Página InicialGruposDiscussãoMaisZeitgeist
Pesquisar O Sítio Web
Este sítio web usa «cookies» para fornecer os seus serviços, para melhorar o desempenho, para analítica e (se não estiver autenticado) para publicidade. Ao usar o LibraryThing está a reconhecer que leu e compreende os nossos Termos de Serviço e Política de Privacidade. A sua utilização deste sítio e serviços está sujeita a essas políticas e termos.

Resultados dos Livros Google

Carregue numa fotografia para ir para os Livros Google.

A carregar...

This Mortal Boy

por Fiona Kidman

MembrosCríticasPopularidadeAvaliação médiaMenções
615426,627 (4.23)4
"Albert Black, known as the 'jukebox killer', was only twenty when he was convicted of murdering another young man in a fight at a milk bar in Auckland on 26 July 1955. His crime fuelled growing moral panic about teenagers, and he was to hang less than five months later, the second-to-last person to be executed in New Zealand. But what really happened? Was this a love crime, was it a sign of juvenile delinquency? Or was this dark episode in our recent history more about our society's reaction to outsiders"--Publisher information.… (mais)
A carregar...

Adira ao LibraryThing para descobrir se irá gostar deste livro.

Ainda não há conversas na Discussão sobre este livro.

» Ver também 4 menções

Mostrando 5 de 5
Qu'il fut coupable ou non, ou perdu quelque part entre ces deux états, cet Albert Black est un personnage plein d'une profonde humanité et un livre puissant. ( )
  Nikoz | Dec 1, 2021 |
Based on a true story of one of the last executions in New Zealand, Fiona Kidman’s historical crime novel about a young man found guilty of murder is a powerful question mark. When is the death penalty justified? How does politics affect ‘blind justice’? Fundamentally, what is justice?
Although the novel takes place in New Zealand in late 1955, its thought-provoking issues are still germane to the United States and to the more than 50 countries where the death penalty exists today, countries where more than 60 percent of the world’s population lives.
What’s remarkable about this book is how Kidman brings forth the issues involved, like specimens under a strong light, showing them in all their complexity, with all their shadows and brilliance, without ever preaching or becoming polemical. You are reading a compelling story, not an essay.
Albert Black is a young man from tension-filled, divided Belfast, who leaves his parents and younger brother to immigrate to New Zealand for a fresh start and a better life. In a bar fight, he stabs Johnny McBride, the bully who’s been tormenting him. From his Auckland jail cell he reminisces about his upbringing on the other side of the world and his life during the two years since he left Northern Ireland. The vivid descriptions of these various communities and his circumstances, as well as his actions, make him a fully rounded person. While Kidman doesn’t romanticize him, he inspires empathy.
He feels he’s an outsider in New Zealand. That feeling turns into grim reality when he’s on trial, and jury members hold his Irishness against him. He’s ‘not one of ours,’ the judge says. Kidman also reveals the mindset of the jurors (‘set’ being the operative word) and the high-level discussions amongst the legal establishment regarding capital punishment.
She skillfully uses the frame of the trial to enable comparison of retold events to witness testimony, and while there’s no doubt that Black attacked McBride, the circumstances make both the situation and the cause of death more ambiguous than they first appear or than the court ever hears.
Albert Black was hanged 5 December 1955, and, as Kidman says in an Afterword, “A tide of disgust against the penalty overtook public perception after the hanging of Albert Black.” When a new government took over in New Zealand in 1957, all death sentences were commuted to life imprisonment, and in 1961, the death penalty was abolished. ( )
  Vicki_Weisfeld | Nov 26, 2019 |
Every year the Ngaio Marsh Awards for New Zealand Crime Fiction include something that makes this reader marvel at the depth and quality of work coming out of that country. Dame Fiona Kidman came to THIS MORTAL BOY as (paraphrasing her own words) an accidental crime writer, but she has form in the central concept, where she has often recreated the past of characters, developing a fictional story based on true events or people. THIS MORTAL BOY is just such an undertaking.

