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
A humane, though frequently mawkish, look at a system where too many fall through the cracks.
An investigator who specializes in locating missing children turns her attention to a case closer to home.
After introducing Naomi Cottle to readers in The Child Finder (2017), Denfeld has brought back the tough-but-fragile searcher to explore her origins. As a girl, Naomi was held captive with her sister in a bunker in rural Oregon; one day, Naomi escaped and ran to safety and was eventually taken in by a foster mother. But Naomi was never reunited with the sister she had to leave behind, and now, 20 years on, without even the ability to remember her sister’s name, Naomi is trying to find her, starting with the street community in Portland. She’s especially drawn to one girl she meets, Celia, a 12-year-old who’s been homeless since reporting her stepfather for sexual abuse only to see him acquitted and able to move back into the family home, where Celia’s younger sister still lives. Despite the fact that Celia is living on the streets at the same time as young homeless women are being murdered and dumped into the river, she feels safer there than at home thanks to the refuge she takes in the local library and in her imagination, where she obsesses over butterflies and the freedom they represent. As she works to recover her sister, gain Celia’s trust, and uncover the serial killer, Naomi serves to remind us of the message of all of Denfeld’s work: “People stop existing once you forget them”—and no person deserves to be forgotten. If Denfeld would ease up a bit on the sentimentality, this message could shine through all the more.
A humane, though frequently mawkish, look at a system where too many fall through the cracks.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-269816-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
Traversing topics of love, race, and class, this emotionally complex novel speaks to—and may reverberate beyond—our troubled...
A riveting, potentially redemptive story of modern American suburbia that reads almost like an ancient Greek tragedy.
When the Whitmans, a nouveau riche white family, move into a sprawling, newly built house next door to Valerie Alston-Holt, a black professor of forestry and ecology, and her musically gifted, biracial 18-year-old son, Xavier, in a modest, diverse North Carolina neighborhood of cozy ranch houses on wooded lots, it is clear from the outset things will not end well. The neighborhood itself, which serves as the novel’s narrator and chorus, tells us so. The story begins on “a Sunday afternoon in May when our neighborhood is still maintaining its tenuous peace, a loose balance between old and new, us and them,” we are informed in the book’s opening paragraph. “Later this summer when the funeral takes place, the media will speculate boldly on who’s to blame.” The exact nature of the tragedy that has been foretold and questions of blame come into focus gradually as a series of events is set inexorably in motion when the Whitmans’ cloistered 17-year-old daughter, Juniper, encounters Xavier. The two teenagers tumble into a furtive, pure-hearted romance even as Xavier’s mom and Juniper’s stepfather, Brad, a slick operator who runs a successful HVAC business and has secrets of his own, lock horns in a legal battle over a dying tree. As the novel builds toward its devastating climax, it nimbly negotiates issues of race and racism, class and gentrification, sex and sexual violence, environmental destruction and other highly charged topics. Fowler (A Well-Behaved Woman, 2018, etc.) empathetically conjures nuanced characters we won’t soon forget, expertly weaves together their stories, and imbues the plot with a sense of inevitability and urgency. In the end, she offers an opportunity for catharsis as well as a heartfelt, hopeful call to action.
Traversing topics of love, race, and class, this emotionally complex novel speaks to—and may reverberate beyond—our troubled times.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-23727-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2019
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