Review of That Guy What Kill Topsy
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Olabisi Atinmo
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- Latest Review: That Guy What Kill Topsy by Peter Wood Cotterill
Review of That Guy What Kill Topsy
[Following is a volunteer review of "That Guy What Kill Topsy" by Peter Wood Cotterill.]
That Guy What Kill Topsy by Peter Wood Cotterill is a collection of seventeen stories of different lengths and appeal that include a novella, 'I Love Rhinos' and a poem, 'My Life and Times - Pussy Galore' from a cat. The book derives its title from the lead story.
The collection is not fixated on a particular theme or message but gives readers a range of characters, situations and experiences to ponder on, learn from, enjoy or simply pass over.
Stories depict slices of life; exposing the frailty and strength of human nature under various circumstances that often strip man of his airs and pretenses. The stories look at different aspects of life and society. They examine issues ranging from death, poverty, abandonment, the essential futility of life, to racism, injustice and a prison system that is less than reformatory. Things are however not all dark in some of the stories because there is an infusion of hope, restoration and humor into them. The stories show that life situations sometimes totally corrupt man's innate goodness while they only slightly contaminate it in some cases. Overall, we are all inter-related and inter-dependent.
In That Guy What Kill Topsy, Lester seems unaffected by the death of Topsy Turvy and his role as the drunk driver who gets her killed. His father is also more concerned about his ruined car than about the dead Topsy and the permanent disability caused to the other occupant of the car. Street justice is meted out to Lester by an unforgiving aggrieved party who is dissatisfied with the injustice of the system that keeps Lester locked up for only three and a half years for his crime.
'I Love Rhinos' examines issues of race, poverty, inequalities and crime along personal and institutional lines and the coping strategies evolved by the characters. Both the privileged and the deprived all claim to be victims but are hypocrites wearing masks that present images that suit each aspect of their lives. The masks however do slip to expose their self-serving greed and rot. The title comes with a love emoji that sets up a kind of light-heartedness against the heavy issues the novella tackles. The characters are truly rhinos in the sheer size of their poor vision, misconceptions and narrow mindedness; traits that are likely to wipe them out like dinosaurs that became extinct.
The author uses dialect, street, uneducated and slang versions of English to depict the characters' race, educational, social and mental levels in most of the stories. This aids in locating a character's import in the context of the story and in directing the reader's expectations of such a character.
The author compresses time. Its fluidity is expressed by imperceptible breaks in the narration. Years and months are bridged by jumping to the next event right in the next paragraph. This deconstructs popular concepts about the length of time and the separation of events by time. Time does not pause or stop. This fluidity is also shown between life and death in 'Am I Dead?' where Will cannot answer his own question as he floats between different streams of consciousness.
I score That Guy What Kill Topsy 2 stars out of 4. The use of dialect and other variants did not enable a smooth reading experience for me. I believe a story should be interesting, have some purpose to it and exhibit a completeness in the fragment of life or experience being narrated. I do not find these in many of the stories.
I still recommend Peter Wood Cotterill's That Guy What Kill Topsy to readers because their is always something, no matter how minute, to gain from any reading experience which will contribute to one's storehouse and diversity of knowledge. Teenage readers may however find this book tedious.
******
That Guy What Kill Topsy
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon
That Guy What Kill Topsy by Peter Wood Cotterill is a collection of seventeen stories of different lengths and appeal that include a novella, 'I Love Rhinos' and a poem, 'My Life and Times - Pussy Galore' from a cat. The book derives its title from the lead story.
The collection is not fixated on a particular theme or message but gives readers a range of characters, situations and experiences to ponder on, learn from, enjoy or simply pass over.
Stories depict slices of life; exposing the frailty and strength of human nature under various circumstances that often strip man of his airs and pretenses. The stories look at different aspects of life and society. They examine issues ranging from death, poverty, abandonment, the essential futility of life, to racism, injustice and a prison system that is less than reformatory. Things are however not all dark in some of the stories because there is an infusion of hope, restoration and humor into them. The stories show that life situations sometimes totally corrupt man's innate goodness while they only slightly contaminate it in some cases. Overall, we are all inter-related and inter-dependent.
In That Guy What Kill Topsy, Lester seems unaffected by the death of Topsy Turvy and his role as the drunk driver who gets her killed. His father is also more concerned about his ruined car than about the dead Topsy and the permanent disability caused to the other occupant of the car. Street justice is meted out to Lester by an unforgiving aggrieved party who is dissatisfied with the injustice of the system that keeps Lester locked up for only three and a half years for his crime.
'I Love Rhinos' examines issues of race, poverty, inequalities and crime along personal and institutional lines and the coping strategies evolved by the characters. Both the privileged and the deprived all claim to be victims but are hypocrites wearing masks that present images that suit each aspect of their lives. The masks however do slip to expose their self-serving greed and rot. The title comes with a love emoji that sets up a kind of light-heartedness against the heavy issues the novella tackles. The characters are truly rhinos in the sheer size of their poor vision, misconceptions and narrow mindedness; traits that are likely to wipe them out like dinosaurs that became extinct.
The author uses dialect, street, uneducated and slang versions of English to depict the characters' race, educational, social and mental levels in most of the stories. This aids in locating a character's import in the context of the story and in directing the reader's expectations of such a character.
The author compresses time. Its fluidity is expressed by imperceptible breaks in the narration. Years and months are bridged by jumping to the next event right in the next paragraph. This deconstructs popular concepts about the length of time and the separation of events by time. Time does not pause or stop. This fluidity is also shown between life and death in 'Am I Dead?' where Will cannot answer his own question as he floats between different streams of consciousness.
I score That Guy What Kill Topsy 2 stars out of 4. The use of dialect and other variants did not enable a smooth reading experience for me. I believe a story should be interesting, have some purpose to it and exhibit a completeness in the fragment of life or experience being narrated. I do not find these in many of the stories.
I still recommend Peter Wood Cotterill's That Guy What Kill Topsy to readers because their is always something, no matter how minute, to gain from any reading experience which will contribute to one's storehouse and diversity of knowledge. Teenage readers may however find this book tedious.
******
That Guy What Kill Topsy
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon
Latest Review: That Guy What Kill Topsy by Peter Wood Cotterill
