The Acts of the Apostles meets The Satyricon—with surprisingly leaden results. Burgess' subject is the clash between the early Christians and Imperial Rome in the years between the resurrection of Christ and the destruction of Pompeii; but the pacing is as sluggish as it was in the gaudy but empty TV mini-series A.D. (also written by Burgess), of which this is essentially the novelization. Burgess' narrator is a retired Roman bureaucrat, equally skeptical about the claims of the Christians to eternal life and the claims of the Roman emperors to divinity. This detachment, which is undoubtedly the author's method for avoiding De Millean, non-Biblical sentimentality, nonetheless prevents the novel from ever catching fire—except in the literal sense, when Vesuvius erupts. In fact, the novel's one solid virtue may be its quirky learning—Burgess' conception of the relationship between Roman eros and Christian agape (spiritual love) is often fascinating. Beyond occasional nuggets of scholarship, however, such as the confusion of "Christus" (annointed) with "Chrestus" (cheerful, dutiful—a popular name for a slave, which led the Romans to assume that Christianity was a slave-cult), the novel offers little that rings true—especially in the area of characterization. Burgess' post-Augustan Romans are reminiscent—too reminiscent—of those in Graves' Claudius the God; and his Christians are either crudely stereotyped (doubting Thomas is rendered with a Scottish accent; Peter shudders every time he hears a cock crowing) or downright unpleasant (fanatical St. Paul is the major Christian character). All in all, Burgess has his eye on too many sources this time, some divine and some from pulpier realms—some Bulwer-Lytton here, some Suetonius there, then add a dash of Ben Hur (one central character is a Jewish radical who becomes a gladiator) and perhaps a touch of another mini-series, Masada. Repetition of central ideas and intercutting of Roman and Christian scenes technically pull the novel together, but, if learned, it's lifeless.
Pub Date: Sept. 23, 1985
ISBN: 0749006722
Page Count: 360
Publisher: Arbor House
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1985
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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