Word: jim
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...plot is driven by Ronny's entry into Jim's life and how that entrance brings about revelations (opening up, as it were) and conciliations--between Nathan and Jim, Lily and Sara, Sara and Luke. Aptly enough for a novel about the neglected, Nathan works at the Lost Property office of the London Underground, the repository of the forgotten. Like the objects that pass through Nathan's hands, the characters stand in limbo--existing but unrecognised...
...many novels open with two people with the same name, as Wide Open does with two Ronnies: the Ronny without the big toes and Nathan's brother. Even fewer rename a main character some way into the text, as happens when Nathan's brother is rechristened Jim by the other Ronny. Clarification is not high on the novel's priorities, either...
...four sight. The cadence of the sentences resound at the level of a missed heartbeat: "He turned and cut into the sandwich. The yolk was cold, and the blade was much sharper than he'd anticipated." The resonances eventually swell to an emotionally intense climax, as Nathan and Jim's secret about their awful father is drawn to the fore...
...Wide Open have garnered high praise since its release in the United Kingdom about six months ago; this Stateside release is an excellent trans-Atlantic introduction to the ferocious originality of Nicola Barker's work. It is a novel into which, like Ronny listening to a story of Jim's we are "slowly, safely, surely, soundly" hooked...
...faraway glance and a solemn face she swayed, at times awkwardly, to the tunes of "Pineola" and "Metal Firecracker." Like a '90s Snow White she stood almost defiantly surrounded by four of her (actually rather tall) dwarfs: electric guitarists John Jackson and Kenny Vaughn, acoustic guitarist and harmony singer Jim Lauderdale, bassist Richard M. Price and drummer Fran Bryne...