Another Elvis Love Child

Format:	Paperback 256 pages

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Synopsis

Janette Jenkins writes like a contemporary, edgy Beryl Bainbridge (from the Bottle Factory Outing days)- with the same sly observation, the same black humour, an eye for the telling detail and a great ear for dialogue. Jack is the 11 year old son of an Elvis impersonator who works the clubs at night and fits wigs by day. As his father struggles to break out of the club circuit to bigger things, Jack, a bit of a nerd but more knowing than he seems, starts to come to grips with the bigger things in his own life - like his father's uncanny talent combined with a frightening tendency to violence, other women, his mother's vulnerability, the fact that his school has burned down, his friends are no-hopers and he has nowhere to go. His father is the sun round which the family revolves - big-hearted, unpredictable, too hot for their small lives - and Jack dreams of taking his mother away, though she herself has sadder, smaller plans. Beautifully written, an offbeat tragic-comic novel about families and growing up, which wonderfully evokes Bolton in the seventies, with an undertow of frustrated violence and a backbeat of Elvis, Dean Martin and other all-time greats.

Book details

Published
14/03/2002

Publisher
Chatto & Windus

ISBN
9780701173265

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Jacket review

Brassed Off meets Beryl Bainbridge in this funny, poignant, offbeat northern novel about the son of an Elvis impersonator.

UK Kirkus review

Like Jenkins's previous novel, Columbus Day, this is told through the eyes of a child, 11-year-old Jackie Trench. Even at his tender age Jackie has experience of the hard knocks of life. They have mainly been dealt out by his father Joey, a popular nightclub singer and Elvis impersonator who dreams of hitting the big time and leaving his day job as a wig salesman. Set in Bolton in the 1970s, the novel conjures up a seedy world of smoky pubs and nightclubs, domestic violence and dreary poverty, the only light relief being the hit songs of the time. Although his school burns down, his friends leave a lot to be desired, and he's scared of his dad, Jackie still has aspirations to climb a hill and observe the stars at night, and to plot an escape to France with his fragile mother. He's perceptive and realizes that his father's bonhomie is reserved for his adoring audiences, while at home he's a capricious prima donna whose every whim must be pandered to; his wife and son bolster his ego just to keep the peace. However, as Joey is hovering on the verge of a big break, frustration leads to the violence that was always lurking in the wings. Disappointingly, instead of this being a cathartic act for all concerned, it just underlines that some things will never change, and that perhaps people don't really want them to. Jenkins well captures the flavour and language of the '70s, and Alma Cogan, Dean Martin and Elvis Presley songs are used to reflect the mood of the moment. The novel is more tragic than comic, and for gritty realism it can't be bettered. (Kirkus UK)