A Kestrel for a Knave, by Barry Hines
A Kestrel for a Knave, by Barry Hines
And above them all, the noise--combinations of object and voice, depending on chance, and on the emotions of each child involved in each activity at a given time. Sometimes heightening, sometimes faltering, but the incidents causing these fluctuations in volume and pitch impossible to locate within the given activity. The noise: spreading down from the yard across the estate, but leaving the bulk of its volume behind, so that people all over the estate, on the streets and in their gardens, on hearing it looked up towards its source, as though expecting it to be visible above the rooftops like a cloud or the rising sun.
Over the course of a day or two, we see the bleakness of young Billy Casper, in a nothing town somewhere in the north of England. Everybody in his life is an asshole or downright abusive: from his mother who tries to beat him for going to school instead of being late in order to buy her some cigarettes, to his bullying brother, the guy who pays him for his paper route, the teacher, the pastor, the coach, the other students...the kid has no friends and no hope, and because the book is only 160 pages, we don't get enough depth beyond passing from one nasty incident to another, the cumulative effect of which is a line of people smacking him and calling him no good, and of course steering him thereby to noplace good.
Casper's one real interest and the closest to a friend is the kestrel hawk he keeps as a pet and trains in falconry...and we don't see much of that either; just him feeding it one morning, having a flashback as to the day he found it and had to shoplift the book on falconry he wanted because the local librarian wouldn't let him be a member; and then a lot of daydreaming. Flights of fancy.
Maybe the point is to get people to care more about children It just made me depressed.
And above them all, the noise--combinations of object and voice, depending on chance, and on the emotions of each child involved in each activity at a given time. Sometimes heightening, sometimes faltering, but the incidents causing these fluctuations in volume and pitch impossible to locate within the given activity. The noise: spreading down from the yard across the estate, but leaving the bulk of its volume behind, so that people all over the estate, on the streets and in their gardens, on hearing it looked up towards its source, as though expecting it to be visible above the rooftops like a cloud or the rising sun.
Over the course of a day or two, we see the bleakness of young Billy Casper, in a nothing town somewhere in the north of England. Everybody in his life is an asshole or downright abusive: from his mother who tries to beat him for going to school instead of being late in order to buy her some cigarettes, to his bullying brother, the guy who pays him for his paper route, the teacher, the pastor, the coach, the other students...the kid has no friends and no hope, and because the book is only 160 pages, we don't get enough depth beyond passing from one nasty incident to another, the cumulative effect of which is a line of people smacking him and calling him no good, and of course steering him thereby to noplace good.
Casper's one real interest and the closest to a friend is the kestrel hawk he keeps as a pet and trains in falconry...and we don't see much of that either; just him feeding it one morning, having a flashback as to the day he found it and had to shoplift the book on falconry he wanted because the local librarian wouldn't let him be a member; and then a lot of daydreaming. Flights of fancy.
Maybe the point is to get people to care more about children It just made me depressed.