W. H. Keery

Atmospheric, but..., 16 July 2010

I have to agree with the first review, particularly about the dialogue which seems contrived a little. However, this being the fourth Cottam novel I have read (see my review on The Dark Echo), I must say that the positives easily outweigh any negatives. What the writer does best is create a sense of true horror at the sense of evil and malign menace that seems to emerge from both the waiting room and the ghost of the boy soldier who haunts it; he leads us back to the senseless carnage and ensuing madness of the Great War and its losses. Evil can come out of the folly of past actions, it seems. Not as good as Dark Echo but it's up there with that class of writing.

In search of lost time..., 8 Sep 2009

The summer of 1950's rural Ireland were longer, hotter. The events of this novel simmer gently to the rhythms of an enclosed world now gone. When the opening sentence of chapter one begins with, "On a June evening some years after the middle of the last century...", I certainly experienced a "Casterbridge" moment.
After burying their mother, the middle-aged Connulty twins (who are said to own half of Rathmoye) reveal a lifelong tolerant dislike of one another; their mother's death meaning release for her while it denotes grief for him. But the most poignant plot-line involves the diletenttish Florian Kilderry and his effect on the recently married Ellie Dillahan whose husband is… Read more

Landmark literature, 30 Jun 2009

I disagree with those reviewers who cite Mantel's writing style as a weakness; in fact it's quite the contrary. Her style is modern, certainly not Victorian, nor does it pretend to mimic the speech patterns of the Tudor era (one suspects it would be inaccessible to modern readers); what it is though is terse and yet rhythmic - carrying the reader into a world which we find credible and fascinating. Mantel's portrayal of Cromwell, More and Henry VIII is epic in its scale, in some ways realigning traditional loyalties and assumptions. The figure of Thomas More, for instance, is far from the heroic figure portrayed by Robert Bolt in "A Man For All Seasons". Overall this was a real literary… Read more