In this bilious and booze-sodden narrative (winner of the 1986 Booker Prize), Amis once again transforms insult, ridicule, and reaction into high comic art, much of it at the expense of his own kind for a change. But that explains the unusual degree of sympathy also in evidence here for the like-minded Welshmen (and women) who endure, with varying degrees of grace, the onslaught of old age. Malcolm Cellan-Davies, afflicted with bad teeth and bowel problems, spends his retirement translating Welsh verse, and meeting his mates, all ex-members of a defunct squash club, at a pub named "the Bible." These daily "Bible sessions" include Charlie Norris, an overweight, alcoholic restaurateur, and Peter Thomas, also obese, who's always on the lookout for "vulgarity, affectation, and shoddiness." All of which seem to arrive in South Wales with the return, after 30 years, of their old friend, Alun Weaver, a popular poet and, in one friend's words, an "up-market media Welshman" who has made quite a career of pontificating about "things Welsh" on TV. In search of his "roots," this "second-rate bloody ersatz" version of the justly celebrated Welsh poet, Brydan, is more interested in planting than sowing. Malcolm's wife, Gwen, Charlie's Sophie, and a number of other old flames all welcome the vain and selfish writer into their beds, thus bringing out into the open all the pent-up problems of these superannuated swingers. When the white-haired Don Juan dies an untimely death ("a rather raw occasion all round"), his charming and still beautiful wife, Rhiannon, rekindles a long-cherished affection of her own for Peter, who's been stuck for years in a loveless marriage with Muriel, a tart-tongued harridan in the Amis tradition. Plenty of boisterous pub crawls and witty chin-wags add up to vintage Amis.
Pub Date: March 1, 1987
ISBN: 0060971460
Page Count: 294
Publisher: Summit/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1987
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
An unusual and mesmerizing novel, gracefully written and deeply disturbing.
In her first novel to be published in English, South Korean writer Han divides a story about strange obsessions and metamorphosis into three parts, each with a distinct voice.
Yeong-hye and her husband drift through calm, unexceptional lives devoid of passion or anything that might disrupt their domestic routine until the day that Yeong-hye takes every piece of meat from the refrigerator, throws it away, and announces that she's become a vegetarian. Her decision is sudden and rigid, inexplicable to her family and a society where unconventional choices elicit distaste and concern that borders on fear. Yeong-hye tries to explain that she had a dream, a horrifying nightmare of bloody, intimate violence, and that's why she won't eat meat, but her husband and family remain perplexed and disturbed. As Yeong-hye sinks further into both nightmares and the conviction that she must transform herself into a different kind of being, her condition alters the lives of three members of her family—her husband, brother-in-law, and sister—forcing them to confront unsettling desires and the alarming possibility that even with the closest familiarity, people remain strangers. Each of these relatives claims a section of the novel, and each section is strikingly written, equally absorbing whether lush or emotionally bleak. The book insists on a reader’s attention, with an almost hypnotically serene atmosphere interrupted by surreal images and frighteningly recognizable moments of ordinary despair. Han writes convincingly of the disruptive power of longing and the choice to either embrace or deny it, using details that are nearly fantastical in their strangeness to cut to the heart of the very human experience of discovering that one is no longer content with life as it is.
An unusual and mesmerizing novel, gracefully written and deeply disturbing.Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-553-44818-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Hogarth
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2015
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