Parks, Tim(othy Harold) 1954–

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PARKS, Tim(othy Harold) 1954– (John MacDowell)

PERSONAL: Born December 19, 1954, in Manchester, England; son of Harold James (a clergyman) and Joan (McDowell) Parks; married Rita Baldassarre (a translator), December 15, 1979; children: Michele (son), Stefania (daughter), another son. Education: Cambridge University, B.A. (with honors), 1977; Harvard University, M.A., 1979.

ADDRESSES: Agent—c/o Author Mail, Arcade Publishing, 141 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10010.

CAREER: WGBH-Radio, Boston, MA, writer, 1978–79; telephone salesperson in London, England, 1979–81; language teacher in Verona, Italy, 1981; freelance translator in Verona, 1985; lector at University of Verona, Verona.

AWARDS, HONORS: Sinclair Prize for fiction runner-up, Book Trust (England), 1985, for manuscript of Tongues of Flame; Betty Trask Award and Somerset Maugham Award, both Society of Authors, both 1986, both for Tongues of Flame; John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize, Book Trust, 1986, for Loving Roger.

WRITINGS:

NOVELS

Tongues of Flame, Heinemann (London, England), 1985, Grove Press (New York, NY), 1986.

Loving Roger, Heinemann (London, England), 1986, Grove Press (New York, NY), 1987.

Home Thoughts, Collins (London, England), 1987, Grove Press (New York, NY), 1988.

Family Planning, Grove Press (New York, NY), 1989.

(Under pseudonym John MacDowell) Cara Massimina, Hodder & Stoughton (London, England), 1990.

Goodness, Grove, Weidenfeld (New York, NY), 1991.

Juggling the Stars, Grove Press (New York, NY), 1993.

Shear, Grove Press (New York, NY), 1994.

Mimi's Ghost, Secker & Warburg (London, England), 1995, Arcade (New York, NY), 2001.

Europa, Secker & Warburg (London, England), 1997.

Adultery and Other Diversions, Arcade (New York, NY), 1999.

Destiny, Arcade (New York, NY), 2000.

Judge Savage, Arcade (New York, NY), 2003.

TRANSLATOR

Alberto Moravia, Erotic Tales, Secker & Warburg (London, England), 1985, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1986.

Alberto Moravia, The Voyeur, Secker & Warburg (London, England), 1986, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1987.

Antonio Tabucchi, Indian Nocturne, Chatto & Windus (London, England), 1988, New Directions (New York, NY), 1989.

Antonio Tabucchi, The Edge of the Horizon, New Directions (New York, NY), 1990.

Alberto Moravia, Journey to Rome, Secker & Warburg (London, England), 1990.

Antonio Tabucchi, Vanishing Point; The Woman of Porto Pim; The Flying Creatures of Fra Angelico, Vintage (London, England), 1993.

Roberto Calasso, The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, Knopf (New York, NY), 1993.

Italo Calvino, Numbers in the Dark, and Other Stories, Pantheon (New York, NY), 1995.

Fleur Jaeggy, Last Vanities, New Directions (New York, NY), 1998.

Roberto Calasso, Ka: Stories of the Mind and Gods of India, Knopf (New York, NY), 1998.

Roberto Calasso, Literature and the Gods, Knopf (New York, NY), 2001.

OTHER

Italian Neighbors; or, A Lapsed Anglo-Saxon in Verona, Grove, Weidenfeld (New York, NY), 1992.

An Italian Education: The Further Adventures of an Expatriate in Verona, Grove Press (New York, NY), 1995.

Translating Style: The English Modernists and Their Italian Translators, Cassell (London, England), 1998.

Hell and Back: Reflections on Writers and Writing from Dante to Rushdie, Arcade (New York, NY), 2002.

A Season with Verona: Travels around Italy in Search of Illusion, National Character, and … Goals!, Arcade (New York, NY), 2002.

Author of short radio talks for British Broadcasting Corp.

