William Boyd - On the Yankee Station

Beschrijving boek

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Stories.

With his first novel, ‘A Good Man in Africa’, William Boyd won three literary prizes and made one of the strongest debuts of any novelist in recent memory - both in the United States and in Europe. The book was compared to works by Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh. Through the wimpy but lovable character of Morgan Leafy, a British diplomat, Boyd brilliantly portrayed the comic pathos of wasted lives in post-colonial Africa. Boyd’s second novel, ‘An Ice-Cream War’, followed the lives of four men - two British brothers, an American colonial farmer, and his German neighbor - as their destinies were shaped by World War I. The book was nominated for the Booker prize for fiction, the most prestigious British literary award, and was a national best seller in England.

Now, in ‘On the Yankee Station’, he presents us with his first collection of short stories. Diversity of setting, style, and mood is the keynote. From the anguish of an English schoolboy’s desire [‘Hardly Ever’] to the title story’s portrayal of a napalm-happy pilot in Vietnam and the mechanic who hates him, William Boyd’s prose is assured and flawlessly executed. There is a psychological thriller [‘My Girl in Skintight Jeans’], a touching story of a boy who unwittingly finds evidence of his mother’s adultery [‘Killing Lizards’], and the bizarre landscape of a failed child actor in a seamy suburb of Los Angeles [‘Not Yet, Jayette’].

Boyd is equally at home on the beaches of California and in post-colonial Africa. Two of the stories [‘Next Boat from Douala’ and ‘The Coup’] feature early adventures of Morgan Leafy, the hero of ‘A Good Man in Africa’, and two others have been added for the American edition [‘The Care and Attention of Swimming Pools’ and ‘Excerpts from the Journal of Flying Officer J’].

For the growing audience of Boyd fans, for all lovers of good stories, William Boyd has produced an exceptionally entertaining and masterfully written collection.