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    Juggling the Stars: A Novel
    Unavailable
    Juggling the Stars: A Novel
    Unavailable
    Juggling the Stars: A Novel
    Ebook279 pages13 hours

    Juggling the Stars: A Novel

    By Tim Parks

    3/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    “Better than Silence of the Lambs . . . Macabre fun orchestrated with immaculate precision. It’s a killer” (Los Angeles Times).
     
    Morris Duckworth teaches English to the pampered rich of Verona and is not pleased. Living a meager existence in a squalid apartment, he regards his privileged students with envy and disdain, first wreaking revenge by petty theft and then, like all good criminals, graduating to grander larceny. When one of those students, a beautiful but vapid heiress, falls in love with him, Morris can almost smell upward mobility. However, after the girl’s mother—much to his chagrin—unequivocally forbids her from seeing him, he hits upon the perfect scheme: He convinces the besotted girl to run off with him, then sends ransom notes to her family.
     
    Following a frightening logic, Morris’s subversions become deeper and darker. Soon events are spiraling with eerie momentum into a nightmare of deception and violence. As Publishers Weekly observed about the protagonist, “So deft is Parks’s dissection of Morris’s pathology that this taut narrative gains in suspense and surprise and sweeps to a shocking conclusion.”
     
    “As always, Mr. Parks’s principal strength is in his crisp, unsentimental, grimly comic portrayal of characters on the edge . . . Continued evidence of Mr. Parks’s edgy, restless talent.” —The New York Times
     
    “Parks turns up the heat, with wonderfully scary results . . . His move into the suspense field is a triumph.” —Kirkus Reviews
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateJan 8, 2001
    ISBN9781628720419
    Unavailable
    Juggling the Stars: A Novel
    Author

    Tim Parks

    Tim Parks has lived in Italy since 1981. He is the author of eleven novels, three accounts of life in Italy, two collections of essays and many translations of Italian writers.

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    Reviews for Juggling the Stars