SIDELIGHTS: Tim Parks is a writer whose novels, including Tongues of Flame, Mimi's Ghost, and Judge Savage, prove him, claim critics, to be a deft, entertaining commentator who imaginatively examines human foibles. Parks has also established himself as a talented essayist and translator, but he has identified the novel as his favorite form in which to work. British by birth, Parks met his Italian-born wife while both were studying in the United States. He returned to Italy with her, and the couple has raised their family there. The people and culture of Italy have informed several of his books, including A Year with Verona: Travels around Italy in Search of Illusion, National Character, and … Goals!, about his town's soccer team; Italian Neighbors; or, A Lapsed Anglo-Saxon in Verona, in which he describes life as a transplanted Englishman; and the novels Home Thoughts and Family Planning, which reflect his real life in their casts of expatriates and their associates in Italy. Reviewers have frequently praised Parks's ability to sketch people with a blend of caricature and compassion, and to tell stories that offer mayhem with a message. In his fiction, he often places ordinary people in extraordinary situations, thus providing them with opportunities to learn unexpected things about themselves.

Parks wrote several novels in his twenties, all of which went unpublished until Tongues of Flame. It, too, had been rejected numerous times, until the author entered it in England's Sinclair Prize competition and was selected as a runner-up. The attention led to the book's publication, and Tongues of Flame went on to win the Betty Trask and Somerset Maugham awards. Set in suburban London during the late 1960s, Tongues of Flame focuses on the household of Reverend Bowen, the earnest but restrained vicar of a comfortable Anglican parish. As the story opens, the Bowen household is quietly struggling with family problems brought on by the unresolved conflict between the vicar and his oldest son, Adrian. A bright, moody teenage hippie, Adrian casually ignores paternal authority by using his room to smoke marijuana and to sleep with his girlfriend. Narrating the story is Adrian's younger brother, Richard, who is just discovering sex and is torn between his father's traditional morality and an underlying admiration for Adrian's audacity.

The family's guarded truce ends with the arrival of Reverend Bowen's new assistant, curate Donald Rolandson, who compensates for his own past misconduct by leading the parish on a religious crusade. The parishioners begin speaking in tongues to show their new closeness to God and then attack whatever they see as Satanic influence. They soon focus on Adrian, who is marked not only by his hippie lifestyle, but by a clubfoot. In a climactic exorcism scene at the annual parish youth retreat, Adrian is browbeaten into rejecting his hedonistic ways, thus precipitating a crisis in the mind of the narrator Richard. "I began to realize," Richard declares, "that if they changed Adrian … I would have to change too." He explains: "It was because of Adrian, because of his example and his courage and how I loved and at the same time hated him, that I was able to take … my neutral position in the family … just waiting quietly for the day I could leave all this and be myself." Richard resorts to arson to disrupt the exorcism, only to discover that Adrian is ungrateful for his help.

Tongues of Flame received widespread praise. "The quality of the story-telling and the cadences of the prose have a piercing authenticity," wrote Barbara Hamilton-Smith in the London Catholic Herald. "Parks is a writer to watch," declared Jeanette Winter-spoon in the Times Literary Supplement. "As a technician [he] cannot be faulted. His book builds slowly, taking the reader from secure ground to a mad place…. The closing stage is a terrifying tour de force made bearable only by the tight prose." Washington Post contributor Jonathan Yardley observed: "The lessons [Richard] learns from Adrian's battle are hard, painful and necessary. They have to do not only with the evil that can be done in the name of religion, but with the obligation to take a stand when matters of principle and loyalty are at stake." Tongues of Flame, Yardley concluded, "is a rites-of-passage novel that far exceeds the usual limitations of the genre."

