Lazy Eye [Hardcover]

Donna Daley-clarke (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 23, 2007

Racial tensions and the plight of immigrant life in 1970 s England create the backdrop for the story of a soccer player s act of violence that will haunt his son for years to come. At nineteen, Geoffhurst is getting along just fine. He has his own flat away from his family, eight jars to divide his weekly pay, and a standing order at Madame Wong s Chinese Restaurant. But when a reporter offers to pay him handsomely to tell his story, Geoffhurst must return to the past, and to the unspeakable events that transformed his life eight years ago. In the long, hot, asphalt-melting summer of 1976, Geoffhurst s life was happily full of superheroes. There was his six-foot mother, the most glamorous woman in the neighborhood; his aunt, a witch; his gang the Four Aces; and of course, his father, Sonny, one of the first black professional soccer players in England. Frustrated by the racial taunts he s endured on-field and off, Sonny snapped, bringing Geoffhurst s childhood to a close on the very same day that the heat wave broke in a massive thunderstorm. Rendered with blazing lyricism, and shifting between Geoffhurst s Technicolor nostalgia and his aunt s Caribbean-inflected English, Lazy Eye is a brilliant account of the last moments before a man loses control.

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.)
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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

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: MacAdam/Cage (March 23, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1596922087
• ISBN-13: 978-1596922082
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,936,134 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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