{"id":2543,"date":"2012-09-19T06:55:12","date_gmt":"2012-09-19T06:55:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=2543"},"modified":"2012-09-23T11:08:33","modified_gmt":"2012-09-23T11:08:33","slug":"nothing-is-heavy-by-vicki-jarrett","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=2543","title":{"rendered":"Nothing is Heavy by Vicki Jarrett"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Published by Linen Press 28 September 2012<\/strong><\/p>\n

256pp, paperback, \u00a39.99<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reviewed byElsbeth Lindner<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u2018I\u2019ve had a very long night,\u2019 says Beth towards the end of Vicki Jarrett\u2019s tragic-comic debut, and she\u2019s not wrong. Shootings, beatings, car chases, death by misadventure and penguining* are just some of the events during one very busy evening in Junction Street which, with its comically impotent villains, kindly coppers, bouquet-wielding guys in gorilla suits and fatal scraps of roof tile, bears a passing resemblance to Albert Square in one of those heightened, end-of-the-year specials.<\/p>\n

The novel features three central characters who, between them, can tot up a football team’s worth of catastrophe. Beth tops the list \u2013 her mother gave birth to her while in a coma and then died, alongside her father, after a car crash; her grandparents, with whom she then lived, were killed in a house fire; and the love of her life perished in another car crash which Beth survived. Now, unsurprisingly, she\u2019s living a life of numb withdrawal while working in a chip shop. Then there\u2019s pole-dancer Amber, and the chap in the monkey suit, George, each of whom has a litany of troubles.<\/p>\n

Laugh? Well yes, you do sometimes in this occasionally surreal tale of a drug heist which turns out well for quite a lot of people although not Amber\u2019s boss at the strip club, John, \u2018the guy with the sunroof in his head\u2019 owing to an unlucky encounter with a stray chunk of roof slate. Jarrett\u2019s talent for throwaway humour keeps the mawkishness at bay and helps readers swallow the helter skelter pace and not entirely unpredictable conclusions to the three main characters\u2019 predicaments.<\/p>\n

Angels feature frequently \u2013 neon ones with drugs up their tubes; tattooed ones; sarcastic, feminist ones who appear during George\u2019s near-death experience. The celestial beings lend a theme and a title: Alis Grave Nil<\/em> (Nothing is heavy for those who have wings).<\/p>\n

Jarrett\u2019s novel for all its onslaught of events, isn\u2019t heavy either. Its dialogue is fresh \u2013 \u2018You don\u2019t remember me, do you?\u2019 \u2018Small chips and a pickled egg.\u2019 \u2013 and its women characters display a feisty, Thelma-and-Louise-ish survivors\u2019 charm. Despite its overload of life-crushing disasters and shorthand assessment of parenting, this is an oddly exuberant and salty book. And that\u2019s even before the chips.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*Let\u2019s just say it involves men with trousers round their ankles.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Elsbeth Lindner<\/p>\n

Laugh? Well yes, you do sometimes in this occasionally surreal tale of a drug heist which turns out well for quite a lot of people although not Amber\u2019s boss at the strip club, John, \u2018the guy with the sunroof in his head\u2019 owing to an unlucky encounter with a stray chunk of roof slate. Jarrett\u2019s talent for throwaway humour keeps the mawkishness at bay and helps readers swallow the helter skelter pace and not entirely unpredictable conclusions to the three main characters\u2019 predicaments.[…] in Reviews<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-fiction-and-non-fiction","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2543"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2543\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2587,"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2543\/revisions\/2587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}