Parks followed Tongues of Flame with the novel Loving Roger. As Lore Dickstein observed in the New York Times Book Review, both works describe "the disastrous consequences of passion and obsession." Loving Roger begins with a jolt, as the title character lies dead in the apartment of his lover, a bland young typist named Anna. The novel largely comprises Anna's explanation of why she loved and murdered Roger, an aspiring writer who was desperate to transcend his position as a typesetting executive at her office. Apparently Anna falls in love with Roger because, as a well-spoken Cambridge graduate, he outwardly resembles the sensitive artists who populate her favorite romance novels. But as a lover Roger appears selfish and cruel: he alternates between needing affection and scorning her obsessive devotion, and he flies off to Texas when she becomes pregnant by him. Finally, Anna seems to become violently irrational from the emotional strain of the relationship.

Reviewers offered varied interpretations of Loving Roger. Voice Literary Supplement contributor Martha Southgate suggested that the book was a fairly positive tale of a woman's self-assertion. "The effect of Loving Roger is surprisingly comic," she wrote, explaining that "it's impossible to feel the weight of tragedy when the self-styled hero is such a jerk." As a murderess, Southgate observed, "Anna begins to find her own strength and resources" and so "become[s] the independent woman [Roger] always said he wanted." By contrast, Michael Carroll of the Los Angeles Times Book Review saw the novel as far more ambiguous and unsettling. In Anna, Carroll contended, Parks has created the classic literary device of the untrustworthy narrator, leaving readers to puzzle out the real events of the story for themselves. "Each time we think we know what is happening, something occurs to make us doubt ourselves," Carroll wrote. "There is the startling possibility that Anna is being manipulated by Roger into being the instrument of his self-destruction," he suggested, and asked: "Who is really the victim? Who the perpetrator?" Regardless of how reviewers interpreted Loving Roger, they generally lauded it. "Parks exhibits an astonishing control over his writing," declared Jo-Ann Goodwin in the Times Literary Supplement, "and it is this discipline which makes the novel such an impressive achievement."

In his third and fourth published novels, Parks moves from the traumas of obsession to the dilemmas of commitment. He also explores fully the question of point of view in the novel, using various literary techniques to show the differing perspectives of his characters. Home Thoughts begins as Julia Delaforce leaves her job in London to seek a more fulfilling life as a teacher in Verona, Italy. There she finds herself in a community of rootless and unhappy English-speaking expatriates. These exiles, who have fled unhappiness in their respective homelands, are unable to build futures for themselves in the foreigners' community of Verona, where jobs are temporary and friendships are shallow. Eventually Julia is forced to ponder her own inability to make commitments, which seems to have begun in her mid-twenties when she refused to marry her lover and had an abortion. Julia's unhappiness stands in contrast to the fulfillment of a couple she left behind in England who have built a successful marriage and responded admirably to the birth of their mentally retarded child. To offer his readers multiple points of view, Parks structures Home Thoughts almost entirely of letters sent between various characters in England and Italy. "We hear a chorus of vivid, highly individualized voices," explained Lore Dickstein in the New York Times Book Review. "The range is nothing short of extraordinary." As Parks once told CA, Julia sometimes uses her letters to describe the life she wishes she led rather than the one she is living: in her final missives she envisions a series of possible futures for herself that bear little connection to her actual unhappiness. Dickstein concluded: "While there are moments in this book when Tim Parks becomes a little too entranced with his own cleverness, 'Home Thoughts' is a startlingly sharp and impressive piece of work."

Parks's fourth published novel, Family Planning, uses multiple narrators, as well as more letters, to provide a multifaceted view of the bizarre Baldwin family. Comprising two parents and their four grown children, the Baldwins are preoccupied with their personal problems and, as Cheri Fein observed in the New York Times Book Review, they "feel startlingly little love." Nonetheless, they must accept responsibility for Raymond, the eldest child, who is wildly insane. "Parks exploits the possibilities of this scenario with great resourcefulness," in the opinion of London Observer contributor Michael Dibdin. "The ease and economy with which relationships are shuffled and the characters made to reveal themselves, largely through their own words, is remarkable." The author's "unflinching eye," Fein declared, "penetrates like an X-ray."

