Synopsis
Profoundly changed after witnessing the death of a wounded World War II soldier, young Jeremiah Bembo becomes what he considers to be a "merciful executioner," who brings compassion and release to the dying.
Reviews
Masterful storytelling and a winning mix of tenderness and morbidity hold the reader in thrall throughout this imaginative tale of retribution, compassion and redemption set largely in 1960s England. As a young man during WWII, in a village near Oxford, Jeremiah Bembo sees his life changed by German pilots flying overhead. An unsuccessful bombing unites him with his wife; the explosive crash of a reconnaissance plane takes out his eye; and the villagers' sadistic torture of a downed pilot supplies him with his eventual calling. To the chagrin of his passionate wife, Judith, and brash cousin Will, her former suitor, Jeremiah will take on a second identity as England's foremost hangman, the renowned and feared Solomon Straw. It's his obsession to bring order?in the form of technical skill and professional detachment?to the chaos of death. But Jeremiah's two worlds inevitably collide, offering him a chance to normalize and redeem his empty emotional life?with one final execution. Binding (In the Kingdom of Air) documents the logistics of hanging in fascinating detail, from mechanics to psychology to style, as he weaves a strangely poignant and suspenseful story. His evocative prose and sure-handed narrative bring this odd, old-fashioned yarn vividly to life.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
British novelist Binding (In The Kingdom Of Air, 1994) continues to plumb the dark recesses of jolly old England, but the narrative links are stretched to the limit in this tale of a hangman's knotted existence within interlocking love triangles. Feared executioner Solomon Straw has retired as the story begins, leaving his ropes and his ``stage'' name behind to find peace as a country pub owner with his wife Judith and their infant son. The long tangle of events preceding his return to normalcy and his given name, Jeremiah (Jem) Bembo, however, ranges far from tranquility. Raised with his cousin Will in a family of farmers descended from a famous actor, Jem is ever reserved, while Will yearns for the glitter and patter of the music hall; when the two vie for the affections of young Judith, her choice of the more solid Jem proves a bone of contention for decades. The war changes everything, as a German air raid brings a plane down on the Bembo greenhouses, destroying them and burying a piece of flying glass in newlywed Jem's eye. He watches with crippled vision as his neighbors slowly murder the badly wounded German pilot. Shocked by such brutality, Jem vows to become the most decent and efficient of executioners, even at the cost of his feelings for Judith. But years later, when Dancing Danny steps onto the scaffold for killing a rival in the hopeless pursuit of a local girl, Jem errs in his meticulous procedure, shaken in part by having delivered his firstborn himself only two days before. Then he learns to his horror not only that he has executed an innocent man, but also that the echoes of his earlier rivalry have taken deadly shape in this more recent affair. In its tricky details in the binding up of several hugely different lives, this is a macabre, compelling story, proving powerful in spite of its convolutions and excess. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Few protagonists in all of literature have been given so macabre a line of work as Jeremiah Bembo. As a young lad growing up in the English countryside during World War II, he witnesses his neighbor taunting a mortally wounded German pilot?a horrible vision of death that leads him to his life's calling. Vowing to "take residence in the place where revenge reigned supreme," he becomes a professional hangman known by the allegorical name of Solomon Straw, a benevolent executioner who carries out his gruesome duties with efficiency and compassion. A gifted storyteller, Binding (In the Kingdom of the Air, LJ 1/94) masterfully spins a tale of personal redemption. Recommended for public libraries.?David Sowd, formerly with Stark Cty. Dist. Lib., Canton, Ohio
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
The name Solomon Straw strikes terror in the hearts of British criminals, for Straw is an executioner for Her Majesty's government. He is exceptionally good at his macabre occupation, knowing just how long the rope must be, how tight to make the noose, and how to calm the convicted man's last-minute panic. But Solomon is known by another name in another life: to the villagers in Aylesbury, he is quiet, taciturn Jeremiah Bembo, local farmer and businessman. In this provocative and powerful story, Binding tells of Jeremiah's transformation into Solomon, taking the reader on a journey into Jeremiah's past, where he and his once-beloved cousin Will planned their futures, where he fell in love and married, where he experienced the soul-shattering event that led him to his grim occupation. In a parallel story, Binding tells of Ethel, Danny, and Colin, who are caught in a dark love triangle that will change their lives and Solomon's forever. And finally, there is the story of Jeremiah's redemption, which comes at his final, horrible act of execution. Binding's prose is harsh, hypnotic, and affecting, and his story is at once mesmerizing and repugnant as it slowly, grimly peels back society's thin veneer of civility and compassion, exposing the cruelty, lust, and emptiness that can inhabit men's souls. Shattering, powerful, and superbly crafted. Emily Melton
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