V for Victor
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- 12,99 zł
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- 12,99 zł
Publisher Description
Alabama, 1942. The war is everywhere, but Victor -- a 16-year-old boy sent by his father to care for his dying grandmother on a lonely island in Mobile Bay -- can only dream of it. Then he wakes one amazing night to a thunderous roar from the Bay... and sees the ominous shadow of an enemy submarine surfacing at night. "Fantastic, extravagant... thoroughly charming." --Boston Globe
Mark Childress was born in Monroeville, Alabama and grew up in the Midwest and the South. After working as a reporter and editor for The Birmingham News, Southern Living magazine, and The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, Childress published the first of his seven novels: A World Made of Fire, V For Victor, Tender, Crazy in Alabama, Gone for Good, One Mississippi, and Georgia Bottoms. He also wrote the award-winning screenplay for the Columbia Pictures production of 'Crazy in Alabama,' and has written three books for children. His articles and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Times of London, San Francisco Chronicle, Saturday Review, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer, Travel and Leisure, and other national and international publications. He lives in Key West, Florida.
"If you've forgotten the thrills and chills of child's play, the incendiary imagination of adolescence, Mark Childress's second novel -- a speeding bullet of a book -- will ignite your memory. In this adventure story the hero, Victor, is sublimely lost, a celebrated ragamuffin like Huck Finn or one of Peter Pan's lost tribe."
-- Marianne Gingher, New York Times Book Review
"A crackling good adventure is tough to pull off, but Mark Childress has done just this and he's done it brilliantly. From his lyrical opening passages, which evoke the softness of adolescent innocence, right up through his explosive finale, he never lets us come up for air. And we never want to. Think of the Hardy Boys if you will, but also think of Harper Lee, and early Capote. This is a yarn spun with poetry. This is storytelling at its best."
-- Peter Buckley, Vogue
"The whole 'great watery plain of Mobile Bay' is a world the author and his gangly hero know with a strong and lovely intimacy."
-- Philadelphia Inquirer
"Childress makes us believe this tale of double-crosses, murders, spying and general mayhem. He does this through a magical evocation of place, a lyric touch and a keen ear for speech, both interior and exterior.... A compelling variation on the happy myth of war as a passage to manhood."
-- San Francisco Chronicle
"With a marvelous ear for language and devilishly rich imagination, Mark Childress has crafted an engaging and readable novel."
-- Jay Parini, The Boston Globe
"Mr. Childress knows the business of words. His descriptions evoke a sense of time and place that ring true... A rare talent."
-- Atlanta Journal & Constitution
"A boy's fantasy of adventure, heroism, and romance... the cinematic plot is perfect for a thriller movie."
-- Publisher's Weekly
"Childress's novel zings with charm and thrills."
-- Booklist
"Childress deftly evokes the marshy landscape, the thrill of radio listening, the magic of a summer cotillion, etching it against a backdrop of purpose and urgency."
-- Joseph Olshan, Chicago Tribune
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Taking its title from the ``V for Victory'' salute of WW II, Childress's second novel has a nostalgia-inducing wealth of period detail. It is not so successful as a coming-of-age narrative, however, since Childress seems not to have been able to restrain himself from indulging in a boy's fantasy of adventure, heroism and romance. The 16-year-old son of a brutal shrimp fisherman, Victor is itching to run off to join his older brother in the navy. Instead, he is consigned to watch over his elderly grandmother who lives alone on an island in Mobile (Ala.) Bay. One night he stumbles on a dead body, the first in a series of events that involves him with a Nazi submarine, a hard-nosed teenaged bootlegger named Butch, a specious coast marshall, a wealthy old man, his narcissistic actress wife and her seductive grandaughter. Childress's A World Made of Fire was melodramatic but mesmerizing. Here his tendency to melodrama is not redeemed by the nature of the material, freighted as it is with mysterious coincidences and predictable plot manipulations. In their attempts to outwit the Nazi collaborationists and the crew of the U-boat, Victor and Butch share some desperately dangerous experiences and metamorphose, in the end, to Tom and Huck, taking a boat down the river. While it doesn't convince as a novel, the cinematic plot is perfect for a thriller movie.