Albert Black was the second last person executed in New Zealand, and I believe I saw somewhere that Kidman came across his story after talking to a witness to the events that lead to his conviction (this occurred in the mid 1950's). Black was Irish, born to a desperately poor family, an immigrant to New Zealand in search of prospects and a better life. Kidman takes readers back to Black's childhood in Ireland, and most tellingly gives us a glimpse into his families anguish at the conviction and the prospect of his execution. The novel concentrates on the story of Albert Black however, so we don't get the same sort of insight into the victim Alan Keith Jacques (aka Johnny McBride). Working backwards and forwards through the past and Black's life in New Zealand, Kidman seamlessly, tellingly, compellingly, draws a picture of a young man on the cusp of life who made the sorts of choices, and therefore mistakes, that many make.

Kidman has pulled off one of those forms of novel where a true story is woven into a fictional account that doesn't play fast and loose with the truth or the ultimate outcome. A fight over a girl, leading to Black's decision to arm himself with a knife, after which an encounter with the same man who beat him the night before, turned into a single knife blow that killed his rival in love and Albert Black was ultimately executed. The build up to this event provides real insight into a febrile society. Post war, social change had arrived in New Zealand, and young people, in particular are very different. The free love, drugs and rock and roll 1960's are on the horizon, whilst 1950's bodgies and widgies subculture was thriving. The tensions around the "generation gap" were starting to be felt and there was an overwhelming belief that the younger generation were out of control. Needless to say it's a heady mix for a young Irishman from a deprived background to land into. The opportunities that present themselves on his arrival in Auckland are almost too much for him to handle, and the smack in the head that is falling in love, sends him spiralling into some really bad decision making.

Somewhere in all of this, the line between fiction and fact becomes blurred in a manner that readers unaware of all the facts of Albert Black's crimes will be hard-pressed to pick. Kidman uses a series of letters from prison, accounts of final visits with friends and switching timelines and places to draw out a story of an immensely vulnerable young man in a time that's not best suited to understanding and forgiveness. In particularly heart-breaking fashion we also see the affects of his crime, trial and punishment on his mother. Back in Ireland, desperate to get to her son, to understand what has gone so horribly wrong, the portrayal of this woman is moving. You're left considering the ease with which young men do stupid things, a sneaking suspicion that murder was too harsh a decision, and the anguish of that mother and her belief in her son; in stark contrast to comments attributed to NZ Attorney General, John Marshall, "... we could do without these deplorable migrants". Readers have no option but to pause and consider if this is really what he said, what were the implications of that attitude on the trial and sentence?

THIS MORTAL BOY is sensitively written, beautifully constructed, considered and well balanced. It carefully delivers a number of points for the reader to contemplate - lack of compassion, lack of understanding of peer pressure, overt political interference in the judicial system, and the finality of capital punishment. It's not, however, a novel that shouts moral conclusions from the rafters. Rather it lays out the story of two young men who make stupid decisions, who lack self-control and wisdom and end up in an awful place. Whether or not they both deserved to die for this is left to the reader to consider, as is the role of the state and the judiciary when it comes to careful and cautious consideration of the facts, and the right to compassion and clear moral leadership. Needless to say, THIS MORTAL BOY, is a mighty undertaking and a very worthy Ngaio Marsh Award Winner.

https://www.austcrimefiction.org/review/mortal-boy-dame-fiona-kidman ( )
  austcrimefiction | Nov 5, 2019 |
This Mortal Boy is shortlisted for the 2019 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards but that's not the only reason I'm reading it: Fiona Kidman is one of five Kiwi authors in a session called Inside Peek at the Auckland Writers Festival in May, and I will be there in the audience, wanting to ask her: whatever was the trigger for her to write about capital punishment in this compelling way?

