It’s 11th-century England and King William has sent a trusted team to Oxford to settle opposing land claims: ex-soldier Ralph Delchard (The Serpents of Harbledown, 1998, etc.), lawyer Gervase Bret, rough-hewn Maurice Pagnol, and scribe Brother Columbanus, replacing gentle Brother Simon. The group is housed at Oxford Castle, the imposing territory of Sheriff Robert d’Oilly, its garrison church presided over by Alnulf the Chaplain. The Sheriff’s idea of Justice, observed by Ralph and wife Golde, is his merciless beating of the slave Ebbi, accused of killing Walter Payne, the rider of Bertrand Gamberell’s horse Hyperion, in the middle of a hotly contested race. Ralph and Gervase do some sleuthing at the race site and are convinced that Ebbi is innocent. Not so innocent, however, is their co-worker Maurice—found wanting in the ethics department and sent off in disgrace. Meanwhile, the Castle is preparing for a visit of Norman prelate Bishop Geoffrey Coutances, and the chaplain is grooming young Bristeva, daughter of Ordgar, to sing at the banquet, hoping to keep her from the news that Helene, her friend and once chapel singer, has killed herself. There’s more, a great deal more, as the villains get their just deserts and the heroes live on to populate the next adventure. Too much of everything—especially plots and people—make this sixth in the series less fun than it should be.
Pub Date: Feb. 10, 1999
ISBN: 0-312-20021-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1999
D°az's first collection of ten stories, some having appeared in the New Yorker and Story, is certain to draw attention for its gritty view of life in the barrios of the Dominican Republic and rough neighborhoods of urban New Jersey. Most of the stories are linked by their narrator, who spent his first nine years in the D.R., until his father in the States brought the entire family to South Jersey, where he continued to display the survivalist machismo he developed during years of poverty, scamming, and struggle. In the Caribbean pieces, D°az offers a boy's-eye view of a hardscrabble life. In ``Ysrael,'' the narrator and his brother, sent to the countryside during the summer, plot to unmask a local oddity, a boy whose face was eaten off by a pig in his youth. Much later in the volume, ``No Face'' reappears, surviving the taunts of the locals as he waits for his trip to America, where surgeons will work on his face. ``Arguantando'' documents life in the barrio, where the narrator, his brother, and his mother eke out an existence while hearing nothing from the father. ``Negocios'' explains why: Robbed of his savings in the US, the father schemes to marry a citizen in order to become one himself, all the time thinking of his family back home. He is hardly a saint, and, reunited in New Jersey, the family is dominated by his violent temper. ``Fiesta, 1980'' recalls the narrator's bouts of car sickness, for which his father shows no sympathy. In the remaining tales, a teenaged Dominican drug dealer in New Jersey dreams of a normal life with his crackhead girlfriend (``Aurora''); a high-school dealer is disturbed by his best friend's homosexuality (``Drown''); and ``How to Date . . .'' is a fractured handbook on the subtleties of interracial dating. D°az's spare style and narrative poise make for some disturbing fiction, full of casual violence and indifferent morality. A debut calculated to raise some eyebrows.
Pub Date: Sept. 10, 1996
ISBN: 1-57322-041-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Charming tale, sweet as pie, with a just-right touch of tartness from the bestselling Flagg (Standing in the Rainbow, 2003,...
One more Christmas, one more chance.
Diagnosed with terminal emphysema, Oswald T. Campbell leaves wintry Chicago for a friendly little town in Alabama recommended by his doctor. Lost River seems as good a place as any to spend his last Christmas on earth; and Oswald, a cheerful loser all his life, believes in going with the flow. Turns out that the people of Lost River are a colorful bunch: Roy Grimmit, the strapping owner of the grocery/bait/beer store, hand-feeds a rescued fledgling named Jack (the redbird of the title) and doesn’t care who thinks he’s a sissy. Many of the local women belong to the Mystic Order of the Royal Polka Dots, which does good things on the sly, like fixing up unattached men. Betty Kitchen, former army nurse, coaxes Oswald’s life story out of him. Seems he was an orphan named for a can of soup—could there be anything sadder? Oswald is quite taken with the charms of Frances Cleverdon, who has a fabulous collection of gravy boats and a pink kitchen, too. Back to Jack, the redbird: it’s a favorite of Patsy, a crippled little girl abandoned by her worthless parents. She’ll be heartbroken when she finds out that Jack died, so the townsfolk arrange for a minor miracle. Will they get it? Yes—and snow for Christmas, too.
Charming tale, sweet as pie, with a just-right touch of tartness from the bestselling Flagg (Standing in the Rainbow, 2003, etc).Pub Date: Nov. 9, 2004
ISBN: 1-4000-6304-3
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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