Tim Parks - English author?, yes. But his story could set anywhere.

For some reason I always think of Tim Parks (when I think of him at all) as a writer from the NW - I don't know if I've confused him w/ someone else or it's just some misconception that worked its way into my brain, but I'm reminded once again as i read his story Vespa in the current New Yorker that he's an English writer (with an American-sounding name, maybe?). So, yes, his story is set in England to but be honest - unlike, say, Trevor stories or Hedley stories - this story could just as well be set in the US - just change the place names (and maybe the motorcycle brand name) and it would fit in right here - which is to say the story is about relationships and personalities, which are much the same world over. Story tells of a college student who's dating ("Facebook engaged") a high-school student in his home town - he's in school in a nearby city (specifically, she's in Manchester, he in Liverpool). One day as she sneaks off from school, which she does often, and they try to find a place to smoke some dope and have sex, his Vespa stolen from the school parking lot. The story is essentially about the follow-up to this theft - and to the eventual return of the bike (technically, of the engine that the thieves had lifted from the bike) and the differing reactions of the several characters, and what their reactions reveal: his mother, a blandly indifferent woman who can't see beyond the drama of her own life, laughs off the theft; his father (parents are recently divorced). The police: totally hostile and suspicious, suspecting that the boy and girlfriend engineered the theft to report and claim from insurance. The girlfriend, similar to the mother in that she laughs it off, but she says she'll get the word out and, miraculously, the engine is returned. Is this suspicious? The father: he thinks so and warns his son to stay away from this girl, who's from a working-class, immigrant family. Parks lets us form our own conclusions, and it's kind of a litmus test: whose view do you align with? There's plenty in here to lead us to suspect that, at the least, the girl (Yasmin) knew who took the bike - but was she part of the scheme or not? It's a very smart story in that Parks gives us more info than any one of the characters have, so we can peer around the edges and make judgements about each of them - but he does not give us all the info, we we're left in doubt, at the end, about what really happened, all we know is what the characters say and do and what that reveals about the biases and limitations of each, and of us.