The Wounded

In this haunting debut collection, set mostly in 1950s England, life is a battleground and family offers no protection--only more violence. The title story depicts a downwardly mobile couple attempting to cope with their hard-drinking young son. The boy, Calum, again appears in the two finest stories, adapting to his squalid world without losing his imagination or tenderness: at the age of 10 he already feels "the magic of his life . . . leaking away"; later he achieves his teenage triumph fighting a sadistic neighborhood bully. The last, somewhat sentimental story features an older, more contented Calum, with a son of his own. This tale of mellowing lacks Leask's keen perception of violence; though nuanced, the story has none of the captivating bite and urgency of the early Calum stories. Three other compelling tales intertwine events in a young couple's lives: Hesta's dreamlike reaction to the death of the Swiss lover who had aroused her sexuality; bookish Rod's daring behavior on a tough English building crew; and Rod's reconciliation with the premature death of Hesta's mother, in whom he felt he had found a mother of his own.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A British writer's first collection of stories, set in a newly independent India, contemporary England, and the American South. In the title story, told from a mother's point of view, a teenaged son has been taken over with alcoholic binges; he vomits; he loses all cognizance of himself. As we learn more of the father, we find that he, too, is an alcoholic, a chain-smoker, and not far from death. The piece ends on a note of misogyny and violent helplessness, as if to imply like father, like son. Alcoholism, violence, class and racial prejudice figure throughout these stories, which are often garish and melodramatic, like the tale of a Britisher gone completely to seed in India (``Bombay Morning''). Leask makes it clear that he's brought his woes upon himself. The same self-destructive impulse grows a bit maudlin in ``Smoking Section,'' about a man who can't pay his bill at a sleazy diner. But in ``Daddy's Eyes'' and the fine ``Piggybank,'' Leask offers a more reflective view: in the first, an overworked, unhappily married father, whose own childhood was miserable, manages nonetheless to enter his small son's world with empathy and love; in the second, a young boy views his repulsive family's bankruptcy and abusive ways with the determination to do better. The question in many of these stories may be whether alcohol has led to unpleasant behavior, or whether these are unpleasant people who become even more unpleasant when they drink. Accomplished, but to trade upon some mythic eternal wound among men seems facile. The women here are no better. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.