Although competently done, this quirky novel can also seem airless and charmless.
What did Molly tell her biology teacher that caused her family to split apart?
The power of the word looms over Salway’s determinedly offbeat second novel (after The ABCs of Love, 2004), a mystery story of a kind in which Molly Drayton, an unusual, sometimes furious, overweight young woman with a shaded past settles into a new life working in a stationery shop. But what happened beforehand to turn “the most popular girl at school” into a recluse? Answers must wait while Molly establishes her new living and social arrangements. Her quietly lecherous but harmless boss, Mr. Roberts, pays her to rearrange the shelves while she perches on a ladder telling him suggestive stories; chic Mrs. Roberts and Molly’s hairdresser friend Miranda help improve Molly’s grooming; and in the park, her strange and secretive boyfriend Tim delivers delicious kisses but also mentions hearing voices. Meanwhile, Liz at the library guides Molly’s reading, introducing her to Colette, whose work will inspire new tales for Mr. Roberts. As Molly’s confidence grows, she harms herself less, starts to lose weight and believes that Tim is going to take care of her, something she craves. But Tim isn’t well and neither perhaps is Molly. Eventually, the truth about her past emerges in one of her stories: Her fury at her oppressive father led her to tell exaggerated tales of his abuse to her teacher, who called in social services. Now, in a last, well-intentioned burst, Molly turns pro-active, putting an end to Miranda’s foolish fantasies and finishing off Mr. Roberts (who has a weak heart) with a story of sexual sadism, thereby securing Mrs. Roberts’s and her own financial future. A lightly told, somewhat comic but darkly claustrophobic story of disturbed and disturbing empowerment in an odd neighborhood.
Although competently done, this quirky novel can also seem airless and charmless.Pub Date: Nov. 28, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-48100-3
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2006
PLB 0-688-13166-2 King Midas And The Golden Touch ($16.00; PLB $15.63; Apr.; 32 pp.; 0-688-13165-4; PLB 0-688-13166-2): The familiar tale of King Midas gets the golden touch in the hands of Craft and Craft (Cupid and Psyche, 1996). The author takes her inspiration from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s retelling, capturing the essence of the tale with the use of pithy dialogue and colorful description. Enchanting in their own right, the illustrations summon the Middle Ages as a setting, and incorporate colors so lavish that when they are lost to the uniform gold spurred by King Midas’s touch, the point of the story is further burnished. (Picture book. 7-9)
Pub Date: April 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-688-13165-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1999
Refreshingly filled with love rather than sex, this coming-of-age novel examines the human cost of political repression.
A star-crossed romance captures the turmoil of pre-revolutionary Iran in Seraji’s debut.
From the rooftops of Tehran in 1973, life looks pretty good to 17-year-old Pasha Shahed and his friend Ahmed. They’re bright, funny and good-looking; they’re going to graduate from high school in a year; and they’re in love with a couple of the neighborhood girls. But all is not idyllic. At first the girls scarcely know the boys are alive, and one of them, Zari, is engaged to Doctor—not actually a doctor but an exceptionally gifted and politically committed young Iranian. In this neighborhood, the Shah is a subject of contempt rather than veneration, and residents fear SAVAK, the state’s secret police force, which operates without any restraint. Pasha, the novel’s narrator and prime dreamer, focuses on two key periods in his life: the summer and fall of 1973, when his life is going rather well, and the winter of 1974, when he’s incarcerated in a grim psychiatric hospital. Among the traumatic events he relates are the sudden arrest, imprisonment and presumed execution of Doctor. Pasha feels terrible because he fears he might have inadvertently been responsible for SAVAK having located Doctor’s hiding place; he also feels guilty because he’s always been in love with Zari. She makes a dramatic political statement, setting herself on fire and sending Pasha into emotional turmoil. He is both devastated and further worried when the irrepressible Ahmed also seems to come under suspicion for political activity. Pasha turns bitterly against religion, raising the question of God’s existence in a world in which the bad guys seem so obviously in the ascendant. Yet the badly scarred Zari assures him, “Things will change—they always do.”
Refreshingly filled with love rather than sex, this coming-of-age novel examines the human cost of political repression.Pub Date: May 5, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-451-22681-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: NAL/Berkley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2009
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