Though Lively (Moon Tiger; Perfect Happiness) can be satirical, even wicked, these 36 stories (two earlier collections from England plus assorted recent stories, some published in US magazines) are mostly gentle, affectionate portraits of English men and women who muddle through. While there's a host of types and situations here, most center on village streets, petty bourgeoisie society, and academia. In truth, when a character in "Venice, Now and Then" says that "Things are so inconstant. That's the trouble," she could be speaking for most of her fictional cohorts: an aging English lady with insomnia ("The Voice of God in Adelaide Terrace"); a befuddled housewife whose "treasure" of a maid turns out to be a domineering sneak-thief ("Help"); and a professor suffering through the small humiliations of academia ("Revenant as Typewriter"), among many others. In addition to "Help," other notables include: "Nothing Missing but the Samovar," about a German Anglophile who spends a touching season with a sympathetically drawn family of shabbygenteel aristocrats at the end of their economic tether; "Corruption," a delicately textured portrait involving an aging judge, his wife, a female interloper, and a box of confiscated pornography; "The Pill Box," very short and a little metafictional ("How, having glimpsed the possibility of the impossible, can the world remain as steady as you had supposed?"); and" The Dream Merchant," a whimsical portrait of a sensible man who sells dreams from 9:30-5:00 but doesn't believe in them: "that was the secret of his success." Occasionally cloying or thin, but mostly solid work, full of character, incident, and elegiac charm.
Pub Date: March 11, 1986
ISBN: 8021-1156-4
Page Count: -
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Hopping is not hard, for a frog, but when he asks other animals to join him, he finds that bats flap, lobsters snap, and dust flies when an especially large rhinoceros stomps. None of the creatures can do what the frog does so well, until he meets a rabbit, and it becomes a friendship bound by bounding. Vere’s creatures are reminiscent of Sandra Boynton’s: smiling, bright, and lively, unrestrained by this board book’s small dimensions. A hopping good time. (Board book. 1-4)
Pub Date: March 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-531-30131-1
Page Count: 22
Publisher: Orchard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1999
Tennis pro, Vietnam vet, and intelligence operative Brad Smith, who first served in Dropshot (1990), quits an irritating job in Texas to head for Montana, where his unusual skills are needed to open a new tennis resort and locate a murderous nearby secret agent. Well, whom else would you call to clean out the spies plaguing a mysterious Air Force lab just a backhand away from a troubled tennis camp? The debt-ridden sports resort, just bought by Smith's old tennis and spying pal Ted Treacher, provides the perfect cover for Smith—the only tennis-playing spy in America capable of recognizing his old archenemy Sylvester, the Soviet spy responsible for the death of Smith's late Yugoslavian tennis- playing wife. Sylvester, operating with a completely new face fresh from the plastic surgeon, is in Big Sky country to snatch a bit of strategic-defense technology from the research lab whose powerful secret electromagnetic pulses have been giving the local children leukemia. Also neighboring the resort is a secret toxic- waste dump owned by a beautiful but ruthless capitalist hussy who wants to close down the country club so she can get her toxic wastes back. Smith has to sort out all these secrets while cleaning up the financial and managerial mess his chum has made of what should be a fabulous destination for rich tennis players. Sylvester shoots at him, a sadistic deputy shoots at him, and Ivan Lendl shoots at him. Bodies pop out of the golf course. Credibility crushed in straight sets 6-2, 6-0, 6-1.
Pub Date: June 20, 1991
ISBN: 0-312-85143-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1991
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