An overambitious, distractingly dense, but nonetheless engaging first novel from Dublin Evening Herald journalist Ryan. Everyone starts out in the wrong marriage in this quirky Irish saga that opens in the tumultuous 1960s: Even patriarch and racehorse trainer Eamonn Laraghy must keep his trysts with Helen Craigie a secret for decades, though his icy wife Maeve wouldn't deny her desire to keep their marriage strictly business. Their children, twins Kerry (due to take over Ashamber, the family estate) and Brian, a fashion designer by calling, make bad choices, too: Kerry disdains her inheritance and runs off to Africa with wandering musician Darragh deBruin, and Brian's pressured into an early Parisian marriage by the lovely yet controlling Lucienne de Veurlay. When Eamonn and Maeve are killed unexpectedly by the IRA, Kerry returns home to Ashamber with infant son Killian—a child she can't love, it seems, because he reminds her of his father, who was a self-centered and abusive disappointment. The spotlight is on Kerry throughout, as she eventually thaws to Brian, with whom she's been estranged, and to Killian, who's desperate for her affection; and as she relates to Helen, whom she meets and even hires after Eamonn's death; and to Brandon Lawrence, the older man who's loved her since she was 18 but who's been trapped in a loveless marriage. The surrounding cast of characters—including Kerry's best friend, Yves, who's gay and eventually contracts AIDS, and Zoe, also a fashion designer, who's in love with married Brian—command formidable attention. Ultimately, the whole incongruous gang is brought together for an unlikely Tahitian vacation that casts a soothing if gauzy net over any remaining shaky plot turns. Ryan's easy style and journalistic gift for detail conceal a multitude of narrative shortcuts and indulgences that could terminally weaken a lesser entertainment.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-312-13933-0
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1995
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
