Cheap mysticism narrated in wooden prose (“He felt connected to all of humankind and all of nature in a way he never had...
A history of the world in eight chapters, from 3,000,000 b.c. to the present, as Wood (Sacred Ground, 2001, etc.) follows the trail of a magical blue stone that fell to earth from a meteor.
The author sounds like someone who has read a lot about the Knights of the Round Table and decided to go one better than the Holy Grail—which, after all, only went back to the time of Christ. She begins her tale some 3,000 millennia ago, when a meteor crashed in Africa and left a small blue gem in the residue of its ashes. From Africa, the gem passed to the Near East, where it broke the curse that kept the women of the Laliari tribe from conceiving. When it later came into the possession of the Chanaanites, its powers of fertility caused the patriarch Avram to make the connection between the cycles of the moon and female ovulation. In Imperial Rome, the gem fell into the hands of a wealthy Christian lady who suffered martyrdom, and it then became part of her relics and was venerated for centuries. It helped save an English convent from destruction during the Viking invasions of the 11th century, and in the 16th century it protected a German pilgrim who lost her way and ended up in Tibet rather than Jerusalem. It made its first appearance in the New World—in Martinique—during the 18th century and showed up in California in the middle of the 1840s’ Gold Rush. Afterward, it fell into obscurity and was lost until a New Age scholar discovered it in a junk shop some twenty years ago. It’s for sale today, in case you’re interested.
Cheap mysticism narrated in wooden prose (“He felt connected to all of humankind and all of nature in a way he never had before”).Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2003
ISBN: 0-312-27534-X
Page Count: 464
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2002
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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