    3/5

    23 ratings3 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Shades of Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley series. Morris Duckworth teaches English to recalcitrant Italians, most of them wealthy. He thinks he’s in love with a seventeen-year-old heiress, Massimina — if that’s possible; or at least she’s infatuated with him. Her parents see through his pretentious lies related to a fictitious job he pretends to have and forbid their daughter from seeing him. Massimina meets him one day and they decide to run off, Morris pretending to send her cards back to her parents so they won’t worry. He has a more subtle plan. He’s tired of being penurious, so he contrives a scheme to pretend to kidnap her. Morris’s previous attempts at petty larceny (stealing a bronze statue from the house of a boy he tutors) and a foray into blackmail (he steals a briefcase and finds a diary that refers to two young women — he assumes the owner is having an affair with the two so he threatens to reveal the information to the man’s wife) both are dismal failures (the bronze statue is a minor copy — he missed the really valuable piece-- and the two women turn out to be the man’s daughters. Morris has the amoral psyche of Ripley, without Tom’s skill — or luck. When Massimina makes friends with an English girl and her Italian boyfriend, Morris kills the boyfriend who has seen Massimina’s picture in the newspaper with a story about the kidnapping. He has to kill the English girl as well when she stumbles on the scene shortly afterwards. Like Tom, Morris seems devoid of sexual interest, the whole idea just simmering in the background. Gradually, events conspire to push him into a corner. There is a sequel that will be on my list.
    • 3/5
      "Vielleicht ging es letzten Endes nur darum, wie man sein Leben verbrachte, ohne sich wie ein Narr vorzukommen. Und wenn sie einen nicht durch ehrliche Arbeit oder Heirat zu Geld kommen ließen, vielleicht war es dann gar nicht so falsch oder auch nur kompliziert es zu stehlen. Vielleicht ging es einfach darum, die Augen offen zu halten und auf Gelegenheiten zu warten. Morris gegen den Rest der Welt – so war es schon in der Schule gewesen. Dabei ging es eigentlich gar nicht um Geld, sondern viel mehr um Stil. Sollte er jahrelang Hauslehrer bleiben und die Minuten seiner Privatstunden zählen? Sollte er sich weiter im Winter in Decken einwickeln, öffentliche Verkehrsmittel benutzen und unter chronischem Neid leiden müssen, während diese Leute aufgrund ihrer zufälligen Geburt in aristokratischer Anmut dahinlebten? Was gab es für Alternativen? Was konnte ihm die Welt raten? Wie sollte man seine Zeit verbringen? Wie sollte man leben? Die gängige Lebensweisheit (Kopf hoch, Arbeit suchen, schuften und sich aufs Wochenende freuen) führte offensichtlich ins Nichts. Wenn sie einem schon keine anständige Arbeit gaben, konnte man ihnen wenigstens einen Denkzettel verpassen."Verona, Norditalien, Ende der 1980-er Jahre. Arthur Morris Duckworth ist Englischlehrer und betrachtet sich selbst als gescheiterte Existenz. Der Job ist schlecht bezahlt, Zukunftsperspektiven gibt es kaum. Ohne einen Abschluss musste Morris damals in England die Uni verlassen (ein lächerlicher Fehltritt: ein einziges Mal in seinem Leben hatte er Drogen genommen und wurde prompt dabei erwischt. Weil er aus einer einfachen Familie stammte musste man ein Exempel an ihm statuieren.) Seitdem fühlt er sich vom Leben benachteiligt. Die Reichen können sich alles erlauben, er selbst leidet fürchterlich daran, dass er nur Bürger zweiter Klasse ist. Kriminell zu werden scheint ihm die logische Konsequenz nach all den Demütigungen, die ihm die Gesellschaft zugefügt hat. Zunächst unternimmt Morris eher aus Langeweile und Abenteuerlust Versuche aus seinem geregelten Dasein auszubrechen. Er entwendet einem Mitreisenden im Zug die teure Aktentasche, stiehlt eine Statue aus der Wohnung eines reichen Zöglings. Diese Taten verschaffen ihm zwar zunächst Genugtuung. Aber er selbst weiß, das ist nur Kinderkram, kleinliche Racheakte, die auf lange Sicht nichts bringen. Etwas Größeres, Grandioseres muss her. Morris hat eine irrwitzige Idee: Die Heirat mit seiner wohlhabenden Schülerin Massimina Trevisan soll ihm die Eintrittskarte zur mondänen Welt der Reichen verschaffen. Als dieses Vorhaben misslingt lässt Morris endgültig alle moralischen Hemmungen fallen: Er entführt Massimina, um ein Lösegeld von der Familie zu erpressen. Die darauffolgenden Komplikationen stellen ihn vor immer größere Probleme. Zumindest findet er hearus, dass Morden im Grunde gar nicht so schwierig ist:"Was ihn am meisten erstaunte, war die Tatsache, dass die Morde so wenig real waren. Wahrscheinlich war die Welt voll von Mörder, Kriegsverbrechern und Kinderschändern, die selbst gar nicht glauben konnten, dass sie so etwas getan haben sollten. Aber jeder war dazu fähig, auch wenn er’s nicht glaubte. Jedes beliebige Küchenmesser konnte zur Mordwaffe werden, und jeder hatte schon tausende Male getötet, wenn auch vielleicht nur im Kopf. Es war nur eine Frage, dass der Wunsch und die Gelegenheit zusammentrafen." Morris Duckworth besitzt offensichtliche Ähnlichkeiten zu Patricia Highsmiths Antihelden Tom Ripley, doch während Highsmith es schaffte ihren Protagonisten trotz dessen Handlungen zum Sympathieträger zu machen, bleibt es schwer Morris ins Herz zu schließen. Arrogant, larmoyant, egozentrisch und manchmal geradezu widerwärtig gebärdet sich dieser Hochstapler. Und dann ist da noch der Stil: Highsmith bedient sich einer sehr klaren, direkten Sprache, die so gar nichts Verschnörkeltes oder um künstlerischen Anspruch Heischendes an sich hat. Der Talentierte Mr. Ripley war ein absoluter Page-Turner, den ich kaum aus der Hand legen konnte. Mr. Duckworths Abenteuer hatten dagegen doch ihre Längen. Vor allem die Passagen, in welchen Morris sich an seinen verhassten Vater erinnert (er schreibt ihm anklagende Briefe, die er nie abschickt und spricht wütende Botschaften auf Band) gestalteten sich mit Dauer etwas ermüdend. Trotzdem gelingt dem Autor ein zynisch-schwarzhumoriger Thriller, dem aber die Kompaktheit und Eleganz des Highsmith-Klassikers fehlt.
    • 3/5
      Morris is an English snob who wants to marry into wealth. He has no conscience & nothing will deter him from his ambitions. Often funny even though there are murders along the way.