Some of Townsend’s veddy British jokes don’t cross the Atlantic, but those that do are funny, frivolous, and devastatingly...
More satirical diaries of a persistently pathetic English everyman pitches brickbats and sourballs at Tony Blair, Princess Di worshippers, TV cooking shows, celibacy, and the ever increasing bunch of village idiots and ne’er-do-wells in Ashby-de-la-Zouch.
Back in 1982, long before Bridget Jones turned feckless romance and menstrual cramps into bestselling silliness, playwright and comic novelist Townsend introduced The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged, 13 3/4. Over the years, the precocious adolescent who wrote bad poetry and made hilariously misinformed comments about his dysfunctional family, has grown—though not necessarily up. This sixth installment covers Adrian’s misadventures, with sarcastic side glances at national events, from March 1997 to May 1998, and opens with 31-year-old Adrian, author of an unpublished novel, employed as a chef at the Hoi Polloi, a fashionable Soho restaurant that serves such ineptly prepared “traditional” English fare as overcooked frozen liver and runny Yorkshire pudding (from the kitchen, Adrian glimpses Bridget Jones grimacing over dinner). His Nigerian wife Jo Jo has fled back to Africa while their three-year-old offspring, William, stays with Adrian’s father, George, who is chronically depressed because he can’t get it up anymore, and mother, Pauline, who is having an affair with Ivan Braithwaite, the father of Adrian’s first girlfriend, the voluptuous Dr. Pandora Braithwaite, who is also Adrian’s first and, so far, unrequited love. The diaries open with Adrian’s cautious surprise at Tony Blair’s election, for who should ride in on Blair’s coattails as the new MP for Ashby-de-la-Zouch? Adrian contemplates celibacy, makes a short-lived TV cooking show called Offally Good!, Princess Di is killed in a car crash, Adrian’s father has an affair with Ivan Braithwaite’s wife, the Hoi Polloi is closed when foot fungus is found in a sink and, incredibly, Pandora and Adrian wind up in bed.
Some of Townsend’s veddy British jokes don’t cross the Atlantic, but those that do are funny, frivolous, and devastatingly dead-on.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2000
ISBN: 1-56947-204-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Soho
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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