A vibrant, profane narrative of heartwarming criminality.
The adventures of a small-time criminal whose mettle is truly tested when she leaves the hard-edged Irish border town she calls home to embark on a perilous mission in neighboring yet utterly alien England.
In this free-wheeling, foulmouthed monologue-as-novel, we enter the close-knit underworld of a small, unlovely town on the redundant border between Ireland and Northern Ireland where our heroine, Aoife, plies a modest trade in drugs and knockoff alcohol. “Most'a the Smirnoff ye dink narth’a the Boyne is brewed in Mullaghbawn, Drumintee an Forkhill,” she explains of her rural territory. “Fuckin first-class stuff too. Gets ye where yer goin sure.” With trusted colleagues to rely on—chiefly Shamey Hughes, poet, singer, and muscle when necessary, and the stalwart Rat King, a respected patriarch in the Traveller community—Aoife is running her business smoothly when the mercurial, highly educated Annie enters her life, captures her heart, and puts old loyalties to the test. “She doesn know too much bowt the proper temptation that’s in poverty,” Aoife observes of Annie’s leftist pronouncements. “But that’s grand. I love her so I do. So I can let her run. Cause I know she’ll come backta me.” Employing language that is at times as poetic as it is profane (a shoreline, for example, appears “like a tear between sea and sky”) and with razor-sharp sardonic wit, the novel hurtles through a handful of loosely connected episodes, each entertaining enough, though some verging on slapstick or, worse, sentimentality, before finding its feet in a somewhat predictable plot. As a favor to Rat King—and to spare her town a gangland showdown—Aoife travels to England with a substantial amount of cocaine to unload and with Annie along to complicate matters. What follows is as entertaining as what went before, and Aoife’s acerbic view of Brexit England is as bracing as her earlier take on urban Ireland’s moneyed smugness. But mayhem and tragedy inevitably ensue. Leaving some essential plot threads dangling, the narrative returns home, to the only safe place.
A vibrant, profane narrative of heartwarming criminality.Pub Date: Jan. 11, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-31481-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard
Review Posted Online: Nov. 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2021
A deep and grimly whimsical exploration of what it means to be a son, a father, and an artist.
A retelling of Pinocchio from Geppetto's point of view.
The novel purports to be the memoirs of Geppetto, a carpenter from the town of Collodi, written in the belly of a vast fish that has swallowed him. Fortunately for Geppetto, the fish has also engulfed a ship, and its supplies—fresh water, candles, hardtack, captain’s logbook, ink—are what keep the Swallowed Man going. (Collodi is, of course, the name of the author of the original Pinocchio.) A misfit whose loneliness is equaled only by his drive to make art, Geppetto scours his surroundings for supplies, crafting sculptures out of pieces of the ship’s wood, softened hardtack, mussel shells, and his own hair, half hoping and half fearing to create a companion once again that will come to life. He befriends a crab that lives all too briefly in his beard, then mourns when “she” dies. Alone in the dark, he broods over his past, reflecting on his strained relationship with his father and his harsh treatment of his own “son”—Pinocchio, the wooden puppet that somehow came to life. In true Carey fashion, the author illustrates the novel with his own images of his protagonist’s art: sketches of Pinocchio, of woodworking tools, of the women Geppetto loved; photos of driftwood, of tintypes, of a sculpted self-portrait with seaweed hair. For all its humor, the novel is dark and claustrophobic, and its true subject is the responsibilities of creators. Remembering the first time he heard of the sea monster that was to swallow him, Geppetto wonders if the monster is somehow connected to Pinocchio: “The unnatural child had so thrown the world off-balance that it must be righted at any cost, and perhaps the only thing with the power to right it was a gigantic sea monster, born—I began to suppose this—just after I cracked the world by making a wooden person.” Later, contemplating his self-portrait bust, Geppetto asks, “Monster of the deep. Am I, then, the monster? Do I nightmare myself?”
A deep and grimly whimsical exploration of what it means to be a son, a father, and an artist.Pub Date: Jan. 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-18887-3
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2020
A top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.
Four residents of Coopers Chase, a British retirement village, compete with the police to solve a murder in this debut novel.
The Thursday Murder Club started out with a group of septuagenarians working on old murder cases culled from the files of club founder Elizabeth Best’s friend Penny Gray, a former police officer who's now comatose in the village's nursing home. Elizabeth used to have an unspecified job, possibly as a spy, that has left her with a large network of helpful sources. Joyce Meadowcroft is a former nurse who chronicles their deeds. Psychiatrist Ibrahim Arif and well-known political firebrand Ron Ritchie complete the group. They charm Police Constable Donna De Freitas, who, visiting to give a talk on safety at Coopers Chase, finds the residents sharp as tacks. Built with drug money on the grounds of a convent, Coopers Chase is a high-end development conceived by loathsome Ian Ventham and maintained by dangerous crook Tony Curran, who’s about to be fired and replaced with wary but willing Bogdan Jankowski. Ventham has big plans for the future—as soon as he’s removed the nuns' bodies from the cemetery. When Curran is murdered, DCI Chris Hudson gets the case, but Elizabeth uses her influence to get the ambitious De Freitas included, giving the Thursday Club a police source. What follows is a fascinating primer in detection as British TV personality Osman allows the members to use their diverse skills to solve a series of interconnected crimes.
A top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-98-488096-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
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