English Passengers

Product Information

This perfectly fine question is posed by captain Illiam Quillian Kewley at the beginning of English Passengers. The year is 1857, and Kewley and his crew of Manx sailors only wished to transport some duty-free liquor from the Isle of Man - strategically located right in the middle of the Irish Sea - to mainland England, where the ruthless British Customs officials were waiting for them to do just that, so they could impose a fine on the more prosperous sailors. The enormous fine forces Kewley to rebrand his vessel (whis is named - wait for it - Sincerity) into a travelling ship, and offer to take anyone pretty much anywhere, as long as it's soon and sufficiently away from British customs officials. This is when the Reverend Geoffrey Wilson enters the scene: he is a vicar devoted to proving the accuracy of Scripture and through close reading grew convinced that the Garden of Eden is located not in Arabia, as it was previously thought, but in a small island called Tasmania, south of Australia. Accompanying him is Timothy Renshaw, a botanist, and Dr. Thomas Potter, a racial theorist who has his own reasons for taking the journey. Captain Kewley has little choice but to take them on board, and Sincerity sets the course to the distant island. In When We Were Romans (2007), Kneale takes further his experiments in literary ventriloquism, narrating the entire novel through the idiom of nine-year-old Lawrence, complete with spelling mistakes. The plot involves an increasingly chaotic road-trip to Italy, where Lawrence, his younger sister and their mother lodge with friends, but soon outstay their welcome. Gradually it becomes obvious that their flight from the children’s father has been fuelled by their mother’s escalating paranoia.

English Passengers by Matthew Kneale | Goodreads

Giles, Jeff (December 21, 2016). "Sing Is Mostly On Key". Rotten Tomatoes . Retrieved June 25, 2018. Talese, Nan A. (28 February 2000). "English Passengers". Publishers Weekly . Retrieved 21 January 2022. UK passenger lists do not record travel within Europe unless a ship called at more than one European port before travelling further afield.But if the Christians are exploited by the gatekeepers of their faith, the situation is significantly darker for England’s Jews. Kneale opens the novel with an incident that takes place in 1264, when two Jewish sisters, Motte and Rosa, narrowly avoid the massacre in London’s Jewry that kills their family. Twenty-five years later, Motte – now Mary – joins the pilgrimage to Rome, her new Christian identity a flimsy protection against the prejudice she is trying to outrun. There’s an undercurrent of casual antisemitism echoed unthinkingly by most of the characters, and the novel ends as it began, with a glimpse of further persecution of England’s Jews that casts a chill after the rumbustious rewards and comeuppances of the pilgrimage. Kneale doesn’t probe too deeply into the psychology of his medieval characters – perhaps to do so would have felt anachronistic – but he captures an ingrained sense of English, Christian superiority over those who are not considered to truly belong that feels all too uneasily familiar. By wrongness I mean that the POVs seemed to me to strike false notes: they didn't seem fictional enough to me. All novels are constructed things. Fiction is the deliberate choice of unreal elements to achieve the effect chosen by the author, but in this case it felt too obviously so for me and I simply found it too didactic, which I suppose is hard to avoid in a novel dealing with the extermination of the Tasmanian Aborigines. (The settlers were familiar with their Herodotus and swept across the island in the same style as the Kings of Persia went hunting for game, its how we made the modern world). Kneale is known for his ability to ‘do voices’ but he is also skilled in using them to uncover emotional realities and advance his plot. Peevay’s archaic and circumlocutory use of English, for example, amplifies the gap between his desire for his mother’s ‘tender cherishings’ and the actuality of her ‘hating’, evoking poignancy. Conversely, Dr Potter’s cryptic notebook jottings ostensibly illustrate his quest to determine racial types, but in fact reveal the growing seriousness of his quarrel with Reverend Wilson. In his best writing, Kneale’s own passion for knowledge fuels the development of his characters, as when Potter explains the working of expanding bullets, demonstrating his practical, even brutal approach: ‘They change shape. They’re made from lead, being soft, but have a steel plug at the base. At first they’re narrow enough to drop easily down the barrel, but when the charge goes off the plug blows them flattish. That way they exactly fit the bore of the gun barrel, and spin nicely.’ Kroll, Justin (August 5, 2015). "Sony Dates 16 Films Including Two More 'Bad Boys' Sequels, 'Jumanji' Remake". Variety . Retrieved September 21, 2015. The Avalon, a sleeper ship transporting 5,000 colonists and 258 crew members in hibernation pods, is traveling from Earth to the planet Homestead II, a 120-year journey as part of a mass exodus of Earth's population due to ecocide and the collapse of the biosphere. [8] After only 30 years, an asteroid collision damages the ship despite its defense systems, causing a malfunction that awakens passenger James "Jim" Preston, a mechanical engineer, 90 years too early.

Pilgrims by Matthew Kneale review – witty, thoughtful

Barraclough, Leo (November 18, 2016). "Pinewood Atlanta Studios Selects Tech Guru Frank Patterson as President". Variety . Retrieved April 4, 2021. Anyone who believes in true love or is simply willing to accept it as the premise of a winding tale will find this debut an emotional, satisfying read.Lazy, simpleminded, almost unremmittingly tedious, although occasionally farcical, sometimes even funny, it's Hollywood action if it was written by a modestly sized Brit in longhand. Most of the casual racism exists in what's missing. Nordyke, Kimberly (January 24, 2017). "Oscars: 'La La Land' Ties Record With 14 Nominations". The Hollywood Reporter . Retrieved January 24, 2017. [ dead link]