Juggling the Stars

Morris Duckworth, an unhappy and poverty-stricken English teacher in Verona, descends deeper and deeper into crime and violence as he moves from petty theft to a plot to kidnap a wealthy heiress who has fallen in love with him.

The virtuosic Parks, whose highly praised novels ( Family Planning et al.) use restrained irony with chilling effect, and whose recent nonfiction work, Italian Neighbors , wittily evokes that country from an outsider's perspective, has combined both skills and added a dimension of macabre imagination in this corker of a psychological thriller. Parks creates a memorable protagonist: a smug, morally empty Englishman living in Italy who lies, steals and murders without compunction, convinced that he is intellectually superior to his victims. Smarmy Morris Duckworth blames everyone but himself for the misfortunes that destroyed his once promising future: sent down from Cambridge, he was forced to bear the jibes ("pansy/weakling") of his brutish, vulgar father, and then he managed to sabotage every job opportunity through vainglorious boasting. Now he is living penuriously in Verona, tutoring spoiled Italian students for their university exams. His devious scheme to marry wealthy teenager Massimina Trevisan segues into a seriocomic, picaresque caper during which Morris casually dispatches people who thwart his desires. The reader turns pages in horrified fascination, waiting for the wheels of justice to turn, but Park's's final surprise is the quintessential irony. In the hands of a less talented author, a self-pitying whiner-turned-criminal might be a bore, but so deft is Parks's dissection of Morris's pathology that this taut narrative gains in suspense and surprise and sweeps to a shocking conclusion.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Morris Duckworth, a disgruntled English teacher in Verona, is a man blessed with taste and intelligence, if not wealth or a well-developed conscience. When a wealthy young student named Massimina falls for him, he quickly opts for marriage. After the girl's family rejects him and she runs away, he turns the supposed elopement into a bizarre kidnapping, using her without her knowledge to extort money from her family. As he attempts to keep his plan from unraveling, Morris's deceptions grow increasingly elaborate, culminating in a series of brutal, shocking crimes. Well-drawn characters, a clever plot, and Parks's usual combination of humor and mayhem make this a thriller with both style and substance. Recommended for most collections. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 10/1/92.
- Lawrence Rungren, Bedford Free P.L., Mass.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.