WAR ZONE - Hardcover

Stuart, Alexander

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0099716607 ISBN 13: 9780099716600

Publisher: Random House UK, 1994

Synopsis

THE WAR ZONE is everywhere for its young narrator Tom - on the streets of London, in the Devon countryside, but above all at the heart of his outwardly safe middle class family, and his relationship with his sister, Jessie. A tightly drawn, savagely seductive portrayal of adolescent anger and social disorder. The Times For writers, incest arguably tops the risk tables, with adolescent narrators a close second. THE WAR ZONE tackles both, with stunning success. This is a pungent shocking book, superbly written (sharp, sensuous, bitter) .... I was horrified but seduced from first to last. The writing is remarkable. Anthony Burgess

About this title

About the Author

Alexander Stuart (aka Alexander Chow-Stuart) is a Los Angeles-based, British-born novelist and screenwriter, whose novels, non-fiction and children's books have been translated into eight languages and published in the US, Britain, Europe and throughout the world. His most controversial novel, The War Zone, about a family torn apart by incest, was turned into a searingly emotional film by Oscar-nominated actor/director Tim Roth. At the time of the book's initial publication, it was stripped of the Whitbread Best Novel Award amid controversy among the panel of three judges. As a screenwriter, Stuart has worked with actors ranging from Angelina Jolie to Jodie Foster, and with directors including Tim Roth, Danny Boyle and Jonathan Glazer. Stuart lives in California with his wife, Charong Chow, their two young children and a growing menagerie of pets. www.alexanderstuart.com

From Publishers Weekly

A photo of children in bomb-torn Beirut hangs in the bedroom of Tom, the adolescent narrator of this taut, gripping novel by a young British writer. The war zone of the title, however, is the seemingly tranquil village in Devon where Tom and his family have moved from London. Bored and restless, Tom at first seems a contemporary Holden Caulfield, possessed of an urge to do mischief to establish his identity. But as he relates the circumstances that transform his lifehis discovery of the incestuous relationship between his father and his older sister Jessiethe novel reveals its sinister, shocking theme. Because he and Jessie have always been close, the situation feels like a double betrayal to Tom, who also realizes that to reveal the bizarre secret to his mother, preoccupied with a new baby, will destroy them all. In electrically tense prose, Stuart succeeds in enveloping the reader in the surcharged atmosphere of sexual perversion. Although Tom's painful emotional limbo is effectively conveyed, however, Stuart's portrayal of Jessie is less successful. The young woman's cool, nervy manipulation of her father and Tom, her determination to engage in every form of sexual experience, is meant to mirror the "corrupt, repressive" society of Thatcher's England, but Jessie loses her credibility as she leads Tom into a maelstrom of depravity and violence. The denouement, containing the rationale for Jessie's behavior, is unconvincing, but until that point the reader is caught up in a riveting tale.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Random House UK
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0099716607
• ISBN 13: 9780099716600
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 232