Some clunkers, too, in a mixed bag collection. But it’s always good to know what the Welsh are up to.
This small country’s uneasy adaptation to the present age is charted with varying success in a gathering of 19 short stories written by as many young Welsh authors.
Adolescent alienation and misbehavior are the subjects of Rachel Trezise’s “Fresh Apples,” a dark picture of teenagers idling angrily about in a coal-mining village; Brian Smith’s “Broken Arrow,” a portrayal of violent territorialism; and Cynan Jones’s “The Babysitter,” an arch, amusing revelation of sexual fantasies (true, Robert Coover did it better, years ago). Adult layabouts show how sociopathy really works in Tristan Hughes’s raucous “Twelve Beer Blues”; Jon Gower’s abrasive “TV Land” (a detailed tour of the meanest streets and persons of Cardiff, the capital of Wales); and Niall Griffiths’s efficiently anecdotal tale of a collegiate tour guide provoked into “educating” new students (“Freshers’ Week”). Several more interesting stories explore tensions peculiar to a geographically tiny nation enriched, bothered and bewildered by a multi-racial, multi-ethnic populace. Leonora Brito’s “The Last Jumpshot” riffs amusingly on the culture of pro sports, in the lively, lilting voice of “the first Welsh black who is destined to blaze a trail through the NBA!” Davies contributes a touching, if overly elliptical picture of a cabdriver married to an Indian woman whose biracial son has just died. Ironic understatement is nicely employed in Rhian Saadat’s wry look at a family of immigrant con-persons (“Uncle Mehdi’s Carpet Deal”) and Isabel Adonis’s complex and interesting portrayal of a hopeful writer victimized by a suave West Indian Svengali (“Drawing Apart”). Best of all are Glenda Beagan’s delineation of inherited and feared mental instability (“Messages”) and Thomas Fourgs’s richly, rudely comic reproduction of an antisocial drunk’s eloquent misanthropy: a story with a powerful rhythm and a truly individual voice.
Some clunkers, too, in a mixed bag collection. But it’s always good to know what the Welsh are up to.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2005
ISBN: 1-902638-42-5
Page Count: 280
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 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
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