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Fans of Matthew Kneale's historical saga, English Passengers, which won the 2000 Whitbread Book of the Year Award and was short-listed for the Booker Prize, be forewarned. A short story collection, such as Small Crimes in an Age of Abundance, is very different. That said, relax and enjoy the fact that Matthew Kneale has mastered both genres. This collection of 12 stories is unified and bound thematically by the portrayal of people on the cusp of a new awareness of the trajectory of their lives, or by a moment or event that changes the equation for them. The stories take place all over the world: China, Ethiopia, Africa, the Middle East, and South America. For some, it is the dislocation of being in a strange place that causes the introspection necessary for change. For others, no external change takes place, but the interior landscape is forever altered.
In the first story, "Stone," a conventional English family, used to traveling with a "tour firm," goes off on their own with dire consequences, not for themselves, but for a hapless young man they think stole from them. This isn't a language problem; it is cultural difference writ large. In "Leaves," gringo planes spray pesticide destroying most of the crops in a Colombian valley, forcing relocation on those who live there. One family is saved by their old grandfather who steals coca plants, the only crop that was saved, from a neighbor. In "Metal," an arms supplier from Great Britain is caught up in a demonstration in Africa, bloodied with a nightstick and brought face to face with violence and terrorism. The morning after, awakening in the safety of his hotel, "He knew, without a shadow of doubt, that his life would never be the same. He would give up his job. He would change everything." But, does he? The final story, "White," is one that will not be forgotten. A young Palestinian suicide bomber, with explosives strapped to his body, makes his way to Tel Aviv to kill himself and as many people as possible. He is crippled by doubt and fear as he recalls his brother's call from Canada telling him of his new life there and inviting him to join him.
Kneale has captured in these stories the complexity of the world and the ways that people cope--or not--showcasing situations of moral ambiguity where roads not taken make all the difference. --Valerie Ryan
Book Description
A well-intentioned English family unwittingly becomes complicit in state violence while traveling through China. A ploddingly respectable London lawyer chances upon a stash of cocaine and realizes it offers the wealth and status he's always hungered for. A salesman in Africa gets caught up in a riot, and a Palestinian suicide bomber has a moment of self-doubt. Kneale transports readers across continents in a nanosecond, reaching to the heart of faraway societies with rare perceptiveness. With wry humor and razor-sharp satire, these twelve thought-provoking stories illuminate the moral uncertainty of our time.
Customer Reviews:
Abundantly entertaining.......2006-08-09
Having read English Passengers I was impatient to get my hands on this one, and it didn't disappoint. Whilst it's not as weighty a tome as English Passengers, it shares a common theme of trespass. The stories of people who go where they shouldn't (either figuratively or physically) zip by and the book was over too quickly.
Very nicely done.......2005-11-28
I don't usually read short stories, so I was a bit disappointed when I heard this was the format of the followup to the fabulous English Passengers. I shouldnt have been, since my bias against short stories is probably silly: collections by Julian Barnes, Ha Jin, not to mention Dubliners are easily among my best lifetime reads ever.
Anyway, I found Small Crimes captivating. In nearly every story, I was left with some strong type of feeling or other, ranging from deep pity to disgust. Knealle's trip into the minds of the muslim bomber, of the overweight guy who marries the beautiful girl, of the nerdy scientist who can't relate to his wife as her brother dies... are as perfectly descrided as the multiple geographic surroundings. And the simple language makes for easy reading, without loss in depth of theme. I look forward to Kneale's next book, whether novel or short story.
Massively Disappointing.......2005-08-23
I loved, loved, loved Kneale's novel English Passengers and was utterly disappointed by this trite collection of short stories. Using the story of the settlement of Tasmania, English Passengers was a tightly controlled broadside against colonial racism, injustice, and cultural imperialism, allowing the anger to flow through the characters' voices in a way that worked organically. Here, although the theme is very similar, the modern situations feel contrived and artificial, each story a carefully constructed attempt to push the reader's buttons and raise awareness. Crisscrossing the world and ranging in length from under ten pages to almost forty, they feel less like stories than lessons one is supposed to learn.
