Word: goat
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...best mystery of the year to date is in fact a splendid mainstream novel exploring a theme that links almost all good mysteries with the larger literary tradition: the burden of the past. Robert Barnard, a specialist in snide japery (Death of an Old Goat), turns deceptively gentle and affectionate in The Skeleton in the Grass (Scribner's; 199 pages; $15.95), which focuses on the subtleties of the relationship between the teenage daughter of a poor British clergyman and the aristocratic family she is sent to join, as something between servant and family member, during the fateful summer...
...still a standoff. The world is out to get Ronald Reagan's goat even in his last months as President. And Reagan is determined not to allow...
...while inverting some earlier writing about Picasso -- hagiography of the goat god, by members of his claque -- Huffington produces something just as hokey. She comes on like a cross between Marabel Morgan and Mme. Defarge. She is out to avenge all of the women in his life -- "goddesses and doormats," in Picasso's nasty phrase -- except his late widow Jacqueline Roque, whom she denounces. Her biography becomes an interminable pecking session, to the point where she even finds fault with Picasso for becoming rich. "It took a lot of money to keep Picasso in bohemia," sneers the author...
...feels he could find his way around it in the dark. The chapter on the school is as effective in miniature as any number of public school classics. Todd's closest friend is an acne-ridden chap named Hamish who happens to be a mathematical wizard. Hamish is the goat of some brutish schoolboy pranks, but he is too intoxicated by his own theories to care very much. His presence gives rise to some authorial speculations on the wonder of numbers, their patterns and how they often reveal themselves to true adepts in pictures...
Outside is one of the post's main tourist attractions: Clay Henry, a beer- drinking goat whose pen abuts the shaded porch. A boozer of 14 years' standing, Clay Henry picks up an opened can or bottle in his mouth and downs the contents in seconds. "He has drunk as much as 24 cans in a single day," says Linda Garcia, a clerk at the post. CLAY HENRY FOR MAYOR, reads a sign on the fridge that holds the beer...