A worthy effort, if a touch too elaborate, illuminating unknown corners of a great photographer’s life.
A pensive, sometimes ponderous imagining of the life of renowned photographer Edward Curtis, who ran away from the urban circus to join the Indians.
Curtis’s sepia-tint photographs are well known. His life is not. NPR book critic Cheuse (The Fires, 2007, etc.) attempts to situate Curtis in a historical time and within the context of the man’s long and interesting, if somewhat chaotic, life. This might have worked better as a biography than a novel, had not Laurie Lawlor’s Shadow Catcher: The Life and Work of Edward S. Curtis (1994) been first to market. As it is, Cheuse is forced to provide so much exposition in the story that, if it were a movie, the narrative would be more voiceover than image; this has the effect of slowing the narrative down and, from time to time, forcing it into cul-de-sacs. That said, Cheuse’s approach to Curtis, who wanted nothing more than to escape the stifling city and the close confines of his marriage to roam the plains and deserts with the last unimpounded Indians, is sympathetic and affecting; says the book’s narrator to the photographer, “You’re an unusual man but you’re not more than human,” and indeed Curtis emerges as lifelike but never larger than life. By Cheuse’s account, Curtis’s chief blemish is a kind of proprietary jealousy: He would sooner smash his glass-plate negatives, irreplaceable though they may be, rather than see them fall into the hands of his estranged wife, and so he does. Borrowing a page from Doctorow and perhaps Brian Hall—whose imaginings of the lives of famous men are much more vivid blends of fact and fiction—Cheuse studs the narrative with historical figures from Theodore Roosevelt to Cecil B. DeMille, who move the story along even as they helped Curtis in real life.
A worthy effort, if a touch too elaborate, illuminating unknown corners of a great photographer’s life.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4022-1404-2
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Sourcebooks Landmark
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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