In "Stone" an English family goes on vacation to China due to their insecure need to keep up with the Joneses. Totally out of their element and off-track, when the wife loses a valuable piece of jewelry a cross-cultural misunderstanding predictable results in a terrible tragedy. Keeping up with the neighbors is more explicitly the theme of "Powder", in which a nebbish London lawyer stumbles onto bag of cocaine and cell phone. He starts dealing the stuff in order to fulfill material dreams, and the entire family spins into corruption they can't escape. Cocaine is also the catalyst in "Leaves", a short sketch which follows a Columbian family whose meager crop farm is destroyed by anti-coca spraying. Of course the law of unintended consequences takes effect as they move elsewhere to pursue farming of a different sort.
"Weight" once again takes the reader to China, where a Texas oil worker meets a beautiful Chinese woman. He manages to stumble through the cross-cultural pitfalls of marriage, but when they return to Houston, jealousy predictably rears its ugly head. The very short "Pills" follows an Ethiopian villager making an arduous trek to intercept two Western travelers to get medicine for her child. "Metal" remains in Africa, where and English businessman on a trip gets in a car accident and then swept up in anti-government riot. He helps his driver and local shanty dwellers help him escape the riot. This experience of human connection gets him all touchy-feely and he vows to quit his job and do something more meaningful with his life. A day later he reconsiders, and the oh-so-ironic punchline is that he's an arms salesman selling military helicopters.
The brief "Taste" has a wealthy and unfulfilled London peeress tracking down her Hispanic maid to accuse her of stealing small candied chestnuts and fire her, only to have the woman's warm apartment thaw her soul. In "Sound" a hipster London music writer buys flat in dodgy backstreet and gets paranoid about a black guy he keeps seeing. Each thinks the other is dangerous, but their confrontation has a rather unexpected result. It's a particularly sermonizing piece that reads like something a teenager would have done for some racial sensitivity writing contest. "Sunlight" is about a rich Englishwoman and her poor writer boyfriend who buy house in Italy on a romantic whim. Naturally the restoration goes badly, cross-cultural insults ensure, but the outcome is a bit more unexpected than the other stories.
"Seasons" is a brief story that doesn't quite fit the pattern of the rest of the collection. It's simply about a group of old school friends meeting in pub before one heads off to Iraq. In "Numbers" an American military aviation engineer's precisely ordered life starts to derail when his wife's brother starts dying and she gets depressed. He's unable to understand and deal with the messier part of life, and his family life starts to fall apart until she bounces back. It's also somewhat different from the rest of the book and is a little more interesting for it. The final story is "White" a very well-imagined glimpse into the mind of a Palestinian suicide bomber crippled by doubt and fear as he recalls his brother's call from Canada telling him of the possibilities of a new life there. It's protagonist is much less certain and directed than others in the collection, and thus it feels more open and real.
Ultimately, the book is about the baser sides of the human soul. The one that let us harm our fellow man through selfishness, greed, arrogance, or simple laziness or unwillingness to try and connect with others. This aim is certainly noble, but Kneale's attempt to bring home some of the human cost of globalization is simply far too calculated to have much impact. Which is a shame, because the prose is quite good, and he's good at sketching characters and situations in a minimum of space. And he's certainly good at creating a sense of time and place, from London to Africa to China to strip-mall Houston. But on the whole the collection is a failure because none of it seems real.
Most of Kneales work is wonderful.......2005-06-19
...but this isn't. The stories are solidly written but driven by a feeble theme relating to the injustice and and lack of understanding the first world has for the third. It may be OK for some poncey Oxford dinner parties but most of us want a little more insight and entertainment. The characters are mostly odious posh poms who the reader has a vested interest in seeing die from page one. It's almost as emetic as watching Bob 'pretentous wanker' Geldorf talking about Africa.
