This is British writer Coe's fourth novel but his first to appear in the US, and it's easy to see why American publishers have hesitated to introduce him here. Funny and ambitious, his scathing social satire of England in the 1980s relies on a familiarity with domestic politics, as well as with British popular culture. The very subtitle of this panoramic narrative derives from a third-rate British horror film from the early '60s, starring the sexy Shirley Eaton, whose curvaceousness plays an important role in the fantasy lives of more than one character in this rollicking novel. Michael Owen, for one, the author of two critically respected novels, finds himself (circa 1982) engaged to write the family history of the Winshaws, a wealthy and powerful clan described by one repentant member as ``the meanest, greediest, cruellest bunch of back-stabbing, penny-pinching bastards who ever crawled across the face of the earth.'' The family is behind every excess and degradation of the '80s: the overblown art market, the rise of tabloid journalism, the decline of small farms, the privatization of health care, the unscrupulous dealing in arms to Iraq, and the creation of paper wealth characteristic of the decade. Measuring the consequences of their evil in personal terms, Owen finds a Winshaw behind every private misery and tragedy. This, and a revelation about his own past, renders him more or less mute for two years. His only relief comes from masturbating to the image of Shirley Eaton on his VCR. What he doesn't discover until well into this surprisingly neat narrative is just how much his life is intertwined with this horrible family, and that the mad, institutionalized Tabitha Winshaw, with her accusations of truly horrific Winshaw betrayals, is absolutely correct. Something of a Labourite Tom Wolfe, Coe seems a bit naive politically, with his monolithic view of evil. Nevertheless, he has just the right narrative brio to pull off this wild, satisfying novel.
Pub Date: Feb. 15, 1995
ISBN: 0-679-43385-6
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1994
Plaudits for the concept of a woman pursuing and getting her intellectual equal, but, here, gabby and relentlessly high-minded lovers turn Rush's first novel (after the story collection, Whites, 1986) into a meeting of true minds with too long an agenda. When a 30-ish unnamed American woman discovers that her anthropological thesis, which she had come to research in Botswana, is invalid, she decides to be ``hedonic, think passim about my life and next steps'' and ``repose in the white utopia Gaborone was.'' Which she does until she meets the legendary Nelson Denoon, guru of rural development, preacher of a third way for African countries, and rumored to be in charge of a distant village, Tsau, run by and for women. Intrigued by his brilliance and reputation, the woman sets off alone across the Botswana desert, nearly dying in the attempt but finally reaching Tsau. The village is the vehicle for Denoon's ideas about women (``Every female is a golden loom''), religion (religious buildings are banned in Tsau), education, solar power, and just about everything else. The love affair— exhaustively annotated and dissected all in the first person—is inevitable, and though they make agreeable love and though Denoon is all that he should be, it is the talk that matters—''I love your mind,'' she proclaims. They talk up a storm on everything from the ANC in South Africa to the anarchosyndicalists of Spain. But Tsau is not quite paradise—serpents exist, and Denoon himself changes after an accident in the desert, where he may have undergone a religious experience. Our heroine, disenchanted, returns to the US, but a mysterious message from Africa provokes her curiosity—she might venture another investigation of this most unusual man. In essence a love story, an unusual and credible one, with an exotic locale, and a colorful supporting cast; but the nonstop clever talk eventually provokes irritation rather than sympathy. A flawed novel of too many ideas, many good, but collectively too much.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-394-54472-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1991
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A simply told, warm, rather melancholy tale of changing times in the small ranch country of Texas. On old-time cowboy Grandad's ranch, old and new generations are uneasily mixed. Second wife Grandma complains and listens to the radio; her vicious son is obsessed with town, care and women. Lonnie, his grandson by the first marriage, likes Grandad, the land, life and its people, but is restless and lonely and ambiguously drawn to the easy-going Negro women, Helmea, who is the real mother of the household. Many tensions erupt and when Helmea is raped by one of the men (a terrible, pitiful scene), she leaves and the household collapses. The cattle, infected, are shot and buried by bulldozers and the old man, too, dies inside. Lonnie, at loose ends, goes off to the rodeo and returns to find Grandad in a ditch, terribly injured, later to be shot in a "mercy killing". Lonnie, finding that the old way of life is lost, sets out to drift... The isolation and the homely, tangible beauty of small ranch life removes the taint of melodrama from this tale. The people (especially Nelmas), the country, the cattle are real. Grandad's way of life is strong-and can only be killed violently - so that it is a fitting end that he meets.
Pub Date: June 15, 1961
ISBN: 068485385X
Page Count: 196
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1961
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