Sharply observed and very amusing first novel.
Misadventures in the British rag trade, from a fashion insider.
Katie Castle, production manager for fabulous London designer Penny Moss, has listened patiently to Penny’s grandiose stories of her glory days in the Swinging Sixties, endured her comically eccentric behavior, and even fended off her husband Hugh’s advances since the day Penny hired her. Katie figures her egomaniacal boss is too wrapped up in herself to notice much—and she never thought a brief sexual fling would bring so much trouble. Well, all right, she was engaged to Penny’s son Ludo at the time. They lived together in a townhouse owned by Penny, which Katie redecorated in the spare style she prefers after tossing out most of Ludo’s shabby stuff. He didn’t seem to mind. Earnest, brainy Ludo teaches at a school where even the teachers carry knives—when not fretting over endangered sea eagles. Katie can’t really be blamed for having a pint or two and falling into the brawny arms of Liam, the company van driver, can she? But once Penny finds out, she fires Katie immediately—and Katie finds out soon enough who her friends are. Not Milo, p.r. whiz and out-of-closet queen. He’s too busy lusting after underage youths and currying favor with Penny. Not Cavafy, the elderly Greek whose factory produces Penny’s designs (Liam bragged about the episode to Cavafy’s son Angel one drunken night, and Angel told all). Katie is sent packing, but she can’t go home to Mum and Dad in the aptly named suburb of East Grimstead. At last Jonah, an amateur philosopher and professional thug, takes pity and arranges an introduction to Kamil Ayyub, hapless scion of an immigrant Kurdish clan and owner/manager of Ayyub’s Parisian Fashions, featuring the latest in durable polyester. Katie will have to take a cut in pay but she doesn’t really care, especially since pretentious Penny gets her comeuppance, with a little help from Jonah.
Sharply observed and very amusing first novel.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-375-76062-8
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.
Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1992
ISBN: 1400031702
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.
Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.
Written by a Nigerian African trained in missionary schools, this novel tells quietly the story of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior, father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness. But into the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers, teachings so alien to the tribe, that resistance is impossible. One must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of incoherent children. Still, with his guns and persistence, the white man, amoeba-like, gradually absorbs the native culture and in despair, Okonkwo, unable to withstand the corrosion of what he, alone, understands to be the life force of his people, hangs himself. In the formlessness of the dying culture, it is the missionary who takes note of the event, reminding himself to give Okonkwo's gesture a line or two in his work, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1958
ISBN: 0385474547
Page Count: 207
Publisher: McDowell, Obolensky
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1958
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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