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BELMONDO STYLE

Name: BELMONDO STYLE
Author: Adam Berlin
ISBN: 0-312-31923-1

by Adam Berlin ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 9, 2004

A start filled with real possibility degenerates into the formulaic.

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Second-novelist Berlin (Headlock, 2000) offers another skillful yet surface-driven tale of two closely bonded males, this time a single father and his 16-year-old son.

Living in Manhattan, on Bedford Street in the West Village, Jared Chiziver makes his living as—well, as a pickpocket, and one par excellence. He’s not only good enough never to have been caught, but good enough to provide himself and his son Ben—a brainy kid who tested into a spot at Stuyvesant High—with a regular, decent, and more or less normal life. Father and son talk seriously, eat three squares, both love movies, even go running together—the last being part of a major extracurricular passion for Ben and a way of staying fit and young for his good-looking if enigmatic father. This premise of an alternative and unusual life in the big city is filled with possibility and is well handled indeed by Berlin—until the hunger for plot rears its head. Which happens first hardly matters—Ben’s turning out to be gay or his father’s stumbling upon a woman who, unlike the usual long string of once-only lovers, doesn’t bore him after a one-night stand. Anna Partager is different—more authentic, a good cook, and a photographer, working just now on a book to be made up of photos of dead men. A mixed blessing, this, since, though it does provide a fascinating scene of Anna’s photographing a dead man on the subway, it also telegraphs heavy-handedly what’s to come. Ben’s newfound sexuality will get him attacked in a horrific way, and the awful vengeance taken by his understanding and impassioned father—the novel could be called Perils of the Penis—will necessitate flight from the Big Apple, hiding out in Miami, and then, due to cash flow problems, the undertaking of a major heist that will end up with—need it be said, a last photo of a dead man, taken by Anna.

A start filled with real possibility degenerates into the formulaic.

Pub Date: March 9, 2004

ISBN: 0-312-31923-1

Page Count: 288

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2004

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

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Sisters in and out of love.

Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.