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With
The Anatomy School, his first novel since 1997's
Grace Notes, Bernard MacLaverty returns to the dual concerns that animated that Booker-nominated success, and his earlier novels
Lamb and
Cal--the troubled politics of late 20th-century Ireland, and the familiar comedy of working-class Irish life.
We meet innocent Belfast Catholic teenager Michael Brennan as he enters a three-day retreat at Ardglass on the eve of his final year at school, resitting his A levels, to the increasing despair of his mother; by the end of the novel, at the end of the 1960s, Michael's innocence is somewhat tarnished, both by his own sexual awakening with an Australian girl in the local university's anatomy department, and by the sectarian bombs providing an inappropriate soundtrack outside. The bulk of the novel is given over to the schoolboy adventures of Brennan with his two friends, the popular sportsman Kavanagh and the sexually and politically mysterious new boy Blaise Foley. Seeking to spice up their workaday world of mocking their schoolmasters and sniggering about masturbation and pornography, together they embark on a torturously complex plot to hijack the year's A level papers--in Foley's eyes a blow against British imperialism but also a self-serving prank that leaves the ethically serious Michael in no small torment.
MacLaverty is at his best in the humorous moments, spinning out tense situations with the wandering skill of a stand-up comic and breathing new life into the compulsory old-folks' tea-party, the "dotery coterie" of Michael's fastidious mother, Nurse Gilliland, Father Farquharson and Mary Lawless. But undercutting the easy whimsy is a harsher tale of the inevitable death of innocence in a world of religion, politics and deception.--Alan Stewart
--Ce texte fait référence à l'édition
Relié
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From Publishers Weekly
MacLaverty transforms the generic coming-of-age formula into a revelatory albeit lengthy read in his latest, the story of an insecure, thoughtful teenager named Martin Brennan who must survive the rigors of a pivotal year in high school while growing up in Belfast during the Troubles of the late '60s. Martin starts off in a bit of an academic quandary, having lost his scholarship to the Catholic school he attends because of subpar grades, forcing his mother to pay for the rest of the year and putting considerable pressure on the boy to boost his academic performance. Much of what follows is a low-key morality play in which Brendan and his mates go through various machinations to procure the answers to their upcoming exams, only to watch their theft backfire when the school thinks they're circulating pornographic photos and one of Martin's chums gets roughed up as a result. Brennan's sexual initiation is poignantly portrayed as he lands a job at a university anatomy lab and ends up losing his virginity there with a comely Australian minx whose departure sets Martin up to pursue the girl of his dreams. Martin is a memorable character whose unflinching compassion and capacity for self-examination provide a rock-solid foundation, and MacLaverty balances the boy's seriousness with his own wise humor. He also creates a fine cast of secondary characters to bring Martin's rites of passage to life, and the result is a book that delves deeper than usual into the vagaries of teenage emotions. MacLaverty has been down this road before (Cal), and all too often the reader can predict the next scene in the narrative, but despite the familiarity of the journey, he provides plenty of atmospheric background to make this heartfelt story worth the ride.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
--Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.
