Lazy Eye [Hardcover]

Donna Daley-Clarke (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 4, 2005

At nineteen, Geoffhurst is getting along just fine - he's got his own flat away from his family, his eight jars to divide his dole cheque (one for each day; one for saving), his standing order at Madame Wong's Chinese Restaurant. Then a reporter from the local newspaper offers to pay him to tell his story - the story of what happened eight years ago, when something happened that even with his lazy eye he couldn't help but stare right in the face. In the long, hot, legendary summer of '76, Geoffhurst's life was full of superheroes. His father was one of the first black professional footballers, his six-foot mother was the most glamorous woman in the neighbourhood and his aunt was a witch. His alter-ego was the Hulk, and his gang was the Four Aces. If he could get through the heat, he could get through anything. But sometimes even superheroes meet their match, and that year the storms that cracked the skies spelt more than just the end of summer; they spelt the end of Geoffhurst's childhood.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Curling backward and forward in time, Daley-Clarke's debut is less a beginning-to-end novel than an incisive set of related character studies that fugue around a tragedy. The novel's decisive moment takes place during the miserable London summer of 1976, when temperatures reach record highs, and the family of 10-year-old Geoffhurst Johnson splits apart in sudden, tragic fashion. Geoffhurst's father, a West Indian-born soccer player named Sonny, commits an out-of-character crime, leaving Geoffhurst and his sister, Susie, in the care of their aunt Harriet: Geoffhurst and Harriet narrate, with Sonny's letters from prison filling out his perspective. As the book opens, Sonny is about to be released from prison, and a college-age Geoffhurst must push past a tabloid journalist, who offers him five figures for his story, to get into his apartment. He then proceeds to tell the story in his own elliptical way. Geoffhurst charms even when he is behaving boorishly, but even though a lot of what he remembers and talks about is quite vivid, he himself remains frustratingly opaque. Harriet, more reserved, is even less accessible. Extended digressions (British minor-league soccer, voodoo, teenage gangs) are nicely done. The whole doesn't equal the sum of its parts, but British Daley-Clarke shows a great deal of promise. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

Winner of the 2006 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for first books, this debut novel tells a wry, anguished story in several first-person, present-tense narratives about a family that comes from a small Caribbean island and struggles to find a home in 1970s Britain. The switch in viewpoint is sometimes confusing, making it hard to keep track of who's who in the detailed scenarios: from young teenager Geoffhurst, hanging with his friends in the neighborhood, to his aunt Harriet, who remembers when she and his mom came to England, and then to his father, speaking through letters from Dartmoor Prison. But the drama of separation is heartfelt, and so is the sense of dislocation, whether it concerns leaving Grandma behind or encountering prejudice against immigrants of color at school and work. It is Geoffhurst who has the lazy eye that makes him see both ways, and his funny commentary reveals sorrow and strength. Hazel Rochman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Scribner (July 4, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743259807
• ISBN-13: 978-0743259804
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,453,268 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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