How the Ramones (and rock’s original anti-heroes, The Who) save the day, is the pleasing twist to this sweet...
Boy meets God, boy gets girl, boy loses girl and God, all to a soundtrack by Dee Dee Ramone.
When Francis Kelly was a kid, he had one of those religious experiences his older sister Clare had read about but never believed could really happen . . . but it did. Not that she’s going to cut him any slack; he’s still her dorky little brother whose only saving grace is that he shares her taste in music, specifically the punk-rock bands of the late ’70s and ’80s. Francis doesn’t quite know what to do about the whole moment-of-ecstasy thing, either, so he and Clare, the unsentimental, wise-cracking narrator of this family’s story, just go on with their day-to-day lives, which include ragging on their Catholic activist parents, cadging under-age admittance to music clubs and going to Sunday mass. Years pass. Both kids go to college and then settle in Boston. Their parents move to Central America to continue their missionary work and lecture the hierarchy of the Catholic Church from afar. Clare becomes a hospice nurse. Francis sets up youth groups for the diocese. His musical knowledge and kindness make him a hit. Years pass. Clare gets married, has two kids, wonders if Francis should have become a priest all along, until the day he meets the girl of his dreams, Lourdes, an oncologist at Mass General Hospital. They marry and all’s right with the world until tragedy drives them apart and no amount of prayer or healing masses can change things. About the same time, the Cardinal Francis works for is implicated in a pedophilia scandal, and Francis’s crisis of faith becomes a full-blown hatred for God, a dark night of the soul that can be assuaged only by the rank rage of the punk rock heroes of Clare and Francis’s youth.
How the Ramones (and rock’s original anti-heroes, The Who) save the day, is the pleasing twist to this sweet Nick-Hornby-meets-Graham-Greene tragi-comedy from Halpin (Donorboy, 2004, etc.).Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2006
ISBN: 1-4000-6278-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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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