I'm almost frightened for him sometimes, and I don't in the least know why. I think perhaps because he is so tremendously in love with life. People who are that are simply asking to get hurt. [loc. 1075]
A flawed but fascinating novel about Kif, who joins the Army at 15 (he's big for his age) to escape the grinding monotony of rural life as an orphan; makes friends with his fellow soldiers; doesn't adjust well to post-war civilian life, and -- after a disastrous business failure -- falls in love with Baba, sister of a friend from the war, whose family induct Kif into a shadowy world of crime.
This is nowhere near as well-written or as well-observed as The Expensive Halo, but Tey's understated account, and her depiction of a young man almost entirely alienated from his fellow humans, kept me reading to the tragic finale.
I do wonder if Tey intended some of the loose threads -- the spiritualist's vision, the culpability of Collins, Hough's involvement in the business failure -- to be picked up later in the novel. It might have made Kif's story twistier and more interesting.
The edition available as an ebook from Amazon is not great (for one thing, someone has been through and done a global replace of 'arni' to 'tingle': look at the Amazon cover!) but Kif is in the public domain, so can be acquired from Project Gutenberg etc. Meanwhile, I shall keep Tey's other novels for future reading.
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