Parks's 1994 work, Shear, is a suspense novel concerning Peter Nicholson, a forty-year-old geologist who is sent to the Mediterranean to inspect a quarrying operation on behalf of a client whose husband was killed in a construction accident when a piece of quarried stone fell on his head. Treating the trip as a vacation rather than a job he brings along his mistress. Peter's circumstances become increasingly complex, to the point that he ultimately compromises both his mar riage and his professional career in a novel that New York Times Book Review contributor David Sacks praised as "eerie, engrossing, and beautifully written." Lacking the levity that characterizes much of Parks's previous fiction, Shear takes its title from the geologist's term for the split that occurs in quarried stone due to the pressure of opposing forces; it is a state mirrored by the novel's protagonist, who watches forces beyond his control tear his life apart. Replacing levity with information, Parks educates his readers in geology and architecture, although "contriv[ing] never to talk down to the uninitiated," according to Spectator contributor Christopher Bray. Reading Shear, Bray maintained, made him "realize … how long it had been since a novel had actually taught me anything."

In Europa, Parks created "another tale of gripping psychological complexity that reflects the paradoxes of the world at large," reflected Donna Seaman in Booklist. The action takes place within the mind of Jeremy Marlowe, an Englishman teaching at the University of Milan. He has abandoned his wife and daughter for the sake of a romantic alliance with a colleague at the university, but the affair with the Frenchwoman ends badly, leaving him confused and at a loss. He sets off on a group trip to Strasbourg with some other teachers and students, ostensibly to petition the European Parliament about issues related to job security. His former lover is also along on the trip, however, and he finds himself dwelling on parallels between their relationship and the difficulty of setting up a European nation. Library Journal reviewer David W. Henderson stated, "He offers a perceptive commentary on the place of passion in our lives and the despair and hope it offers as we struggle to find our way in an increasingly bland world." A Publishers Weekly writer called the book "darkly comic and inherently tragic," and noted Parks's skill in creating a "headlong interior monologue, frantic with self-loathing and despair," which is, nevertheless "tightly controlled."

Parks created another tale of a feverish mind in his book Destiny, published in 2000. In this tale, a distinguished British journalist has become bored with his profession. Although he is writing a book about the predictablility of human behavior, he is in fact quite unable to predict the behavior of those closest to him, including his wife and son. As he contemplates his changing life, he learns that his son has committed suicide. Much of the narrative takes place as the journalist and his Italian wife take a flight back home. In his mind, the narrator questions "such grand concepts as destiny" and takes a "high-velocity descent into a psychosis precipitated by tragedy," according to Booklist critic Donna Seaman. A New Statesman writer, Nicholas Fearn, warned that the book hardly qualifies as light entertainment, but it is to be respected as "another novel that refuses to compromise." Fearn admired Parks's ability to create stream-of-consciousness narrative that took into account the fact that the truth is not always the first thing to occur in a person's mind. He mused: "The stream of consciousness is not a stream but a delta. One can view the writer's employment of the style as a form of experimentation or an attempt to tell it like it is. Whichever was intended, it succeeds as both."

The author created a mysterious tale involving psychosis and spirits in Mimi's Ghost. Morris Duck-worth is an Englishman who can see and hear his wife even though he has murdered her. As he schemes to take control of her family's vineyards and fortune, Mimi advises him on how to deal with those who get in his way. The story is dark and funny, and Morris is "an inspired mixture of loony self-regard and stupidity fueled by obtuseness," mused a Publishers Weekly reviewer. Mimi and Morris appeared in an earlier book, Juggling the Stars, yet the reviewer advised that "one need not have read the first book to enjoy the frissons of suspense in this one."

