Shelagh Watkins
Autor von Mr. Planemaker's Flying Machine
Werke von Shelagh Watkins
Getagged
Wissenswertes
- Gebräuchlichste Namensform
- Watkins, Shelagh
- Geschlecht
- female
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This is, approximately, the worst thing I've read. Hard to believe it's published--it's the sort of thing that your brain-damaged cousin, who fancies herself a writer, might have turned out over a weekend and pressed into your hands with a plea to read it. It is, however, a prime candidate for reading-and-ridiculing a la Mystery Science Theatre, if there's a market for that. On its own merits, though, it's a tosser.
DNF. Poorly pitched agewise, plot inconsistencies, overly clever punny names pointed out far too many times in case the reader is not smart enough to have gotten them (we are), stereotypical and flat characters that seem to have come out of an Enid Blyton novel.
Full review @booklikes
Full review @booklikes
If there’s one thing Shelagh Watkins doesn’t lack, it’s imagination!
From a rather mundane, slice-of-life story about a British couple coming to grips with the first few days of life in the antipodes (specifically, in Dunedin, New Zealand), Watkins concludes with the tale of a ten-year-old child—a rag picker by trade—who’s abducted from his home in Mali and sent to Africa (specifically, to perform the even more grueling labor of picking cacao beans on a plantation in the Ivory Coast). Between those two stories lie two others: one of mates whose first “good Samaritan” encounter in childhood comes full circle when they bump into each other again as soldiers in Iraq; the other, a kind of modern-day morality tale that employs the ingenious device of Greek mythology to spin its inventive yarn.
Watkins maintains a good narrative habit throughout, and we are the happy benefactors of that habit.
If you’re looking for stories of imagination and a quite acceptable degree of pathos, look no further. Watkins’s Four Short Stories is the real deal!
… (mehr)
From a rather mundane, slice-of-life story about a British couple coming to grips with the first few days of life in the antipodes (specifically, in Dunedin, New Zealand), Watkins concludes with the tale of a ten-year-old child—a rag picker by trade—who’s abducted from his home in Mali and sent to Africa (specifically, to perform the even more grueling labor of picking cacao beans on a plantation in the Ivory Coast). Between those two stories lie two others: one of mates whose first “good Samaritan” encounter in childhood comes full circle when they bump into each other again as soldiers in Iraq; the other, a kind of modern-day morality tale that employs the ingenious device of Greek mythology to spin its inventive yarn.
Watkins maintains a good narrative habit throughout, and we are the happy benefactors of that habit.
If you’re looking for stories of imagination and a quite acceptable degree of pathos, look no further. Watkins’s Four Short Stories is the real deal!
… (mehr)
Statistikseite
- Werke
- 9
- Mitglieder
- 72
- Beliebtheit
- #243,043
- Bewertung
- 3.5
- Rezensionen
- 6
- ISBNs
- 6
There are a lot of names with puns, one or two of which made me smile, but the story as a whole is inconsistent, repetitive, and over-detailed. It's also very dated, technology-wise, but that's understandable in a book published about fifteen years ago.
Supposedly for children, it touches on a couple of significant issues, but without any real resolution. And the characters are so flat that I didn't much care what happened to them. I really wouldn't recommend it.
Longer review here: https://suesbookreviews.blogspot.com/2024/03/mr-planemakers-flying-machine-by.ht...… (mehr)