Lots of quick Brit-wit but pretty shallow.
The title says it all in this newest in spate of ultraclever British novels that have evolved from semiautobiographical weekly columns—in this case, the author’s Web site of the same name.
Thirty-eight-year-old Pel lives with his German girlfriend Ursula and their two little boys in a renovated Victorian house in a rundown neighborhood in northern England. Pel happily kills time at a completely undemanding job in the IT department of the local university library. But then his direct supervisor disappears and Pel is promoted. He soon finds himself embroiled in various intrigues inherited from his former boss: money must be paid to the Chinese mafia for supplying Asian students; bodies buried under a new university building site have to be disposed of, along with some dangerous neurotoxins; the peculiar sexual proclivities of a retiring faculty member need to be hushed up. Poor Pel never quite understands until too late how the powers that be are setting him up as fall guy. Despite its madcap silliness and broad satire, the plot is actually perfunctory, serving to showcase the real subject matter here: Pel’s relationship with Ursula. How he and she, who have been together for years, originally met remains vague, as does the reason they haven’t officially married even after bearing two children and buying a house together. What Millington, named one of Britain’s best first novelists by The Guardian, does spell out in vivid specifics is their arguing. Much of the story, which retains the episodic feel of strung-together columns, is a running commentary on the couple’s sparring about issues large and small: car keys, household chores, sex, the purchase and renovation of a new house. The contrast between their personalities adds to the frisson: Ursula, a physiotherapist, is organized and focused, perhaps pushy; Pel is disorganized, unfocused, a pushover. Neither is exactly appealing, but both have a sense of humor, and the final domestic crisis/car mishap/career meltdown is hysterically funny, if painful.
Lots of quick Brit-wit but pretty shallow.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2003
ISBN: 0-8129-6666-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
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
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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