A skillful blend of passion, mystery, politics and history, set in a perfectly rendered Provence.
A woman in an unraveling marriage tries to solve her uncle’s murder.
When Michèle Trowel learns that her husband has been cheating, she leaves their home in Boston and returns to the place where she’s always felt most comfortable—her aunt and uncle’s house in her native Provence, France. Unfortunately, she arrives at the house just in time to see Uncle George’s body being wheeled out. At first it appeared as if his weak heart had finally given out, but by sheer chance the hospital discovers that someone had switched his heart medication with something lethal. When Aunt Suzanne reports that someone has stolen a document relating to George’s history as a member of the resistance during World War II, suspicion for the murder falls on an unknown Nazi collaborator who was responsible for the deaths of many members of George’s unit, and who would therefore go to great lengths to conceal his identity. Armed with only the sketchiest information, Michèle sets out to uncover the killer and, in the process, locks horns with the U.P., an ultra right-wing nationalist party currently ascendant in the region. Meanwhile, Michèle must deal with the situation that brought her to Provence in the first place—the dissolution of her marriage. With her well-crafted prose, Robinson masterfully invokes her setting and fills it with a varied cast of fully fleshed characters. Amid the romance and intrigue lies a compelling political dissertation, describing the current conflicts between the left and the right in France and skillfully connecting it to its roots in the turbulent days of the second World War. Her main character falls squarely on the left, so Robinson does an especially skillful job of skewering the far right (her blowhard fictional nationalist Le Plume sounds an awful lot like the real right-wing politician Jean-Marie Le Pen). But rarely does the book sound preachy, and the well-conceived plot is always in charge of the narrative.
A skillful blend of passion, mystery, politics and history, set in a perfectly rendered Provence.Pub Date: July 5, 2011
ISBN: 978-1460974773
Page Count: 205
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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