Brilliantly executed.......2005-03-15
Kneale captures average people with the dark sides of their souls exposed, caught in atavistic moments of primal impulse, stripped of everyday deceits and civilized behavior. Or maybe it is the inherent adaptability of human nature, that frail connection we all enjoy, our little secrets whispered in the dark. In any case, Kneale attacks these stories with impeccable charm, surrounding his characters with the world of mediocrity, lives lived down the middle of the road, until tearing off in a jagged pattern, control thrown to the wind.
With each story, the tension of the collection ratchets higher as cultures clash, softly, in small explosions, to the inevitable outcome. The author makes subtle, significant observations, driving them home with fearless precision. This is a moral book of fictional tales, richly layered humanity at its best and worst, a collage of missed opportunities. The titles are singular: "Stone", "Powder", "Weight", "Metal", "Sunlight" and the shocking "White". There is a particular message in each small gem, a couple buying a villa while challenging each other's boundaries, a vacationing English family, smug in their pretensions until faced with the brutality of survival, an upwardly-mobile couple who believe evil can be controlled in small doses.
There are no geographic or emotional boundaries, the human exploits covering the planet, from London to South America and the Middle East to your own back yard. The stories are remarkable, revelatory, making one think that the author has spent a great deal of time staring into people's souls, the haves and the have-not's, the greedy, the impoverished, the petty urgencies of acquisition that lap at the heels of civilization. Stripped of pretensions, there is such a hunger for connection, for quiet in an unquiet time that it is painful to realize how quickly we sell our souls on the common market.
I have read many novels that I could not put aside until I had finished, but this is the first book of stories that has so captured my imagination and so brilliantly portrayed the heartbreak of a world gone mad with greed, exploitation and abandonment that I am absolutely enthralled. I highly recommend this extraordinary collection, an experience not to be missed. Luan Gaines/2005.
Book Description
Set in a world where the Ice Age never ended and only a narrow coastline of civilization survives, where Victorian society exists alongside saber-toothed cats and woolly mammoths, Strange Cargo is the newest and most darkly engrossing novel yet from the author of Dark Sleeper and The House in the High Wood...
Customer Reviews:
A tale replete with rich detail.......2007-03-24
Pros: Development of setting, characters, and interweaving stories.
Cons: Some might find the degree of detail too heavy and slowing.
I usually start by describing some of the plot, but the story-lines are only about a third of this book's considerable charm. So . . .
The Setting: This is an alternate history tale, as far as the setting goes. It takes place on Earth, and more preciously in (what is left of) England. But, this Earth had no Ice Age, it was struck by an object (popularly believed to have been a meteor) that caused the Sundering (the seas rose, the land was mostly submerged, cultures lost touch with one another, the climate changed drastically), and humans live side-by-side with mastodons, mammoths, glyptodonts, and other creatures that did not perish (because there was no Ice Age). The result is an isolated England, that retains much of its past, but has culturally evolved away from what it is (to us).
The Characters: I am not sure that I have ever read another book that is populated by this many quirky, interesting, amusing, well-developed characters. These are very realistic people, living in a surreal time. Even their names are colorful, quirky, and interesting: Dr. Pinches, Mrs. Matchless, Mr. Threadneedle, Tim Christmas. The characters and the writing speak strongly of a Dickensian influence, but is definitely also just plain Jeffrey Barlough's.
The Plots: Yes, I did say "Plots" in the plural. There are three, distinct story-lines, that share some characters and the same setting and time period.
The woes of Ms. Jane Wastefield is what I would entitle one story-line, wherein a beautiful young woman receives a birthday present that terrifies her father to death and then haunts her every waking moment. How can she be rid of the fiendish thing?! Who can help her? Everyone wants to, but no one seems to know how. Will she succumb? Would defeat be as terrible as she fears? And what about her pet monkey?