A more serious tone marked Judge Savage, a novel about a man recently made a county judge. It is unclear whether he was named to the post because of his true ability, his good connections, or because his dark skin and privileged upbringing make him an ideal candidate to serve as a racial token. As the story opens, Savage is deciding to give up his philandering ways and commit himself to his marriage and family. He finds his past is not so easily escaped, however, and watches as his life begins to unravel. It is "a novel of thrilling range and ambition," praised Toby Mundy in New Statesman.

In addition to fiction, Parks has written several works of nonfiction, including Italian Neighbors; or, A Lapsed Anglo-Saxon in Verona, and has served as a translator of the works of Italian authors Alberto Moravia, Antonio Tabucchi, Roberto Calasso, and Fleur Jaeggy. A resident of Verona, Italy, for many years, Parks wrote Italian Neighbors about his own neighborhood, which he depicts as an eccentric suburb where, on the Day of the Dead, "followers appear in one of the village's back streets decorating a little stone plaque in a wall behind which a chained dog laps water from an old bidet." In story-like vignettes, Parks portrays his corner of Italy as a land of paradoxes. Praising Italian Neighbors as "combin[ing] accuracy with affection, analysis with lyricism," Washington Post Book World contributor Michael Mewshaw noted that, far from the "dreamy postcard illusions" or memories of the "old country" held by Italians transplanted to other parts of the world, Parks finds Italy to be "a landscape that would appeal only to someone with keen peripheral vision and an appetite for incongruity."

A sequel to Italian Neighbors, An Italian Education: The Further Adventures of an Expatriate in Verona continues Parks's exploration of "this world my son is growing into." Now the father of three children, Parks and his wife have been both socially accepted as natives and more entrenched in the bureaucratic aspects of his adopted country. In a country where Parks has remained, in part because "kids have a better time here," his affection for Italy and its people is obvious, according to Christopher Merrill in his Los Angeles Times Book Review assessment. "Parks has created … a small masterpiece in the tradition of expatriate literature," continued Merrill, "the kind of work that depends on long and loving involvement with a place." As with Italian Neighbors, remarked Times Literary Supplement contributor Nicholas Wroe, Parks "has succeeded in writing a thoughtful and humane account of a society undergoing rapid change while simultaneously respecting apparently eternal values."

Parks took a look at the mania surrounding soccer in his book A Season in Verona. The author followed his home town team, Hellas Verona, through nine months of games in the 2000–2001 season. Italian soccer fans are said to be some of the most passionate in Europe, and Verona's among the most dedicated in Italy. Parks's book relates his adventures during those months, and "the author does a fine job in getting under the skin of the Italian soccer culture, while at the same time offering a fascinating travel guide to the country," wrote John Haydon in Washington Times. The book can be read as both an interesting chronicle of a team's year, but it is more than merely that because of Parks's skill at taking readers "into an unforgettable world," stated Brendan Dowling in Booklist, where fans, players, referees, and others are portrayed as "alternately heroic and human."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Contemporary Novelists, 7th edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 2001.

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 131: British Novelists since 1960, fourth series, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1991.

Parks, Tim, Tongues of Flame, Grove Press (New York, NY), 1986.

PERIODICALS

American Scholar, spring, 2001, Rachel Hadas, review of Literature and the Gods, p. 150.

Booklist, October 1, 1998, Donna Seaman, reviews of Europa and Ka: Stories of the Mind and Gods of India, p. 281; April 15, 2000, Donna Seaman, review of Destiny, p. 1524; February 1, 2001, Whitney Scott, review of Mimi's Ghost, p. 1042; February 15, 2001, Whitney Scott, review of Destiny, p. 1164; March 1, 2001, Donna Seaman, review of Literature and the Gods, p. 1218; June 1, 2002, Brendan Dowling, review of A Season with Verona: Travels around Italy in Search of Illusion, National Character, and … Goals!, p. 1671.

Books & Bookmen, September, 1985.

Catholic Herald (London, England), December 27, 1985.

Contemporary Review, October, 1985.

Courier-Mail (Brisbane, Australia), May 10, 2003, Rosemary Sorensen, review of Judge Savage, p. M6.

Daily Telegraph (London, England), March 1, 2003, Jasper Rees, "A Writer's Life," p. 2; March 8, 2003, David Flusfeder, review of Judge Savage.

Guardian (London, England), October 7, 2000, Tim Parks, "Trapped in a Painful Past," p. 3; March 23, 2002, David Platt, review of A Season with Verona, p. 8; March 29, 2003, Alfred Hickling, review of Judge Savage, p. 27.

Kirkus Reviews, July 15, 2003, review of Judge Savage, p. 931.

Library Journal, October 1, 1998, David W. Henderson, review of Europa, p. 135; February 15, 1999, Susan M. Olcott, review of Ka, p. 212; January, 2002, Nancy P. Shires, review of Hell and Back: Reflections on Writers and Writing from Dante to Rushdie, p. 104; June 15, 2002, Janet Ross, review of A Season with Verona, p. 83; October 1, 2003, Marc Kloszewski, review of Judge Savage, p. 117.

Los Angeles Times, January 30, 1987.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, January 24, 1988; October 16, 1988; March 24, 1996, p. 6.

New Republic, November 23, 1998, Robert Boyers, review of Last Vanities, p. 38.

New Statesman, December 11, 1998, George Walden, review of Adultery and Other Diversions, p. 46; September 13, 1999, Nicholas Fearn, review of Destiny, p. 53; March 25, 2002, Robert Winder, review of A Season with Verona, p. 52; March 24, 2003, Toby Mundy, review of Judge Savage, p. 55.

New York Review of Books, November 5, 1998, Gabriele Annan, review of Europa, p. 44; January 14, 1999, John Banville, review of Ka, p. 16; August 10, 2000, D. J. Enright, Destiny, p. 55.

New York Times Book Review, January 4, 1987; January 10, 1988; October 23, 1988; January 7, 1990; July 26, 1992, p. 9; July 31, 1994, p. 8; August 6, 1995, p. 7; November 15, 1998, David Gates, review of Europa, p. 67; May 2, 1999, Robert Grudin, review of Adultery and Other Diversions, p. 27; January 14, 2001, Colin Harrison, review of Mimi's Ghost, p. 13; July 28, 2002, Scott Veale, review of A Season with Verona, p. 10.

Observer (London, England), September 8, 1985; April 23, 1989; March 2, 2003, Robert Macfarlane, review of Judge Savage, p. 17.

People, June 1, 1987.

Publishers Weekly, November 14, 1986; July 6, 1992, pp. 35-36; August 17, 1998, review of Europa, p. 45; September 14, 1998, review of Ka, p. 44; March 1, 1999, review of Adultery and Other Diversions, p. 48; March 20, 2000, review of Destiny, p. 68; November 27, 2000, review of Mimi's Ghost, p. 50; February 19, 2001, review of Literature and the Gods, p. 81; May 27, 2002, review of A Season with Verona, p. 48; August 11, 2003, review of Judge Savage, p. 254.

Review of Contemporary Fiction, fall, 1998, Irving Malin, review of Last Vanities, p. 243.

Spectator, September 4, 1993, p. 27.

Star-Ledger, April 16, 2000, Roger Harris, review of Destiny, p. 4.

Sunday Times (London, England), March 16, 2003, James Eve, review of Judge Savage.

Times (London, England), December 18, 1986.

Times Literary Supplement, September 13, 1985; October 17, 1986; September 25, 1987; May 26, 1989; July 19, 1996, p. 7.

Village Voice, November 1, 1988.

Voice Literary Supplement, February, 1988.

Washington Post, February 11, 1987.

Washington Post Book World, October 1, 1989; June 28, 1992, p. 6; July 10, 1994, p. 3.

Washington Times, July 14, 2002, John Haydon, review of A Season in Verona, p. B8

Weekend Australian (Sydney, Australia), May 10, 2003, Helen Elliott, review of Judge Savage, p. B8.