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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Slices of real life....,
By
This review is from: Feet and Other Stories (Kestrel books) (Hardcover)
This 1983 collection of eight short stories by Jan Mark won a literary prize,and certainly deserves one. All of the stories involve students in the British equivalents of high school and college. And all create vivid, realistic characters who deal with realistic situations in a realistic way. Mothers who want to get their children reading something in addition to fairly sterile and narrow fantasies about Harry Potter might well be advised to turn to Jan Mark's works. While the British locales and slang could seem a bit exotic for young US readers, it's the kind of exoterica that adds fascination."Feet" puts an inexperienced young girl in as tennis umpire in a school tourney, and circumstances result in her public humiliation, immediately followed by a chance to retaliate, but fairly, against the boy who humiliated her. "Posts and Telecommunications" features a young girl frustrated by her inability to communicate with her increasingly "busy" single parent. When he remarries, the new wife tries to keep the lines open, but when she grows increasingly busy and remote too, the girl finds an opportunity to use the very remoteness of the communication to take a terrible revenge against both the vanishing adults in her life. Historians of the computer age will be fascinated by a "giant" 32 K computer complete with portable TV for use as a monitor, featuring in a minor way in the story. One theme that seems to run through all the Mark works I have read to date is the silent courage of family members who have no choice but to put up with intolerable family situations. Samples here include "Poor Darling," in which a young boy endures the public behavior of a mother who gives new depth to the term "superbitch," and "A Little Misunderstanding," in which a high-school age(?) boy finds, to his horror, that his best friend Kipper has been adversely affected, to say the least, by an unendurable religious revival service that the boys are dragged to by a religious-fanatic parent... Kipper's way of ending the torment puts his friend in a fix almost too terrible to imagine, unless, like me, you were raised around Southern Baptists! In "I was adored once, too," an unpopular kid who normally works the lights for the school drama productions winds up playing Sir Andrew Aguecheek in TWELFTH NIGHT, and learns by direct and immediate experience how to deliver Sir Andrew's greatest line. "Enough is Too Much Already" shows the British equivalent of rapid transit destroying the possibilities of two budding young romances. And "Mrs. Tulkinghorne's First Symphony" has a teenage lad in a disturbing encounter with a deeply conflicted wealthy wife on vacation. "Still Life: Remote Control" takes us into the college art class from Hell itself. Ever seen a British film involving rural antics, where you couldn't understand a word said by at least half the characters? In "A Little Misunderstanding," young Cobbold has to translate every word spoken by his father Mr. Jack for his pal Kipper. Yes, the incomprehensibility of rural dialects is a standing joke among the Brits. I learned something valuable from every one of these stories. Also, this seems to be the easiest of Mark's books to find in the US, having been issued in paperback by several different publishers. Recommended.
0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A review of 'Feet and other Stories',
By A voracious reader (Mars) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Feet and Other Stories (Kestrel books) (Hardcover)
This book was the first book by Jan Mark that I have come across. Reading it, I was struck by the author's depth of reading, powers of articulation and characterisation, as well as her observation skills. Clearly, this was no average author.Jan Mark writes about ordinary people - specifically teenagers in normal British Fenland settings. Her characters, whether they be male or female, are completely believable - something that not all 'teenage' authors can accomplish. You can identify with these characters; you can cringe with Adam as his mother shows him up, feel Isabelle's unease and resentment as her father and stepmother gradually vanish from her life. Unlike other 'teenage' authors, Mark does not pander to the audience she has won. Her characters are mainly clever, mature and articulate people, with unusual interests and knowledge of various things. (I was very interested to learn what a Phyrric victory was from this book - I had never come across the term before.) These characters can also be alarmingly cruel. Jan Mark does not shy away from 'heavy' themes such as divorce, the death of parents or the theme of parents drifting away from their children, and vice versa. She also does not shy away from how this can affect children. (See, 'Posts and Telecommunications'.) Jan Mark's genius is her way of skilfully sketching a scene and the characters in it. For example, 'Enough is too much already' is mostly dialogue - yet where the story is set becomes obvious, and the casual by-play between characters is so well portayed that you learn a lot about these characters simply by 'listening' to the way they speak, and what they say. I only removed one star because of the story concerning a Christian chapel. I realise that everyone has their own opinion, but this story's tone and implications (gosh, this Christian person speaks funnily! He must be a complete idiot!) displeased me. I am a Christian. I come from a Christian family. The Christians I know are good, kind people who love God and have intelligent reasons for believing the Christian teachings. Painting members of a huge religious group as gullible morons, or something similarly negative, is a very clever means of propaganda, against a faith and a people. (The Holocaust was a result of this kind of propaganda.) I do not condone this type of propaganda. Neither should anyone. Otherwise, I liked this book and think it should be better known.
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