Hurry - Only 3 left in stock!
|
Contact Grainne Clear at grainne.clear@littleisland.ie
Kevin Stevens the author of several adult novels and one YA novel. His first book for young children, The Powers, was chosen for the Dublin UNESCO Citywide Read and was hugely successful. Kevin also contributes regularly to The Irish Times and Dublin Review of Books.
I loved this book. Its tender, intelligent interrogation of male
adolescent desperation is unflinching, as is its take on other big
subjects: school bullying, what it’s like to be the only son of
Iraqi Muslim migrants living and working in the US, religion,
post-traumatic stress disorder, the contested limits of parental
control (made all the more fractious by refugee fear – “what will
the neighbours say?” amplified by a thousand), traditional Iraqi
music, traditional Iraqi food (oh my, does it sound delicious),
jazz and sex, with the sex – praise the Lord – so delicately
portrayed that the young people retain their dignity. The story
belts along with a smashing hostage-taking ending, with Tariq
wondering why, like so many American scenes, it felt scripted. The
author is an American who was educated here and now lives partly
here and partly in Boston. This is his seventh novel. Hats off to
the publisher, Little Island, for a handsomely produced tale about
the difficulties and dangers of modern life. More, please.
*The Irish Times*
Whether the Muslim community can ever be fully accepted into
American society is a question tacitly posed by Kevin Stevens in
his engaging new novel A Lonely Note … With its focus on a young
Muslim simultaneously alienated from and mesmerised by American
life, Stevens’s novel has similarities with Terrorist, John
Updike’s penultimate novel published in 2006. The comparison is
facilitated by Stevens’s sharing with Updike a preoccupation with
how the senses are continually quickened by the richness of the
world: whether it’s the colour wheel of the seasons, the sound of
jazz or a whip-poor-will, or even the guilty pleasure of a candy
bar consumed during religious fasting.
*Dublin Review of Books*
The descriptions of teenage uncertainty, the violent swings between
passion and indifference, really stand out because of how spot-on
Stevens gets them … What Stevens excels in are the descriptions of
Tariq’s adolescent disquietude. And how universal a feeling is
that? Not only is this a teenage circumstance but one that anyone
who has gone through a crisis in any stage of life is sure to
recognise, relate to and appreciate reading about when it’s written
this well.
*Irish Independent*
Ask a Question About this Product More... |