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PAST IMPERFECT

Name: PAST IMPERFECT
Author: Julian Fellowes
ISBN: 978-0-312-57068-2

by Julian Fellowes ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 2009

Lopsided, rambling and fitfully witty.

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Dying tycoon entreats sworn enemy to find his heir in a sophisticated meditation on the British upper crust by Fellowes (Snobs, 2005).

Constructed as a minor mystery but sprawling over the course of several decades, the novel launches with a visit by the unnamed narrator to his longtime nemesis, who is dying of pancreatic cancer. Billionaire mogul Damien Baxter shares an anonymous letter written in 1990 that reads in part, “It is also late and I am drunk and so I have found the nerve to say that you have made my life a living lie for nineteen years. I stare at my living lie each day and all because of you.” The letter implies that Baxter, long sterile from adult mumps, has an offspring to whom he could leave his fortune. The newly minted detective agrees to be Baxter’s inside man and access the lofty social circles necessary to track down five potential mothers: the poised daughter of an earl, a Moravian princess and a brassy American adventuress from Cincinnati, among others. Taking stock of the various candidates, the narrator pieces together Baxter’s story and discerns more about his place in a society to which he barely belongs. The whodunit element is solid enough, the dialogue characteristically erudite and the pastoral milieu likely to appeal to anglophiles and Englishmen of a certain age. But Fellowes bogs down his narrative in a quagmire of minutiae about the décor of English country houses, the social graces of a long-gone age and other period niceties that become increasingly dull as they pile up. The appeal of this overly detailed social history is likely to be lost on the average reader.

Lopsided, rambling and fitfully witty.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2009

ISBN: 978-0-312-57068-2

Page Count: 416

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2009

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

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ANIMAL FARM

A FAIRY STORY

by George Orwell ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 26, 1946

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A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.

Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946

ISBN: 0452277507

Page Count: 114

Publisher: Harcourt, Brace

Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
GEORGE ORWELL
by George Orwell ; edited by Peter Davison

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DIARIES
by George Orwell & edited by Peter Davison

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ALL ART IS PROPAGANDA
by George Orwell

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THE BLUEST EYE

by Toni Morrison ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 29, 1970

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"This soil," concludes the young narrator of this quiet chronicle of garrotted innocence, "is bad for all kinds of flowers. Certain seeds it will not nurture, certain fruit it will not bear." And among the exclusions of white rural Ohio, echoed by black respectability, is ugly, black, loveless, twelve-year-old Pecola. But in a world where blue-eyed gifts are clucked over and admired, and the Pecolas are simply not seen, there is always the possibility of the dream and wish—for blue eyes. Born of a mother who adjusted her life to the clarity and serenity of white households and "acquired virtues that were easy to maintain" and a father, Cholly, stunted by early rejections and humiliations, Pecola just might have been loved—for in raping his daughter Cholly did at least touch her. But "Love is never better than the lover," and with the death of her baby, the child herself, accepting absolutely the gift of blue eyes from a faith healer (whose perverse interest in little girls does not preclude understanding), inches over into madness. A skillful understated tribute to the fall of a sparrow for whose small tragedy there was no watching eye.