Award-winning Hispanic poet and novelist S†enz (Carry Me Like Water, 1995, etc.) visits Turow and Grisham territory as he tells the melodramatic story of an abduction victim threatened by crooked lawyers and police. When Chicago cops break into Thomas Blacker's house and find Claudia Santos waiting for them while the aging Blacker lies bleeding from stab wounds, the case seems clear. Robbery or a tryst that soured seems likely, but the truth is much kinkier. Claudia refuses to speak, but feisty public prosecutor Jenny Richard soon gets her talking, and the story she tells is horrific enough to get her released into Jenny's charge. Kidnapped at the age of seven while walking down a street in her native El Paso, Claudia has been kept a prisoner—at first in shackles—in Blacker's house for 23 years. A famous author and academic, he trained her to be the idealized successor to his first wife, who died in a car accident. A cultural reactionary, he has also controlled every element of her life. Raping her when she was 18, he expected her to provide sex for him from then on. Jenny thinks she has a case, as does Lt. Alexander Murphy. But it's soon clear that Blacker has powerful friends who'll do anything to shield him: a gay friend of Jenny's is mugged, vital evidence is removed, and Claudia is stalked. Some of these elements feel overdone, and overlong: treachery and violence multiply at a dizzying rate. While Claudia struggles to cope with freedom and with her confused feelings about Blacker, Jenny and Murphy find themselves reluctantly falling in love. They manage to save Claudia from herself and to unmask the now-recovered Blacker, who has even more diabolical plans in mind. More schematic than insightful: a tale of abuse and the recovery of self that has little original to say about the psyches either of obsessed captor or of captive.
Pub Date: June 4, 1997
ISBN: 0-06-018738-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1997
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
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
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