A Review of He Knows Too Much
He Knows Too Much invented by Alan Maley for the sixth level English learners, is about the main character Dick Sterling, who was dispatched from English to Indian as a general manager in a transnational corporation Madras branch, was forced to accept an early retirement after he began to uncover corruptions in the company he was in charge. After retired, he tried to overcome the depression and explored the
secret behind the company, and revenged his unfair suffering. At the end, Dick obtained his happy life again from his new established business and a true love, for he found there was a better way to let the bad guys deserve their punishments.
This is sort of naive story. All of the exciting elements such as murder, threat, corruption, gang, are from an affair between Dick’s boss and one of the Indian staff in Dick’s company, because the boss was trying to hide the affair and their illegitimate son. This plot is not persuasive enough. As a fact that the main character found out at last after he had traveled from British to Indian so many times, suffering so much both mental and physical, is somehow disappointed. As if after I traveled with the story with great ambitions for a grand enterprise, but finally what I found was just a storm in a teacup.
This kind of disappointment is as the astonishment as the Trumpet Voluntary supplied by
Jeremy Harmer. Derek, the main character in Trumpet Voluntary uncovered a HUGE surprising result for his wife’s disappearance, which is like a big hat for a small head. The whole story lost its balance and changes its style from a romantic heart broken story into an adventurous one after chapter 8; while He Knows Too Much uncovering a boring and simple and unpersuasive factor which is too small for a big head.
The structure, comparing with Snow Falling On Cedars written by David Guterson, He Knows Too Much is easier to follow, for the story is simpler, with fewer character. Readers could create the whole landscape of the story only by following the main character’s action, his thinking, his memory, and his adventure. The structure of Snow Falling On Cedars is multilayer, for there are several stories happened in different spaces and era, resulting readers need to organize these stuffs as good as the author.
At the end of He Knows Too Much, the writer tried to create an enduring theme yet factually not enduring enough, “we should leave punishment to God……God was definitely better at it than him.” This suppose a good theme, but the book do not have enough space to explore and develop it. The book seems that the main character could finally accept this teaching just because the writer designs in the book that all the bad guys received a good punishment in the lifetime of the main character. Actually, the writer is acting as a God because she/he understands that she/he had better to give a perfect ending to support the theme. Wow, how exciting, to be a GOD, just goes to be an author!
After all, the book is easy to read, simple story, few characters, simple words and sentences, not special plot. If someone has a little time to kill yet be tired of bearing the heavy or the size of magazines or newspapers, this booklet is a choice.On the other hand, as an English learner, I really appreciate the efforts made by the author, who provide me a successful reading experience, for I could complete reading an original fiction, find faults from the story, and blah, blah, blah.
(Tian Shuai, an artist in Joffrey ballet, former dancer in Guangzhou Ballet, the city near where I come from)
