Rohan O'GradyBesprekingen

This was unexpected and outstanding. I’ll have a book hangover for a week.

One warm summer, a little boy and a little girl come to a remote Canadian island for their holidays. Initially things don’t look promising. The orphaned Barnaby Gaunt, who has spent his life shuttling from boarding school to boarding school, is a foul-mouthed little heathen; while Christie McNab, who lives with her single mother in the city, is sullen, prim and spoiled. The children hate each other on first sight, of course. But, as time passes, the peace of the island and the gentleness of the inhabitants soften their spirits. There are all sorts of wonderful adventures for two children to enjoy in this paradise. In fact, there’s only one tiny, teeny dark cloud on the horizon. Barnaby’s uncle is due on the island any day now. And Barnaby knows perfectly well that his uncle is planning to kill him.

For the rest of the review, please see my blog:
https://theidlewoman.net/2016/11/26/lets-kill-uncle-rohan-ogrady/½

Two unruly kids are brought together on a small Canadian island. Through the guidance of a couple of wise adults, their competitive shenanigans slowly give way to cooperation and friendship.

Sounds idyllic and even a bit sappy, right? Well, no. A creepy uncle brings in an evil undertone; the kids grow up quite a bit, and assorted adult characters provide comic relief. It's an unusual and enjoyable book.½

Barnaby Gaunt tiene diez años y acaba de quedarse huérfano. Solo y desamparado en la vida, ha de vivir con su tío, por lo que viaja a una preciosa isla remota de la costa de Canada, llena de amables ancianitos y donde hay hasta un policía montado. A primera vista, todo indica que le espera un verano perfecto. Salvo por un pequeño problema: su tío está tratando de matarlo. Heredero de una fortuna de diez millones de dolares, Barnaby se cansa de decirle a todo el mundo que su tío, un hombre misterioso y aterrador, anda detrás de su herencia, pero nadie le cree. Nadie salvo Christie, una niña rara y de poco comer, que llega a la conclusión de que Barnaby solo puede detener a su demoníaco tío de una manera: matándolo primero a él. Y así, con la ayuda de Una Oreja, un puma salvaje a quien los isleños atormentan desde hace años, Christie y Barnaby traman un plan infalible.

Barnaby Gaunt tiene diez años y acaba de quedarse huérfano. Solo y desamparado en la vida, ha de vivir con su tío, por lo que viaja a una preciosa isla remota de la costa de Canadá, llena de amables ancianitos y donde hay hasta un policía montado. A primera vista, todo indica que le espera un verano perfecto. Salvo por un pequeño problema: su tío está tratando de matarlo. Heredero de una fortuna de diez millones de dólares, Barnaby se cansa de decirle a todo el mundo que su tío, un hombre misterioso y aterrador, anda detrás de su herencia, pero nadie le cree. Nadie salvo Christie, una niña rara y de poco comer, que llega a la conclusión de que Barnaby solo puede detener a su demoniaco tío de una manera: matándolo primero a él. Y así, con la ayuda de Una Oreja, un puma salvaje a quien los isleños atormentan desde hace años, Christie y Barnaby traman un plan infalible

"The children loved the little church; it was such a pleasant, peaceful spot in which to plan a murder."

In this delightfully dark little tale two 10 year olds, Barnaby and Christie, are spending their summer on a remote Canadian island. Unfortunately for them, none of the adults charged with their care are willing to believe that Barnaby's charming uncle wants him dead. They decide to take matters into their own hands when it becomes apparent they cannot depend of the adults, or the law, to keep them safe. It's good ole fashioned kill or be killed from then on.
What fun I had rooting for these two young children to murder one wicked wicked uncle! This is the kind a book that an adult like myself may enjoy, but a child would likely love. It had a truly Evil (yes, with a capital "e") villain and just the right amount of danger. Thank you Bloomsbury for bringing this book back into print! I hope a new generation of readers will have the pleasure of following the devious exploits of Barnaby Gaunt and Christie McNab.

I received a copy of this book via the Goodreads giveaway program.

Another very enjoyable read. I imagine that Lemony Snicket read this before deciding to embark on the Series of Unfortunate Events. I understand that there is a film version of this book- I believe I will have to find it. Recommended.½

On the surface, a macabre little tale - underneath there is much depth:

http://kaggsysbookishramblings.wordpress.com/2012/08/22/recent-reads-lets-kill-u...

What a fun and twisted read! I loved that there were no innocents on the island in this scheme (except poor Desmond, of course), but justice was still served appropriately. This will not make a lot of sense to those that haven't read it; so you must read it, especially if you have a dark sense of humor and understand that morals and children do not go hand in hand.

This is the story of 10-year-old Barnaby Gaunt, who stands to inherit $10M on his 21st birthday. His only living relative, "Uncle" plans to kill Barnaby for the money. Unable to convince anyone except 10-year-old Christie of Uncle intentions, the children decide they have no choice but to kill Uncle before he kills Barnaby.

What makes this story interesting is that it is set on a small Canadian island with a strong cast of supporting characters: the RCMP officer, Albert, who is the only one of his generation to have survived World War II; Mr. and Mrs. Brooks who see in Barnaby the reincarnation of their lost son; Desmond, a mentally challenged man who the children befriend, a one-eared cougar and various others.

The story moves along well, but I was never sure whether it was intended to be darkly humourous or just dark. Several frightening scenes are set up, yet I never felt terror or a strong sense of empathy for the children.

Well, for once (or twice or something), I completely agree with the blurbs on the back of the book. Let's Kill Uncle is indubitably "dark, whimsical, [and] startling," as well as--and this is admittedly an odd one in my book--"playfully sinister." The latter is probably the best description possible, not just of the children's plans, but of the book's tone as a whole.

The plot is comparatively straightforward: young Barnaby Gaunt is the heir to an immense fortune and, in order to thwart his evil uncle's murderous schemes, has decided to kill him. He teams up with the only other child on the lonely Canadian island they're summering at, a deep and clever girl named Christie, and as they plot the wicked uncle's demise, they have various, often semi-criminal run-ins with the locals--most notably the Mountie, Sergeant Coulter, who was the only survivor of the island's war-going young men, and the somewhat anthropomorphic outlaw cougar, One-ear. Whether or not they succeed in their plans, I shall leave to the reader, though suffice it to say, O'Grady is not one of the mean authors.

The tone is, as stated above, playfully sinister, which can feel uneven at times, due more to lapses in plausibility than any failure to keep things both laugh-out-loud humorous and rather chilling. The uncle is admittedly a very twisted character, but the children's schemes are not particularly vicious, and One-ear is probably the most personable man-killing wild beast you could hope to meet. And so, I do highly recommend the novel to those who enjoy a moderately dark comedy, a la Evelyn Waugh's The Loved Ones or perhaps R.L. Stevenson's The Wrong Box (which is a bit more playful and less sinister than this one, but part of the humor lies in carting a corpse around, so it fits).

From the back cover:
“When recently orphaned Barnaby Gaunt is sent to stay with his uncle on a beautiful remote island off the coast of Canada, he is all set to have the perfect summer holiday. Except there is one small problem: His uncle is trying to kill him.
Heir to a ten-million dollar fortune, Barnaby tries to tell everyone and anyone that his uncle is after his inheritance, but no one will believe him. That is, until he tells the only other child on the island, Christie, who concludes there is only one way to stop his demonic uncle: He will just have to kill him first. With the unexpected help of One-ear, the aged cougar who has tormented the island for years, Christie and Barnaby hatch a foolproof plan.”

The Edward Gorey illustration on the title page set the perfect tone for this book: darkly funny, macabre and mischievous, the comedy too lightly handled to be called truly “black”—maybe charcoal grey?
Barnaby’s “perfect summer holiday” begins with him wreaking havoc in the Island’s little community: letting sheep out of pens, breaking greenhouse windows, and painting the Island’s prize bull with blue polka dots—goaded on by Christie, the Island’s other summer boarder, and only other child.
”Sergeant Coulter thought he had never seen such an unprepossessing child. …her lank straw-colored hair hanging lifelessly about her pinched white face.” Barnaby’s first impression on the stalwart Mountie isn’t much better: “…there was something very much the matter with that boy…He was more than frightened. He looked almost insane, and that expression on his face when he asked about the uncle…”
Eventually Barnaby’s uncle arrives, and the reader begins to understand what, exactly, is wrong with Barnaby, and who is responsible. It also becomes clear why no adult ever believes Barnaby about his uncle’s motives—and why Christie’s practical, matter-of-fact, cold-blooded solution is, horribly, hilariously, the only one: “’Well, we’ll just have to murder him first.’” (What she says immediately following: “…let’s go home now. I’m thirsty.’” just adds to tone of brisk, no-nonsense willingness Christie takes to the whole issue.) And then the reader watches as both Uncle and the children lay their plans, the Uncle gaining the upper hand as he isolates the children more and more.
Isolation runs throughout the book: the Island, though not far from the others in its little group, has no electricity, and no young people: ”’In two world wars, thirty-three men have left it to fight for their country. Only one has ever come back.’” That one is the brave and true Sergeant Coulter, alone with his secret shame at having survived, and his secret unrequited love. Then there’s Christie’s hostess, the goat lady: widowed, and her only son, Per, away for salmon season. Per is also missed by Agnes Duncan, his erstwhile sweetheart, kept isolated as a farm-hand by her tyrannical father (owner of the graffitied bull). One-ear, the cougar, is isolated partly by choice (“Wherever he went, persecuted.”), and partly for self-preservation (“He knew…if he harmed them, the full complement of dogs, men and guns would be out again, and he had retired to this lovely little island to spend his declining years in peace.”) And of course the children are isolated: Christie is separated from her mother for the summer, Barnaby left with only Uncle for family; but the world of childhood is isolated anyway, in summer days especially. Christie and Barnaby live in a world of their own, with grown-ups only on the fringes. They spend their time working in the little graveyard, playing with Desmond, “taming” One-ear, and, of course, plotting a murder.
In the end, all these isolated souls converge to bring about a satisfying conclusion, where an unofficial—but undeniable—justice is served.

The experience of reading this book was as interesting as was the book itself. As a reader I found myself continually having to reassess exactly what type of book this was. Time and again I arrived at a conclusion only to find myself rethinking that conclusion come the next chapter.

The book is both an artifact of its time and strangely timeless. It is firmly set in a world where World War II ended recently enough that a person's conduct during that war weighed heavily on his public image. It is world where Native Canadians are still seen as specially vulnerable to the alcohol. Yet it is also a world in which a single mother is struggling to raise her daughter. It is a world in which children are presumed to be innocent of many of the sophisticated dangers they face today and yet still a world in which child abuse exists, is clearly indicated in the text and is considered a possibility by legal authorities.

The book is actually a work of magical realism although it presents itself, particularly in the earliest chapters, as more than usually realistic portrait of two difficult to deal with city children who have arrived to spend the summer on an island of the west coast of Canada. The final mystery of the book is not how and why uncle "needs to" die but where the line between reality and magic can be drawn.

Well worth the read and a inspiration for me to find more works by the same author.

This book began as a deceptively quirky story, and slowly evolved into something much darker and more menacing. What could be a simple thriller is so much more than that in the writer's hands.

Let's Kill Uncle is a darkly funny, quirky story and I loved it. I wish I'd started reading it early in the day as I did not want to put it down until I'd finished reading it.

This is the second novel of the "Bloomsbury Group" that I've gotten via LibraryThing's EarlyReviewer's program, Bloomsbury's project to republish forgotten novels of the early 20th century that have nothing at all to do with the Bloomsbury Group. A Canadian novel from 1963, Let's kill Uncle concerns a small coastal island where orphan Barnaby Gaunt is sent to live after being orphaned. Only he's a bit of discipline problem, and he keeps on acting out. There are only two people on the island who have any influence over him: Sergeant Coulter of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Christie, a girl about his own age. Barnaby and Christie are the only two kids on the island.

Much of the book concerns the back-and-forth between Sergeant Coulter and the kids, with the kids wanting to do their own kid-like things (which are occasionally quite mean) and Sergeant Coulter wanting to keep them under control but also help them grow. But Sergeant Coulter's got enough problems; he's the youngest person aside from the kids on the island, as he was the only islander to come back from World Wars I and II. So he's got some guilt going on. The interplay between Coulter and the children is really what makes this book come to life: Barnaby has a strange respect for Coulter, and Coulter finds himself becoming a father despite himself.

As the title indicates, the two kids eventually set out to kill Barnaby's uncle, a sick bastard who wants the money that Barnaby is heir to. This occupies surprisingly less of the book than I'd expected, though I should have realized that two little kids aren't exactly going to be skilled murders. The book is a weird mixture of idyllic summers, damaged characters, and dark sadism. It's sort of Roald Dahl by way of L. M. Montgomery by way of I-don't-know-what. Nothing astounding, but different from anything else I've read, and enjoyable if you like stories about adventurous kids or duty-bound officers-- and I like both.

Barnaby and Christie are both sent to the small island off the coast of Canada to spend the summer. Christie has been sent by her hardworking mother to stay with "The Goat-Lady" of the island, while orphaned heir Barnaby has been sent by his uncle.
The two can't stand one another, but being the only children, they are forced to rely on each other for company. When Uncle arrives for a weekend it upsets Barnaby so much that he tells Christie why he is afraid of being around Uncle, and the two decide that the only way to save Barnaby's life is to kill Uncle first. Getting in the way at every turn is the Sergeant, a mountie of the highest morals.

This is a story about children having to fend for themselves, about how often adults don't know best and that telling truth sometimes gets you nowhere. Though the main characters are children, this isn't a children's book.

I am reading this book to my daughter. I haven't finished it yet but my impressions so far are positive--- but I'm not sure I would classify this as YA fiction. It is a very difficult read and has some fairly mature themes and very subtle foreshadowing and plot twists that I feel are lost on my daughter without my explaining them. I love the setting and the characters. It is a very intelligent book and well written. I'm looking forward to completing it.½

I was not sure at first how to approach this book. Was it written to be tongue-in-cheek or rather a straight narrative? I found it to be a bit of both. I enjoyed the engaging characters of Sergeant Coulter and the two children, Barnaby and Christie. The parts of the book that concern them solely are told as a straight narrative. The wicked uncle is written more over the top and as a tongue-in-cheek character. The two parts of the book blended well for me. The only real reservation I had about the book was the personification of One-Ear. I did not find that part of the book, almost a magical realism, fit well with the rest. Other than this quibble, I found the book an enjoyable read.

This is a quirky little book that I quite enjoyed. It's one part light summer read and one part dark comedy. In some ways, it reminded me of the Hitchcock film, the Trouble With Harry - a small community full of characters, life, death and the adventures of children. So glad they reprinted this!

This oddly pleasing story of two kids on a Gulf Island in the late fifties is fresh and quirky and a little bit Goth. The characters are lovingly drawn but not sentimentally so.
A whimsical, witty mystery set off the coast of Vancouver Island about two young children who set out to murder the boy's evil uncle. Written in 1963, local author O'Grady's prose is as fresh and entertaining today as the day it was first published. It reads like a Hardy Boys book for adults—a playfully sinister page-turner.

I've been meaning to read more Canadian fiction, and this was a great introduction. The story of a young boy whose uncle means to kill him, and so who decides to kill his uncle first, is a dark evocation of post-WWII life. The descriptions of the islanders, who lost all but one son -- and resent the one who came back because he ruined their perfect score -- are sad and funny and poignant by turns. It's a delightful twist on the tropes about orphan children too. And yet, it felt like there were so many plot threads introduced and so few actually resolved in a satisfying way. I wound up feeling a bit put out by promises unfulfilled.½

Oh, my goodness! I learned about this from e-bourne's review. It was published in 1963, and is set in the San Juan Islands. The author grew up on Vancouver Island, and clearly loves the area. Two small children from different backgrounds find themselves on the same small island, and (for very good reasons) plot to kill the boy's uncle. This has been reprinted by the Bloomsbury Group*, a British publisher.

*No, not that one

There are a lot of reviews ahead of mine, and they're all spot on. This book is very well written, captivating, and one of a kind; and although it was published in the 60's, Let's Kill Uncle has a fresh, modern sensibility.

All of the primary characters in this book are nicely developed, even One Eye, the cougar. Animals are rarely sentient characters except in children's books -- yet somehow O'Grady builds a very compelling character in One Eye. She also did a brilliant job capturing the pace and lifestyle of the Gulf Islands off the coast of BC.

To me, this is an ideal summertime read. Engaging, fast-paced, suspenseful, and completely unique. Definitely recommended. I'm very glad to have received a copy through the Early Reviewers program.½