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摘要
摘要
Meet the Laments--the affably dysfunctional globetrotting family at the center of George Hagen's exuberant debut novel. Howard is an engineer who dreams of irrigating the Sahara and lives by the motto "Laments move!" His wife Julia is a fiery spirit who must balance her husband's oddly peripatetic nature with unexpected aspirations of her own. And Will is the "waif with a paper-thin heart" who is given to Howard and Julia in return for their own child who has been lost in a bizarre maternity ward mishap. As Will makes his way from infancy to manhood in a family that careens from continent to continent, one wonders where the Laments will ever belong. In Bahrain, Howard takes a job with an oil company and young Will makes his first friend. But in short order he is wrenched off to another land, his mother's complicated friendship with the American siren Trixie Howitzer causing the family to bolt. In Northern Rhodesia, during its last days as a white colony, the twin enfants terribles Marcus and Julius are born, and Will falls for the gardener's daughter, a girl so vain that she admires her image in the lid of a biscuit tin. But soon the family's life is upturned again, thie time by their neighbor Major Buck Quinn, with his suburban tirades against black self-rule. Envisioning a more civilized life on "the sceptered isle," the Laments board an ocean liner bound for England. Alas, poor Will is greeted by the tribal ferocity of his schoolmates and a society fixated on the Blitz. No sooner has he succumbed to British pop culture in the guise of mop-top Sally Byrd and her stacks of 45s, than the Laments uproot themselves once again, and it's off to New Jersey, where life deals crisis and opportunity in equal measure. Undeniably eccentric, the Laments are also universal. Every family moves on in life. Children grow up, things are left behind; there is always something to lament. Through the Lament's restlessness, responses to adversity, and especially their unwieldy love for one another, George Hagen gives us a portrait of every family that is funny, tragic, and improbably true.
评论 (5)
出版社周刊评论
Ever in search of greener pastures, idealistic but frustrated engineer Howard Lament drags his long-suffering wife, Julia, and their three sons from South Africa to Rhodesia, Bahrain, England and America. The family's rootlessness weighs most heavily on eldest son Will, secretly adopted after a maternity ward mixup goes horribly awry, who feels the odd man out in the face of his constantly changing surroundings and the preternatural solidarity of his twin brothers. Hagen, a screenwriter and first-time novelist, makes the story a coming-of-age saga and familial drama, often comic in tone but also full of tragedy: car crashes, a kidnapping, death and dismemberment. As the Laments give up their privileged status under apartheid and eventually settle for downward mobility in the crass American suburbs, Hagan makes their wanderings and expatriate identity crises a commentary on the vexed legacy of British colonialism. The narrative sometimes slows to allow the Laments to hash out their liberal politics, and some sketchily drawn characters (Lament's son Julius is memorable largely for his un-self-conscious masturbatory rituals) die when their plot assignments are completed. Hagen pokes fun at Albion's seed with comic clich?s-the Rhodesians are racist Colonel Blimps, the English are soccer thugs, the Americans are conformists, religious zealots or strident New Leftists. The Laments themselves, saddled with the melancholy of postimperial decline, are a spirited but slightly sad lot who wish for better lives. This is a funny, touching novel about the meaning of family, with an oddly high body count. Agent, Henry Dunow. (June 22) Forecast: A 10-city author tour and overseas enthusiasm (rights have been sold in 10 countries) should earn this unusual and enjoyable novel a modest following. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
《书目》(Booklist)书评
Traveling the world, never setting down roots, the Laments were a restless breed. When Howard and Julia marry and begin a family, Julia hesitates to name the baby. And in that pause, the baby is switched and kidnapped from the maternity ward, and the Laments end up adopting the abandoned baby, Will. Starting over, the Laments move from northern Rhodesia to the Persian Gulf to England to suburban America, following Howard's career in engineering. Along the way, their family grows as their prospects dim. Howard loses his job and is transfigured from a dreamer fascinated with valves to a man uncertain of his next step, except that he wants to move on. Julia shifts from a spirited woman with artistic tendencies to a harried mother, real-estate broker, and breadwinner, determined to stay put and make a life for her family. Through it all, Will wonders at his lingering feelings of somehow not belonging to the family and yet shares the sense that whatever tragedy befalls them, they are linked by their love for one another. --Vanessa Bush Copyright 2004 Booklist