The wizarding notions would be a good title for the story-line about Mr. Threadneedle, his apprentice Tim Christmas, and whatever they are tinkering with out in the coach-house. Can they make it work? Will everyone be shocked? Will anyone believe them, without seeing the finished product? Will Mr. Threadneedle find some peace and enjoyment, if he succeeds?
The secret of the will is what bothers another set of characters. When rich old Joseph Cargo died, he left most of his estate to his favorite nephew, but who is Jerry Squailes, and why does he get one-fourth of the money? No one knows, and young Frederick Cargo, spurred on by his shrewish wife and aided by their elderly, honest attorney, Mr. Liffey, go on a mission to uncover the truth. Will they like the truth, when and if they find it? Will that thing kill any of them before they do solve the mystery of Jerry Squailes, the unknown heir?
My Take: This book is some of the best escapist reading I have ever found. The world described is so different (but not) and so replete with interesting characters, that it becomes a great place to retreat to. The writing is very detailed, with tremendous development of setting, characters, and the interweaving stories. It is truly a fascinating journey to take, and the ending(s) is not how Hollywood or fairy tales would do it, with a panoply of happily-ever-after. However, it is also not depressing. This tale is just plain well done.
The Bottom Line
This is a very memorable experience that takes you to a different place and tells you an interesting tale about amusing characters.
Recommended: Yes
A uniquely crafted universe in modern literature!.......2007-01-15
I made these comments in a review of Barlough's earlier novel The House in the High Wood but, frankly, they bear repeating for Strange Cargo, his third novel. Barlow's very special blend of writing styles is probably unique in today's literature and gives us a novel that defies classification. One can say, I suppose, that it represents a delicious blend of Lovecraft, Collins or Poe's version of tension and horror, Brooks' ideas of a modern, dark, urban fantasy and the very best of Dickensian characterization, complex and intricately described environments with superbly comic dialogue and story-telling. But to say that is to suggest somehow that Barlough's efforts are derivative and that is selling him far too short. Barlough's style is quite clearly his own and he has mastered it completely.
Nantle, a small seacoast town and sailor's haunt in Barlough's special universe in which the Ice Age has never ended and a small Victorian population live side by side with saber tooth tigers, woolly mammoths and mastodons, plays host to two simultaneous story lines.
In the first, Miss Jane Wastefield arrives seeking Gilbert Thistlewood with whom she has corresponded. Wastefield, at her wit's end, needs his promised help in ridding herself of a malevolent mirror, a gift she received on her twenty-first birthday, which she keeps locked inside a traveling trunk. The mirror, reflecting eerie visions of a long dead society reminiscent of a fantastic Greece in which monsters and evil demi-gods hold sway, threatens Miss Wastefield's very sanity and, despite her best efforts, refuses to be parted from its owner.
In the second, the Cargo family and their solicitor, Mr Arthur Liffey, seek out Jerry Squailes, the mysteriously elusive beneficiary of a significant piece of their grandfather's estate. This particular sub-plot is more recognizable as the product of the combined influences of Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins. We are witness to a superbly crafted detective story involving skullduggery, fraudulent wills and, ultimately, even the appearance of a wonderfully traditional Victorian ghost.
Unfortunately, the two plot lines, while they bump into one another and occasionally interact, never conjoin and become inter-dependent. I finished the novel with the distinct feeling that Barlough had two independent ideas sufficient unto themselves for a novella length story and felt compelled to shoehorn them together in order to produce something with sufficient length to be classed as a novel. This left me with a mystifying and disturbing sense of non-completion even though both stories wound down with nothing that even the most particular reader could classify as a loose end. It somehow just didn't seem quite right!
That said, Barlough's style and his mastery of dialogue, characterization and scene setting is more than enough to justify reading his work and I'll look eagerly for that next novel in this very special world.
Paul Weiss
A sophisticated reader's treat.......2006-02-24
Strange Cargo is a treat for the sophisticated reader. The use of language is exquisite. The descriptions are fresh and highly apt.This book is ideal for the reader who delights in both historical novels and fantasy/scifi. Even if your preference is mostly toward the historical, you will not be disappointed. Run, don't walk, to get this book and then savour every delicious moment of your read.
