Posted in 0: 2010 Reviews, England, Humor, Satire, Absurdity, Literary, 2007-09, Mystery, Thriller, Noir on Jul 29th, 2010
Annie Fairhurst, the narrator of this clever, black-humored character study, hooks the reader from the opening scene, which opens with Annie sending a van containing all her possessions to a new address, after which she strips off all her clothes and viciously attacks the “bloody sofa” which she has left behind. It is the sofa on which her husband proposed to her more than a decade ago, when she was seventeen and he, thirty-two. When she arrives at her new house, she envisions herself as Jackie Kennedy, “getting out of an aeroplane.” Author Jenn Ashworth takes the concept of irony to new heights in this psychological novel which rivals Patrick McCabe’s The Butcher Boy in its intensity, and it is in her irony that this novel achieves something that McCabe’s novel does not—it is pathetically funny at the same time that it is terrifyingly slow in its revelations of Annie’s past life.
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Author Carmine Abate grew up in Carfizzi, a small Arberesh village in the toe of Italy, and he returns to that area again* in this novel, a warm and embracing story of a young man’s growing up and his search for his place in the world. MarArberesh wedding costumeco has a differentArberesh wedding costume life from that of boys in other parts of Italy. Like his father, he may also be destined to leave his home, one day, to spend long periods of time in the mines and fields of France earning enough money to support a family in Italy. Marco and his family are Arberesh, descendants of Albanians who emigrated to southern Italy from the fifteenth through eighteenth centuries and who keep their ethnic ties, their language, and their culture alive within their small communities, which remain poor “while the world outside [gets] better. While the rest of Italy progresse[s].” As his father explains to the son who desperately misses him for the large part year that he is in France, “If I come back [home to stay], who’ll send us money so that Elisa can go to University? What are we going to eat if I come home: nails?” For Marco, however, “My father was a chronic source of pain under my skin.”
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When Shunsuke Ho, a Japanese detective recovering from a gunshot wound, is asked by a young relative to try to find his missing fiancee, Shoko, this “simple” request quickly evolves into much more. Honma also finds himself dealing with issues of credit card debt, bankruptcy, identify theft, and possibly multiple murders. Cleanly written and straightforward, the novel is also unusual in that Miyabe develops character more successfully than many other mystery writers. Honma is a real person who seems older than his 42 years, with real worries and real domestic problems, and we come to know him, his life with his 10-year-old son, and his hopes for the future. This mystery is a welcome change of pace, still lively and absorbing even ten years after its initial publication.
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Described as a “masterpiece of Korean fiction of the twentieth century” and as “one of the outstanding literary achievements during Korea’s colonial era,” Three Generations, written in 1931, has recently been translated into English for the first time. Published in Seoul as a newspaper serial from January through August of that year, author Yom Sang-seop appeals to his Korean audience with his vibrant characters and his depiction of real life, especially as lived by traditional, middle-class Koreans. The action shows, on the domestic level, the challenges to traditional ways of life and the sociopolitical conflicts of the era. The novel traces three generations of one family–the Jo family–consisting of the grandfather and family patriarch, his middle-aged son (Sang-hun, and his wife), and Sang-hun’s 23-year-old son Deok-gi (and his wife and baby), the character around whom most of the action revolves.
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First published in France in 1985, The Prospector signaled a change in what had been the author’s style until then. Abandoning the experimental style he employed in the 1970s, with its elusive characters and almost plotless “stories,” author J. M. G. LeClezio here creates an adventure story which is also a coming-of-age story and an exploration of culture. Set in Mauritius, where his French family has deep roots and where he now has a home, the novel is unique—filled with lush descriptions and vibrant characters who appeal to the romantic in all of us while simultaneously evoking the violence and horror which mar their lives and make a mockery of “civilization.” The novel’s exotic setting inspires dreams of lost worlds, mysteries, and lives tied to nature and its beauties. At the same time, however, the author is exploring the damage wrought by foreigners whose sole purpose is to exploit the land and use it for commercial purposes, specifically the plantation owners who have created and cruelly oversee the sugarcane fields worked by underpaid local help.
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