A frank, moving depiction of a nightmarish slice of American life.
Precisely plotting the slippery slope of a heroin addict’s existence, MacEnulty’s somewhat autobiographical debut paints a bleak picture but still manages to include a ray of hope.
The sweet ’70s are young, and 18-year-old Trish is a newlywed, but that doesn’t stop the Florida judge from sentencing her junkie husband Charlie to ten years for stealing stereos. She grieves by immediately seeking out a fix, and before she knows it she’s hooked herself. There follows a long sojourn in the slough of despond as she and her friends-in-need work small scams to score, head to California in search of better highs, move back to Florida, shoot up and nod off every chance they get—until death gets some of them. First to go is Carrie, one of Charlie’s ex-girlfriends, who kills herself after Trish steals money from her. Then there’s Big Steve, Trish’s California lover, who ODs a week after getting out of jail. Various rehab efforts initiated by her brother and mother, a concert violinist, fail, and Trish takes off for Miami, living with another wasted lover while selling herself to a Cuban drug dealer and even going to college—until she visits her sugar daddy one night and finds him with his throat slit. Finally, she gets involved in a hard-core burglary scheme targeting pharmacies, which works well until the police catch on and she finds herself in a courtroom looking at a judge for sentencing. She gets only three years, but while in the pen she also gets clean and learns the true story of her unknown father, after which something clicks, so that in spite of a slight (though near-fatal) relapse, Charlie’s release, and the death of the wasted lover—an early AIDS victim—Trish still has a shot at putting her past behind her.
A frank, moving depiction of a nightmarish slice of American life.Pub Date: Jan. 9, 2003
ISBN: 1-85242-455-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Serpent’s Tail
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2002
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.
Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.
Written by a Nigerian African trained in missionary schools, this novel tells quietly the story of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior, father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness. But into the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers, teachings so alien to the tribe, that resistance is impossible. One must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of incoherent children. Still, with his guns and persistence, the white man, amoeba-like, gradually absorbs the native culture and in despair, Okonkwo, unable to withstand the corrosion of what he, alone, understands to be the life force of his people, hangs himself. In the formlessness of the dying culture, it is the missionary who takes note of the event, reminding himself to give Okonkwo's gesture a line or two in his work, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1958
ISBN: 0385474547
Page Count: 207
Publisher: McDowell, Obolensky
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1958
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