I left it with you to mind, didn't I, boys and girls?" Then the boy saw more than he should now he learns more than he wanted to. This is a book told in retrospect as the narrator recalls a past which will become increasingly troubling as moments take on more significance and clarity to an adult mind's eye.įor as a young lad he was sent to stay with his maternal grandparents and left to wander around his grandfather's eerie, failing and virtually deserted seaside arcade which was visited by his uncle and one other. It is indeed a maze and a hall of mirrors, prone to distortion but then so is the present to a child. "The path of memory is neither straight nor safe, and we travel down it at our own risk." Punch slaughtered each and every one of them, and we were made to witness it all. In which the philandering, maniacal, child-dropping, wife-beating, cop-killing, mass murderer escaped the noose right under our noses. Well, this was worth re-reading: so many layers, so many secrets and so many lies.Īs pertinent as ever, it will make you think long and hard about the tradition of Punch and Judy that presented itself as a childhood morality tale in which justice was never served.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |