Kevin Malone

Tony Ellis · 25 Feb 1999, 10:18 · from urth-v0024.mbox · original

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From: "Tony Ellis" <tony.ellis at futurenet.co.uk>
Subject: (urth) Re: Kevin Malone
Date: Thu, 25 Feb 1999 10:18:48 +0000
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Roy wrote:

>  I just finished re-re-reading "Kevin Malone", from _Endangered_Species_.
>
A gem of a story, which I've often re-read purely for the pleasure of doing=
 so.
And I have no intention of spoiling it for you or for anyone else, but here=
 are a
couple of hints:

> What I would like to know is: who did what to whom, and why? Is KM a ghos=
t,
> or just what he purports to be?
>
He's neither.

>     What relationship did the murder victim have to KM? Neither KM nor
> Priest actually refer to her as KM's mother. The incident is related in
> response to a query about KM going to an orphanage. And what are we to ma=
ke
> of the narrator's parting hunch that both murderer and victim being named
> Malone may be coincidental? Answers anyone?
>
There -is- no relationship between Kevin and Betty Malone. Once you underst=
and
that it all falls into place: Kevin Malone -thinks- Betty Malone and the el=
der Mr
Malone were married, -thinks- that he was their child in the lost Eden of t=
he
house in its heyday. But if the names are just coincidental, and there -was=
- no
child, that cuts his whole fantasy off at the root. In which case, where -d=
o- his
childhood memories of the big house come from? And the longing to recreate =
that
lost world which has driven his whole life?

Think about that, and think about the narrator wondering in the very last l=
ine of
the story, if it might be possible "for a man, even a very rich man, to be
posessed and not to know it."


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