An unforgettable re-creation of a vanished way of life.
In this luminous coming-of-age story, a boy absorbs the joys—and terrors—of life in an Italian village.
As the book chronicles a year in the life of a lad growing up on a small farm with his little sister and tensely dissatisfied working-class parents, the small town of La Croce offers a voluminous series of vivid set-pieces of peasant life. There are the sunlit mountain vistas and the timeless rhythms of wheat and grape harvests, arcane rites for warding off the evil eye, religious pilgrimages and knotty discussions of the Trinity, luscious meals and evenings spent at the boy’s warm-hearted grandparents’ farmhouse up the hillside, chasing fireflies and listening to tales of ruthless brigands, intrepid saints, philandering husbands and wives who get the last laugh. The boy’s existence revolves around small triumphs and sorrows—schoolyard fights, glimpses of an enchanting red-haired girl, the longing for a cowboy outfit like the ones in the movies—but he grows aware of darker undercurrents in his idyllic life: his father’s bitter class resentment, born of gnawing economic uncertainty; the gory slaughter of livestock that leaves the boy feeling guilt-stricken; smiling predators who lurk within the close-knit community. Working from his protagonist’s limited but keen perspective, Anonymo paints a sweeping social panorama of Italy in the ’60s, an era when rural life was yielding to a disruptive but hopeful modernity. La Croce is still ruled by age-old peasant verities such as the fearful understanding that “compared to hunger and pain, the rest of life is hardly real.” But also on the boy’s horizons are the Beatles and the Volkswagen Beetle, harbingers of an exciting future of glamour and pleasure; and weighing on everyone’s mind is the daunting, thrilling possibility of emigration to America. The author writes with a subtle, evocative prose that is at once earthy and lyrical. The boy’s fictive world emerges with such vibrant immediacy and immersive detail that we feel a powerful sense of loss when it starts to crumble.
An unforgettable re-creation of a vanished way of life.Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2010
ISBN: 978-1453659977
Page Count: 416
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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