Big Bummers From Britain

摘要

If, as cornell professor hal foster argued in a recent New York Times op-ed piece, American culture from Oprah to Nirvana is unwholesomely preoccupied with the abject and the victimized, we've got company across the pond. The season's two most-talked-about novels from the U.K., William Trevor's Felicia's Journey (213 pages. Viking. $21.95) and James Kelman's Booker Prize-winning How Late It Was, How Late (374 pages. Norton. $21), rub our noses in what Foster called "the romance of the wretched." Trevor's lovelorn, dimwitted Irish girl is stalked by a terminally creepy cafeteria manager, has an abortion and ends up a homeless wanderer in the dreary, postindustrial English Midlands. Kelman's small-time Glasgow crook gets beaten up after a drinking binge, goes blind and is last seen heading for ... the dreary, postindustrial English Midlands.