For the converted, certainly, though this warm, funny, poignant tale full of people to like and aspirations to admire could...
A wonderfully entertaining tale about second chances in life, a game almost as hard as golf.
And few bitten by the bug would find that an untoward construction, certainly not Cullen’s heroes: long-hitting golf pro Bobby Jobe and long-put-upon Henry Mote, his caddy. Though their styles differ sharply, both are flawed creatures, and both—at the outset of the story—are about to face a grim string of double-bogeys: supertalented Bobby because he's simply not serious enough, self-effacing Henry because he's never dared to value himself sufficiently. On the 15th hole of the last round of the PGA Championship, Bobby—distracted by a busty blond—loses a two-stroke lead and the services of his disenchanted caddy. Henry returns to Allegheny Gap, Virginia, home of the nine-hole course built by his father. He tries to keep busy, tries not to watch golf on TV since it makes him miss the Tour too much. In the meantime, disaster catches up with Bobby. He's struck by lightning and permanently blinded, after obstinately ignoring warnings to duck out of a thunderstorm. Eight months pass. Enter Angela Murphy, a young woman hired as a rehab specialist who’s convinced true rehabilitation can happen only if Bobby plays golf again. She wants Henry to be his eyes. At first, the notion is abhorrent to both men, but Angela, as sweet-natured as she is iron-willed, persists. They try, they fall short; Henry will place a ball awkwardly, Bobby will over- or under-swing; they'll want to quit, but little by little the task works its magic—and in the process is fully recognized as the metaphor it is.
For the converted, certainly, though this warm, funny, poignant tale full of people to like and aspirations to admire could well earn former Newsweek correspondent Cullen (Why Golf?: The Mystery of the Game Revealed, 2000, etc.) his first large audience.Pub Date: June 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-06-018554-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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
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