《学校图书馆杂志》(School Library Journal)书评
Adult/High School-The Lament family has a secret. Will is not the jolly, glowing baby born to Julia and Howard in Rhodesia during the 1950s. He is the weak, transparent preemie abandoned by his distraught mother when she kidnapped the Lament infant from the maternity ward. When the woman and child die in an automobile accident, the attending physician persuades the stunned Laments to pretend the abandoned child is theirs, and take him home. For the Laments, home is more a goal than a place. Soon Will, his younger twin brothers, and his parents begin a series of disastrous moves. Idealistic and impractical engineer Howard longs for a career that will make full use of his inventive genius. Artistic, progressive Julia wants a perfect community. Leaving a prosperous situation in Rhodesia, the family follows Howard as he accepts ultimately unsatisfactory jobs around the world. Will minds the uprooting more than the others do as the family moves from Africa to Bahrain to England to the U.S., and his struggle to make a place for himself is complicated by the family's downward economic spiral. Since much of the focus of the story is on hormone-driven teenage boys, the language and situations are often crude and sexually oriented. Despite a surprising number of bizarre tragedies, the book is full of humor, and the gradual development of the characters leads to a plausible and satisfying conclusion.-Kathy Tewell, Chantilly Regional Library, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus评论
The mid-century progress of a fragile but hugely likable family from colonial Africa to suburban New Jersey. South Africans Howard and Julia Lament have the makings of a successful marriage. He's a clever engineer, she a capable artist, and they both understand that it will be necessary to work to be better citizens of the world than Howard's lumpen father or Julia's oft-married mother Rose. Howard is willing to set aside his extravagant professional ambitions to work at boring jobs, and Julia bravely gives up painting so that they can be very good parents. But, when they do start the family, they are dealt a devilish hand. Politely agreeing to their obstetrician's rather loopy proposal in hospital, they lend their beautiful robust baby son to a painfully lactating, loony mother whose premature baby is not ready to nurse. The unstable mum runs off with baby Lament, and both are killed in a car accident, leaving the Laments with the scrawny orphan, whom they adopt and name Will. They are fortunate. Although he of course doesn't look like either parent, Will is quite as smart and imaginative, and, unlike his late biological mother, he sails on an even keel. Not that he doesn't wonder a bit. As the Laments move first to southern Rhodesia and then to England, the family growing with the birth of twins Marcus and Julius, Will always finds himself something of an outsider both in the world and, inexplicably, in the family. The moves have been necessitated by Howard's gentle downward professional spiral. Julia and Will hate leaving every place and find it hard to fit into new surroundings. Howard's final move, when English employment doesn't work out, is to America, where they settle into a trilevel in very white suburban New Jersey; there, they're thrown even more curves and hard balls. How they cope, fall apart, and grow up is the meat of the story, and it is fine. Newcomer Hagen's understanding of the mix of love, banality, humor, and sadness that are the features of family life is deep and nearly flawless: a lovely book. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
《图书馆杂志》(Library Journal )书评
This first novel follows the lives of the Laments, a white South African family in the late 20th century. Howard is an engineer who marries the energetic and artistic Julia. In a twist of events, the Laments adopt Will, just delivered by a mother who has abducted their biological infant and is then tragically killed with the abducted child in an automobile accident. A few years later, Will's twin brothers, Marcus and Julius, are born as the Laments begin their nomadic flights from Rhodesia to the Persian Gulf, England, and, finally, the United States. Whenever a social situation becomes uncomfortable, the Laments follow their motto: "Moving is good. Damn the neighbors. On to better things." In each country, they learn that human offenses like prejudice are universal attitudes they cannot escape. At the same time, each family member learns to confront his or her own fears and face the world's injustices. Although the characters could have been developed more fully, Hagen's strong writing offers a significant understanding of contemporary family relationships. Recommended for all collections. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 2/15/04.] David A. Beron?, Univ. of New Hampshire, Durham (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.