There are books which I don't want to end because I'm enjoying them so much, and then there are books like this one, where the ending is known and I don't want to read it. It would make no difference to me whether Albert Black were guilty or not, I find the idea of hanging a young man of twenty absolutely repellent. As you know if you read my review of Seven Hanged (1908) by Leonid Andreyev (translated by Anthony Briggs) I think all capital punishment in any circumstances is repellent.

Fiona Kidman (whose Acknowledgements show that the book is meticulously researched) brings the story alive. The novel traces Albert's impoverished early life in Belfast, his optimistic migration to New Zealand, and his absorption into the 1950s youth subculture of Auckland's teenagers in the era of Bodgies and Widgies. Left in charge as caretaker of a house with an absentee landlord, he has unsupervised freedom when he is too young to handle the situations that arise. His biggest problem is a young thug known as James McBride, an alias he has adopted from the character in the Mickey Spillane pulp fiction novel The Long Wait.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2019/03/28/this-mortal-boy-by-fiona-kidman/
( )
1 vote anzlitlovers | Mar 28, 2019 |
I loved this book. I felt an immediate connection to the period as the event took place the year I was born and in the city of my birth. My father also worked in the central city so he must have been aware of these events. Sadly he passed away in 1975 so I am unable to question him about it.
I found this book very relevant to events that have happened in Christchurch recently. In 1950's New Zealand the Irish were looked on as inferior citizens. I was stunned as I too have Irish ancestry.
The author depicts post war New Zealand society accurately, through well drawn characters and credible dialogue.
Despite knowing the outcome of the story, I was moved to tears by the unjust sentence handed down. This sentence gave me pause for thought: 'The law, as it stands at this moment, seems cruel and unjust, a carapace for power and revenge, designed by men who have been to war and can't let the past go, must hunt down enemies for the rest of their lives.' This was the thinking of Albert Black's defence lawyer.
I think this author has brought to the attention of readers the awfulness of capital punishment and the impact of it on family, friends and community. This is a well researched piece of writing. ( )
3 vote HelenBaker | Mar 24, 2019 |
Mostrando 5 de 5
sem críticas | adicionar uma crítica
Tem de autenticar-se para poder editar dados do Conhecimento Comum.
Para mais ajuda veja a página de ajuda do Conhecimento Comum.
Título canónico
Informação do Conhecimento Comum em inglês. Edite para a localizar na sua língua.
Título original
Títulos alternativos
Data da publicação original
Pessoas/Personagens
Informação do Conhecimento Comum em francês. Edite para a localizar na sua língua.
Locais importantes
Informação do Conhecimento Comum em inglês. Edite para a localizar na sua língua.
Acontecimentos importantes
Filmes relacionados
Epígrafe
Dedicatória
Primeiras palavras
Citações
Últimas palavras
Nota de desambiguação
Editores da Editora
Autores de citações elogiosas (normalmente na contracapa do livro)
Língua original
DDC/MDS canónico
LCC Canónico

Referências a esta obra em recursos externos.

Wikipédia em inglês

Nenhum(a)

"Albert Black, known as the 'jukebox killer', was only twenty when he was convicted of murdering another young man in a fight at a milk bar in Auckland on 26 July 1955. His crime fuelled growing moral panic about teenagers, and he was to hang less than five months later, the second-to-last person to be executed in New Zealand. But what really happened? Was this a love crime, was it a sign of juvenile delinquency? Or was this dark episode in our recent history more about our society's reaction to outsiders"--Publisher information.

Não foram encontradas descrições de bibliotecas.

Descrição do livro
Resumo Haiku

Current Discussions

Nenhum(a)

Capas populares

Ligações Rápidas

Avaliação

Média: (4.23)
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
3.5 2
4 6
4.5 2
5 3

É você?

Torne-se num Autor LibraryThing.

 

Acerca | Contacto | LibraryThing.com | Privacidade/Termos | Ajuda/Perguntas Frequentes | Blogue | Loja | APIs | TinyCat | Bibliotecas Legadas | Primeiros Críticos | Conhecimento Comum | 203,198,451 livros! | Barra de topo: Sempre visível