Fun to read.
Hearth (Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years, 1994, etc.) goes hog wild with lighthearted humor as she tackles some heavyweight issues in her debut novel.
It’s 1962, and Bostonians Jackie Hart and family have moved to Naples, Fla., a community that’s more country than a bowl of grits. She’s itching to make new friends and become involved in community activities, but of course, that’s easier said than done. Small Southern towns don’t exactly welcome transplanted Northerners with open arms. But Jackie’s an obstinate redhead who starts a reading club that attracts a stereotypical mixture of lovable misfits. The salon, as Jackie calls them, meets each week at the town library to discuss books and everything else under the hot Florida sun, and they quickly form a tight bond. There’s the librarian, the only member of the group who doesn’t carpool with them to the meetings; the gay man who’s the town’s lone Sears employee; a woman who secretly pens magazine articles about romance and sex; a young black maid with aspirations of a better life; an octogenarian who’s also a convicted murderer; and the narrator, a postal clerk who’s known around town as the Turtle Lady because she rescues snapping turtles before they can become roadkill. But Jackie’s the central force and the one who provides impetus for the group’s adventures. In addition to her job as a part-time copy editor at the local paper, she’s the anonymous voice of Miss Dreamsville, a sultry radio personality who lulls listeners to sleep in the late hours of the night. Everyone in town is consumed with finding out Miss Dreamsville’s true identity, but before a climatic showdown at the annual Swamp Buggy Festival, Jackie and the group tackle some very heavy situations, including local reactions to the Cuban missile crisis that result in a mistaken arrest and a run-in with the KKK. In fact, the characters experience/discuss/confront almost every social, political, religious, gender-sensitive and environmental issue that’s relevant in the South during the early ’60s, and each topic is couched in so many Southern colloquialisms and treated with such superficiality that it’s hard to take any of it too seriously—which is just as well.
Fun to read.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4516-7523-8
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Rather than settle for a coming-of-age or travails-of-immigrants story, Hosseini has folded them both into this searing...
Here’s a real find: a striking debut from an Afghan now living in the US. His passionate story of betrayal and redemption is framed by Afghanistan’s tragic recent past.
Moving back and forth between Afghanistan and California, and spanning almost 40 years, the story begins in Afghanistan in the tranquil 1960s. Our protagonist Amir is a child in Kabul. The most important people in his life are Baba and Hassan. Father Baba is a wealthy Pashtun merchant, a larger-than-life figure, fretting over his bookish weakling of a son (the mother died giving birth); Hassan is his sweet-natured playmate, son of their servant Ali and a Hazara. Pashtuns have always dominated and ridiculed Hazaras, so Amir can’t help teasing Hassan, even though the Hazara staunchly defends him against neighborhood bullies like the “sociopath” Assef. The day, in 1975, when 12-year-old Amir wins the annual kite-fighting tournament is the best and worst of his young life. He bonds with Baba at last but deserts Hassan when the latter is raped by Assef. And it gets worse. With the still-loyal Hassan a constant reminder of his guilt, Amir makes life impossible for him and Ali, ultimately forcing them to leave town. Fast forward to the Russian occupation, flight to America, life in the Afghan exile community in the Bay Area. Amir becomes a writer and marries a beautiful Afghan; Baba dies of cancer. Then, in 2001, the past comes roaring back. Rahim, Baba’s old business partner who knows all about Amir’s transgressions, calls from Pakistan. Hassan has been executed by the Taliban; his son, Sohrab, must be rescued. Will Amir wipe the slate clean? So he returns to the hell of Taliban-ruled Afghanistan and reclaims Sohrab from a Taliban leader (none other than Assef) after a terrifying showdown. Amir brings the traumatized child back to California and a bittersweet ending.
Rather than settle for a coming-of-age or travails-of-immigrants story, Hosseini has folded them both into this searing spectacle of hard-won personal salvation. All this, and a rich slice of Afghan culture too: irresistible.Pub Date: June 2, 2003
ISBN: 1-57322-245-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2003
SEEN & HEARD
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IN THE NEWS
A masterly encapsulation of modern Russian history, this book more than fulfills the promise of Towles' stylish debut, Rules...
Sentenced to house arrest in Moscow's Metropol Hotel by a Bolshevik tribunal for writing a poem deemed to encourage revolt, Count Alexander Rostov nonetheless lives the fullest of lives, discovering the depths of his humanity.
Inside the elegant Metropol, located near the Kremlin and the Bolshoi, the Count slowly adjusts to circumstances as a "Former Person." He makes do with the attic room, to which he is banished after residing for years in a posh third-floor suite. A man of refined taste in wine, food, and literature, he strives to maintain a daily routine, exploring the nooks and crannies of the hotel, bonding with staff, accepting the advances of attractive women, and forming what proves to be a deeply meaningful relationship with a spirited young girl, Nina. "We are bound to find comfort from the notion that it takes generations for a way of life to fade," says the companionable narrator. For the Count, that way of life ultimately becomes less about aristocratic airs and privilege than generosity and devotion. Spread across four decades, this is in all ways a great novel, a nonstop pleasure brimming with charm, personal wisdom, and philosophic insight. Though Stalin and Khrushchev make their presences felt, Towles largely treats politics as a dark, distant shadow. The chill of the political events occurring outside the Metropol is certainly felt, but for the Count and his friends, the passage of time is "like the turn of a kaleidoscope." Not for nothing is Casablanca his favorite film. This is a book in which the cruelties of the age can't begin to erase the glories of real human connection and the memories it leaves behind.
A masterly encapsulation of modern Russian history, this book more than fulfills the promise of Towles' stylish debut, Rules of Civility(2011).Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-670-02619-7
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: June 20, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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