What little ``medicine'' is available in this debut collection is not only painful for the embattled characters, but it throws into painful relief the displaced moods and passions of the gay psyche as it confronts the end of the century. In a severe, disciplined, brooding style that presses each of his six stories toward a harsh and elliptical conclusion, Klein (1979 winner of the Academy of American Poets Prize) details the struggles of his small tribe of loosely tethered charactersmost of them starved for some kind of emotional fix. ``Club Feet'' establishes the basic tenor: Each of the gay men who functions as a pivot for an individual narrative will suffer a physical malady either altering his self-image or threatening his life. In ``Club Feet,'' the narrator finds in his deformed foot an inescapable connection with his similarly disabled mother. In ``Undertow,'' an adolescent infatuation with a straight relative leads to rape and victimization, with detours through theft and voyeurism. The title story explores Klein's central obsession, the rending tension that links beauty and ugliness: Scarred by cystic acne, the narrator nonetheless manages to devise an attitude toward his malady that lets him function both as foil to and confidant of Lawrence, a striking painter with a troubling taste for older men. ``Keloid'' and ``Dr. K.'' are weaker tales, though explicitly addressing the lurking specter of AIDS, for which the only medicine is hope. The last piece, ``India,'' summarizes in novella form the plangent chiaroscuro that characterizes the author's style: After his lover's death, the narrator, himself stricken with AIDS, takes a feverish trip to India and wanders among an unlikely gaggle of locals and expatriates, allowing the rich experience of travel in a strange land to shape his final days. Harrowing, and yet exquisite, unflinching, and compelling. (Author tour)
Pub Date: July 24, 1995
ISBN: 1-85242-403-6
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Serpent’s Tail
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1995
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
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