Word: corking
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...first half of the novel is narrated by its protagonist, Willie Quinton, and begins with a setting of his early childhood at the idyllic country mansion called Kilnegh in County Cork; this is followed by an extended description of life at Willie's boarding school--a passage that is too long and distracting, and reads, with its contrived nicknames for masters (Mad Mack, Hopeless Gibbon) and standard schoolboy fare, too much like an inserted set-piece; finally there is the massacre which turns Willie's mother to alcohol and then suicide. This leads to an act of revenge that forces...
...land Down Under had not witnessed such an orgy of jubilation since V-J day ended the war in the Pacific. When Australia II won the America's Cup on Rhode Island Sound last week, it was as if the cork had been pulled on an entire continent of bubbly. Indeed, as the revelry roiled on, the only worry in many Australian minds was that the champers would run out. A 130-ft. by 65-ft. Australian flag was hung from Sydney Harbor bridge. In every village, town and city from Wollongong to Jiggalong, car, bus, train and ferry...
Trevor, 55, was born and raised in Ireland, educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and currently lives in Devonshire in southwest England. He is a close observer of the unexceptional: businessmen of Cork, aging maidens from the provinces, London office workers and suburban matrons. They are mostly people who are meeting or avoiding their responsibilities with only an occasional glimpse of their destinies. Trevor has a soft spot for the elderly, like the dapper old soldier in The General's Day who attempts to pick up a younger woman only to learn, at the moment his hand brushes her knee...
Snobbery today tends to be fragmented. The snobbery based on knowledge is particularly specialized. A person who is otherwise completely unpretending and unimpressive may do some reading and become, for example, a wine snob; he will swirl and sniff and smell the cork and send bottles back and otherwise make himself obnoxious on that one subject. Another person may take up, say, chocolate, and be able to discourse absurdly for an hour or two on the merits of Kron over Godiva. This kind of snobbery based upon a narrow but thorough trove of expertise is a bit depressing, because...
...perpetrator: a hulking 6-ft. 6-in., 220-lb. Minnesotan, now working in New York City, and last seen in pinstripe knickers. His victim: a frail denizen of Toronto, covered with feathers. The weapon: a spheroid mass of hide, cork and yarn flung carelessly, at perhaps 70 m.p.h. So the charge sheet might have read last week on New York Yankee Centerfielder Dave Winfield after his arrest in Toronto for fatally beanballing a herring gull...