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Little Monsters
by
Charles Lambert (Goodreads Author)
How do you recover from something like that? Carol never quite does. Sent to live with her aunt, who barely tolerates her presence, Carol is grief-stricken, and all too aware she's not wanted. Desperate for love, but unable to ask for it, she nonetheless - and almost despite herself - finds it where she least expected. Her Uncle Joey is the only one to notice her when she
...moreHardcover
Published
by Picador USA
(first published 2008)
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I have a particular yen for reading books about one place when I’m in another, very different one. I read ‘The God of Small Things’ in Rekjavik, and ‘The Bear Comes Home’ in Kerala (I refused to read Roy’s book while I was in her home state and it was a wise choice, revisiting Kerala through her words was magical, interpreting it via her narrative would have warped my view of an already puzzling and beautiful environment and culture), Middlemarch beguiled me in Melbourne and I kept ‘Dirt Music’ ...more
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A very gentle and beguiling read. It had a distinctly feminine touch, despite being written by a man with a moustache!
The way we were introduced to the characters felt very natural, very life-like, more akin to the way you get to know a person in the flesh than through the pages of a book. You didn't know everything straight away and didn't learn it in a linear way, they gave you bits of themselves when they were ready.
I liked the two halves of the story, the past the p...more
The way we were introduced to the characters felt very natural, very life-like, more akin to the way you get to know a person in the flesh than through the pages of a book. You didn't know everything straight away and didn't learn it in a linear way, they gave you bits of themselves when they were ready.
I liked the two halves of the story, the past the p...more
I loved this novel: compassionate, moving and not the kind of novel you forget in a hurry. See my blog review:
http://elizabethbaines.blogspot.com/2008...
http://elizabethbaines.blogspot.com/2008...
With the attention-grabbing first line; "When I was thirteen, my father killed my mother" this story soon had me racing through the pages, wondering just how 13 year old Carol ends up marrying Uncle Joey.
Thirteen year old Carol is sent to live with her Aunt Margot when her father is jailed for murdering her mother. Aunt Margot runs a pub with Uncle Joey, also living there is Carol's cousin Nicholas, a few years old than her - fat, lazy and not very bright. Carol is con...more
Thirteen year old Carol is sent to live with her Aunt Margot when her father is jailed for murdering her mother. Aunt Margot runs a pub with Uncle Joey, also living there is Carol's cousin Nicholas, a few years old than her - fat, lazy and not very bright. Carol is con...more
Mellifluous prose, patient dementia, remorse and recrimination—all the stuff that keeps you up late. Reading, ruminating.
There are things about this book that made me want to give it three stars - despite the very fine writing - e.g. the situation was maybe too familiar: the 'orphaned' girl who goes to live with a 'bad' relative with a favoured but stupid son; there were odd jumps in the plot, we never learn for example, how Uncle Joey became Jozef the lover/companion in later life or much about the narrator's murderous father; massive events (eg Jozef's WW2 past) done in a paragraph. However the story is complica...more
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A sad but enjoyable (I feel weird putting those words in the same sentence) tale. Carol is fostered to her aunt Margot after her mother is killed. There she meets her uncle Joey and cousin Nicholas, and the story jumps between her early adolescence and adulthood, where she works/volunteers at a refugee camp.
*spoiler*
What struck me most was Carol's complete lack of insight about Kakuna's personality.
I think my enjoyment of this book was lessened because I took a long...more
*spoiler*
What struck me most was Carol's complete lack of insight about Kakuna's personality.
I think my enjoyment of this book was lessened because I took a long...more
Suna
marked it as to-read
Normally not the sort of book I go for, but other readers' reviews and the synopsis make me think it's not like the others of its kind.Intrigued.
An accomplished novel that nevertheless left me feeling a little cold by the end.
I wrote it. I love it. I'd love to know what you think.
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Charles Lambert was born in the United Kingdom but has lived in Italy for most of his adult life. Any Human Face (Picador), his second novel, is the first of a trilogy based on life in modern-day Rome, ranging from the world of politics and corruption to that of juvenile prostitution. The Bookbag has called it "a page-turning crime drama". For Scott Pack, it's a "cracking literary t...more
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