Strange adventures on an alternate Earth.......2006-01-28
On the alternate Earth Jeffrey Barlough has created, characters who would not be out of place in a Dickens novel coexist with beings that we know only through the study of paleontology. Thus, prissy Victorian types are not taken aback when they see a mastodon, or hear of someone who had a fatal encounter with a saber-toothed tiger. It's a world of wonders, where strange rocks enable houses to double as airborne vessels, and dark forces are at work just outside the fringes of normal human perception.
Strange Cargo marks Barlough's third visit to this world, following 1998's Dark Sleeper, and 2001's House in the High Wood. It begins in the coastal town of Nantel, as the occupant of a lighthouse observes an airborne house floating by through the fog. It also ends there, when the dual plotlines Barlough develops, involving the search for the beneficiary of a prominent citizen's will, and that of an orphan who seeks to divest herself of a terrible supernatural burden, eventually converge.
The leisurely unfolding of Barlough's plot allows him to explore his strange terrain in loving detail, with many asides and detours along the way; he clearly loves the world he's created and the eccentrics he's peopled it with, folks with delightful names like Matthew Mulks, Tim Christmas, and Malachi Threadneedle. Obviously influenced and inspired by the likes of Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle, Edgar Allan Poe and H. P. Lovecraft, Barlough's major personal quirk is the tendency to "wander off" mid -story to explore something that's caught his attention. It's a habit which readers will either love or loathe, depending on their temperament. Most will likely find it charming, a quality which, when combined with Barlough's obvious gift for language, makes for satisfying reading.
Not strange, just a darn good read.......2004-11-26
For lovers of Blaylock and Powers, and also Dickens, this is a charming, funny and very well written book. It's perfect for reading on holiday, as I did, when you want entertainment (not depressing literary twaddle), but not of the mindless variety.
Barlough has a GREAT imagination, and I believe he likes a good pint in a quaint pub -- which gives him a high rating in my book!
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Oceania, published by University of Sydney on June 1, 1996. The length of the article is 1646 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Cargo Cult - Strange Stories of Desire from Melanesia and Beyond. (book reviews)
Author: Andrew Lattas
Publication:
Oceania (Refereed)
Date: June 1, 1996
Publisher: University of Sydney
Volume: v66
Issue: n4
Page: p328(3)
Article Type: Book Review
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Pacific Affairs, published by University of British Columbia on December 22, 1994. The length of the article is 636 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Cargo Cult: Strange Stories of Desire from Melanesia and Beyond.
Author: Dan Jorgensen
Publication:
Pacific Affairs (Refereed)
Date: December 22, 1994
Publisher: University of British Columbia
Volume: v67
Issue: n4
Page: p637(2)
Article Type: Book Review
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Book Description
In the 33rd century, unbridled pleasure and unparalleled peace make the world go round—under the watch of a vast corporate order that includes living goddess Gloria VanDeen, a powerful player as gutsy as she is gorgeous.
More popular and more ambitious than ever, Gloria is entertaining two tempting offers: to become Empress, or to rise through the ranks of the Department of Extraterrestrial Affairs and take out some bad guys along the way—if they don’t get her first….
When someone takes a potshot at Gloria with a weapon unseen since the Empire’s last great war, it’s clear that success won’t come without a price. For among power brokers, warriors,and rebels lies a dirty secret that could crack the Empire wide open. And Gloria is determined to get to the bottom of it—even if it means going to the top.
Customer Reviews:
erotic fun filled futuristic science fiction thriller .......2006-09-30
In the thirty-third century, Gloria Vandeen is the most beautiful and popular woman in the Empire. The intelligent female heads the Department of Extraterrestrial Affairs, Office of Strategic Affairs. The leaders of the four quadrants that make up DEXTA are determined to shut down Gloria and her cell, but she is resolute planning to defeat them at their game. Her ex-husband the Emperor Charles V needs an heir and wants to remarry her so that he can have her and children.
