Word: bookings
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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This incident is fast (it takes place in a couple of pages), and the book never significantly deals with the aftermath of the accident, so it seems to be just another contrived misfortune in a long string. Jeremy is the Charlie Brown of modern adolescent fiction. By the time Jeremy finds a voice, we are so wary as not to care...
WHAT prevents the book from becoming unbearably tedious is its sharp wit. There are moments in the book when the readers laugh aloud: a seven-year-old who chainsmokes steals the change he is supposed to be counting; a lisping grade-schooler is cured after doctors find "a button, a staple, a postage stamp and two buffalo nickels" in his stomach; a heated school election eventually degenerates into a food riot...
These moments are welcome in a book that frequently takes itself too seriously, and can throw out platitudes such as "The city boy who hates the city leaves the city to perfect a speech in absolute supremacy of the city...We all choose a calling that's the most radical contradiction of ourselves...
...book has merits apart from its wit. Shields uses imagery well and has mastered setting and dialogue, though he occasionally lapses into the cliched. Undeniably, he does have a nice turn of phrase, especially in his satire...
...Shields' book is fascinating, if not engrossing, and there are glimmers of truth and insights offered in this highly intellectualized package. It is unfortunate, though, that something as beautiful as language and something as poignant and painful as its failings were etherized and dissected on a obviously talented writer's table...