A weighty issue, but a wisp of a novel.
A guy sees a ghost. This leads to an evaluation of the supernatural in Lightman’s low-key fifth novel (Reunion, 2003, etc.).
When 42-year-old David Kurzweil loses his job at a bank, he goes to work at a mortuary. In the so-called slumber room, where relatives view their loved ones, David sees “a thing near a dead body. A vapor…It seemed alive. It had…intelligence. It looked at me.” Within seconds it’s gone. David is a regular guy, and we never doubt his honesty, though his account is generally greeted with skepticism. His boss Martin, the mortuary director, gently suggests he see a shrink. His story gets into the local paper, and David is visited by two emissaries from the Society for the Second World. They don’t seem like kooks, so David agrees to be the subject of an experiment which will test his openness to the nonmaterial world. The investigator, Dr. Tettlebeim, is pleased with the results, but David’s old friend Ronald, a university chemistry professor, thinks Tettlebeim’s claims of David’s special powers are absurd and should be denounced. David feels caught in the middle; he could do without the attention. After all, he does have a life of his own, though not much of one. It’s been eight years since his wife Bethany divorced him, but David’s lonely bachelor life has looked up since he started dating Ellen, a librarian, and his mortuary job, ghost aside, has proved surprisingly fulfilling. He enjoys working for the tender-hearted Martin, who has become a father figure (his own father died when he was eight). This should be fertile ground for teacher/physicist Lightman, best-known for the lightly worn erudition of Einstein’s Dreams (1993), and indeed he is scrupulously fair in presenting the arguments of the opposing camps. But the story never quite catches fire, and it ends with a transparently contrived death.
A weighty issue, but a wisp of a novel.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-375-42169-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
