King - John Berger
King lives with Vico and Vica on a rubbish dump off some European motorway. Subsistence is
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by scavenging and petty theft, with occasional fruitless recourses to vending chestnuts outside the local Pizza Hut. Perhaps the eponymous narrator of John Berger's street story is a dog, perhaps all the inhabitants of Saint Valery are. When home is a four-by-three metre hovel erected on a toxic garbage dump, can anyone be human--even a descendent of the great Humanist Giambattista Vico?Berger, who became famous in the early '70s for sharing the sugar spoils of Booker-McConnell with Caribbean resistance groups after winning the Booker Prize forG, has advanced the claims of the dispossessed in writings on migrant workers, peasants and people with AIDS. His dog's-eye view of these desperate lives is strange and tender, transforming waste into keepsakes, as the poor must do.Poisoned with the poetry of polymers (polyurethane, polycarbamide, polytetrafluoroethylene) and the smell of high octane, Saint Valery is the last resort for its inhabitants and a greenfield site for the speculators. When we're told that Vico believed "humanitas" to be derived from "humare", to bury, we know the ending. A dog's life indeed.--Mandy Merck
Advantages: Fantastic if you've not read any of King's books Disadvantages: Very disappointing if you have !
...'Human Punk' is the fourth novel by JohnKing and the first after his loose trilogy that started with 'The Football Factory'. This is the tale of a Slough boy called Joe who grows up in the punk era, goes travelling for several years, then returns home to the 90's and faces up to things that happened in his youth.
While steering clear of the subject matter of the Football Factory trilogy, King's work here is immediately familiar to any readers of those books. Gritty, working class male life told in a stream-of-consciousness narrative. There are moments of wonderful insight and anger, but 'Human Punk' ultimately seems like just more of the same even to a confirmed fan of the author's earlier books.
Dipping his story back into the seventies and out into eastern Europe can't hide the lack of anything new in King's writing here....
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...to face his demons.
Really a lads book, but in the nice sense of the word. I've never read any JohnKing before this - now I'm on the lookout for more of his books....
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...HeadHunters is not, as the name might imply, another examination of football violence, although it is loosely a sequel to The Football Factory. The central theme is sex in various forms as the absorbing characters start their own shagging league. Ranging from the Man Utd of shaggers, Carter, through to the dreamy Will who craves love, they grip the reader. This is Kings venture into the end of youth, and the insecurities and responsibilities that go with it. The inevitable violence comes from a different perspective, being more of a necessary evil than a way of life. Relationships between the characters are a key theme and it’s difficult not to be touched by many of the situations. Another winner....
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...'t bring them back. But Paul recognizes John's magnificent ability when he saves a dying mouse and heals Paul's own health problem.
Paul gets John out of prison to save the warden's wife, who is very ill. When he returns, John grabs a prison guard and with his special powers gives him a brain tumor. This makes the guard kill an inmate who John always said was the devil. This prompts Paul to look further into John's case and, with the help of the sheriff, find new evidence.
At the beginning I believed without a doubt that John Coffey was the murderer. King does a wonderful job presenting facts to make the reader question who really killed the twins. King proves how easy it is to make assumptions without having all the facts, and shows how one piece of evidence can change everything.
I highly recommend The Green Mile to those who like reading...
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...This has to be Stephen King's best book, and having 26 books of his, I should know!!!
The book first came out in six parts, an idea that King wanted to try. The novel, now a film, centres around John Coffey (like the drink only not spelt the same!), a man convicted of raping and killing two twin girls.
As the plot begins to unravel, we discover that Coffey is not just an ordinary man, and maybe all is not as it seems when he was found at the scene of the crime.
It's not a book that goes along King's usual lines, certainly not a horror, but well worth reading.
Totally "unputdownable"...
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Ciao members have rated this review on average somewhat helpful
Advantages: Fantastic if you've not read any of King's books Disadvantages: Very disappointing if you have !
...'Human Punk' is the fourth novel by JohnKing and the first after his loose trilogy that started with 'The Football Factory'. This is the tale of a Slough boy called Joe who grows up in the punk era, goes travelling for several years, then returns home to the 90's and faces up to things that happened in his youth.
While steering clear of the subject matter of the Football Factory trilogy, King's work here is immediately familiar to any readers of those books. Gritty, working class male life told in a stream-of-consciousness narrative. There are moments of wonderful insight and anger, but 'Human Punk' ultimately seems like just more of the same even to a confirmed fan of the author's earlier books.
Dipping his story back into the seventies and out into eastern Europe can't hide the lack of anything new in King's writing here....
Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average somewhat helpful
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