angry man, never laughing or crying, and loving only his wife Lucille (though the love remained unspoken). The couple’s snowbound wedding night is the one bright spot in W.D.’s memories. Late in life, the turkey farmer becomes friendly with a small boy; there’s pathos here, but then, jarringly, the story skips ahead ten years, to W.D.’s fatal visit to his ancient aunt Nancy.
Minor work from Hassler (The Staggerford Flood, 2002, etc.).Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-452-28540-2
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Plume
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2004
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
A kind of Holden Caulfield who speaks bravely and winningly from inside the sorrows of autism: wonderful, simple, easy,...
Britisher Haddon debuts in the adult novel with the bittersweet tale of a 15-year-old autistic who’s also a math genius.
Christopher Boone has had some bad knocks: his mother has died (well, she went to the hospital and never came back), and soon after he found a neighbor’s dog on the front lawn, slain by a garden fork stuck through it. A teacher said that he should write something that he “would like to read himself”—and so he embarks on this book, a murder mystery that will reveal who killed Mrs. Shears’s dog. First off, though, is a night in jail for hitting the policeman who questions him about the dog (the cop made the mistake of grabbing the boy by the arm when he can’t stand to be touched—any more than he can stand the colors yellow or brown, or not knowing what’s going to happen next). Christopher’s father bails him out but forbids his doing any more “detecting” about the dog-murder. When Christopher disobeys (and writes about it in his book), a fight ensues and his father confiscates the book. In time, detective-Christopher finds it, along with certain other clues that reveal a very great deal indeed about his mother’s “death,” his father’s own part in it—and the murder of the dog. Calming himself by doing roots, cubes, prime numbers, and math problems in his head, Christopher runs away, braves a train-ride to London, and finds—his mother. How can this be? Read and see. Neither parent, if truth be told, is the least bit prepossessing or more than a cutout. Christopher, though, with pet rat Toby in his pocket and advanced “maths” in his head, is another matter indeed, and readers will cheer when, way precociously, he takes his A-level maths and does brilliantly.
A kind of Holden Caulfield who speaks bravely and winningly from inside the sorrows of autism: wonderful, simple, easy, moving, and likely to be a smash.Pub Date: June 17, 2003
ISBN: 0-385-50945-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2003
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