Gloria investigates the recent use of plasma weapons in Quadrant Four that are traced to a shipment of armaments that were shipped there decades ago in anticipation of the onset of a war with the Ch'ignith. Obviously the weapons never made it there and are being used on the planet New Cambride where a DEXTRA conference is convened. Intelligence reports that there is a high degree of certainty that a plasma bomb is on the planet with a capability of eradicating the entire world. Gloria and her team take the threat seriously as they search to find the weapon of mass destruction to disable it before the catastrophe occurs.
Gloria is an intelligent sexy woman who in her offbeat charming manner defuses many crisis on various planets before they go into hostile overdrive. She uses her perfect looks as a weapon to fool her enemies who assume she is a dingbat even though she always gets what she wants mostly with out of the box logic and solutions. THE FIFTH QUADRANT is an erotic fun filled futuristic science fiction thriller that takes readers on an epic adventure guided by a delightful one-of-a-kind heroine.
Harriet Klausner
Average customer rating:
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The Fifth Quadrant
Raymond E. Hartung
Manufacturer: Authorhouse
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
 Contemporary
| General
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
ASIN: 0759662509 |
Customer Reviews:
Not much choice.......2007-10-11
Superb book for anyone interested in this period. It really should be read by all Christians who take their religion seriously. Why? Because the book is very honest and presents an unpleasant picture despite merely stating facts. It is very, very sad...a chronicle of our tremendous loss. It makes you very aware that the magnificent works of art that we now possess are just the tiny bit that escaped the hands of our intolerant ancestors.
This book is also valuable for anyone interested in preserving contemporary "endangered" culture. There are similarities here to the actions of the Chinese government in the Cultural Revolution and in Tibet. It is ironic that Christians looked on in horror as Communists persecuted Christians in Poland, but most are quite ignorant of the blood on the hands of their ancestors.
I am a Hellenic polytheist, so I am being upfront in having a vested interest. But if you find the subject intriguing, give the book a try, regardless of what side you have found yourself on. After reading this book, many Christians in the reading audience may discover that they didn't have much choice in the matter.
Our Pagan Ancestors.......2006-06-29
This book is not exactly light reading, and one should already have at least some familiarity with the period of Late Antiquity before tackling it. Also I think that Chuvin pulls a lot of his punches in order to avoid the accusation of being "anti-Christian". After all, he is telling a story that makes Christianity look very bad, indeed. What other Religion in human history has been so relentlessy intolerant - and so "successful" in its supression of other Religions? Chuvin also soft-pedals the evidence for philosophical Paganism surviving to the present - but he makes the case nevertheless.
This is an essential book for anyone interested in the real roots of modern Paganism. The Pagans that Chuvin deals with are precisely those classical Pagans whose words, including their prayers, we can still read today. Chuvin is overly careful, in my opinion, to avoid any appearance of being polemical - but he still presents a lot of ammunition for the point of view that modern Paganism is a genuine continuation of the Old Religion. The Pagans that Chuvin portrays were, in fact, already involved in the fight to defend the Old Religion nearly 2,000 years ago!
Who were the last European Pagans?.......1999-05-06
Funny, I thought the last recorded pagans in Europe were the Lithuanians. They didn't accept until 1387.
The fall of Paganism as viewed by the Pagans themselves!.......1999-03-21
"A Chronicle of the Last Pagans" is an absolutely masterful work which gives a detailed account of the rise of Christianity and the downfall of Paganism. Both rich in detail and historical accuracy, this volume makes good use of primary sources and tells it's story well. It begins at the time of Constantine and travels through to the reign of Theodosius. Though this is a modern work it is an exceptionally useful resource. Pierre Chuvin has managed to put together a wide variety of sources to create a picture of late antiquity as no other writer has yet been able to do. I found information here that I have not been able to get to easily anywhere else, such as Eastern Pagan survivals lasting well into the 500's AD. Highly recommended!
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