Vivid but incoherent.
A coming-of-ager set in a small Mexican town, from the author of They're Cows, We're Pigs (1997).
Delmira Ulloa is eight, raised in a house "where only women live," and she's intensely curious about her unknown father. Her grandmother and mother see no reason to satisfy her curiosity and endeavor to distract her with stories, some magical, some more prosaic. This strategy temporarily appeases the strong-willed girl and helps nurture her vivid imagination as well as her love of reading. What the classics don't provide in the way of entertainment, Grandma does. The old lady regales Delmira with tales of the awful day the sea turned to stone and the stones to sea, the albino crocodile that once stalked frightened villagers, the glorious birds who fled the forest and then refused to fly; she instructs the girl as well in family history and heroics. Delmira scarcely knows what to believe, and her mind begins to play tricks on her: her grandmother turns halfway into a hen, an elderly servant dissolves into a puddle of urine, and so forth. Meanwhile, she takes a fiendish glee in spying on adults (especially when her indifferent mother commences a blatant affair with a lascivious priest) and finally tracks down her missing father, who sells shawls in the open-air market. Most of this tumultuous narrative seems to take place in the late 1960s, and it ends with a few predictable scenes of political and cultural unrest witnessed by Delmira as a teenager. Her subsequent sojourn in Germany, where she remains, amounts to little more than a bleak, self-imposed exile from the colorful world of her childhood.
Vivid but incoherent.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-8021-1684-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2001
This is the sort of book that stirs one so deeply that it is almost impossible to attempt to convey the impression it leaves. It is the story of today's Exodus, of America's great trek, as the hordes of dispossessed tenant farmers from the dust bowl turn their hopes to the promised land of California's fertile valleys. The story of one family, with the "hangers-on" that the great heart of extreme poverty sometimes collects, but in that story is symbolized the saga of a movement in which society is before the bar. What an indictment of a system — what an indictment of want and poverty in the land of plenty! There is flash after flash of unforgettable pictures, sharply etched with that restraint and power of pen that singles Steinbeck out from all his contemporaries. There is anger here, but it is a deep and disciplined passion, of a man who speaks out of the mind and heart of his knowledge of a people. One feels in reading that so they must think and feel and speak and live. It is an unresolved picture, a record of history still in the making. Not a book for casual reading. Not a book for unregenerate conservative. But a book for everyone whose social conscience is astir — or who is willing to face facts about a segment of American life which is and which must be recognized. Steinbeck is coming into his own. A new and full length novel from his pen is news. Publishers backing with advertising, promotion aids, posters, etc. Sure to be one of the big books of the Spring. First edition limited to half of advance as of March 1st. One half of dealer's orders to be filled with firsts.
Pub Date: April 14, 1939
ISBN: 0143039431
Page Count: 532
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1939
As she seeks to repair bridges, Cat awakens anger and treachery in the hearts of those she once betrayed. Making amends,...
Before sobriety, Catherine "Cat" Coombs had it all: fun friends, an exciting job, and a love affair with alcohol. Until she blacked out one more time and woke up in a stranger’s bed.
By that time, “having it all” had already devolved into hiding the extent of her drinking from everyone she cared about, including herself. Luckily for Cat, the stranger turned out to be Jason Halliwell, a rather delicious television director marking three years, eight months, and 69 days of sobriety. Inspired by Jason—or rather, inspired by the prospect of a romantic relationship with this handsome hunk—Cat joins him at AA meetings and embarks on her own journey toward clarity. But sobriety won’t work until Cat commits to it for herself. Their relationship is tumultuous, as Cat falls off the wagon time and again. Along the way, Cat discovers that the cold man she grew up endlessly failing to please was not her real father, and with his death, her mother’s secret escapes. So she heads for Nantucket, where she meets her drunken dad and two half sisters—one boisterously welcoming and the other sulkily suspicious—and where she commits an unforgivable blunder. Years later, despairing of her persistent relapses, Jason has left Cat, taking their daughter with him. Finally, painfully, Cat gets clean. Green (Saving Grace, 2014, etc.) handles grim issues with a sure hand, balancing light romance with tense family drama. She unflinchingly documents Cat’s humiliations under the influence and then traces her commitment to sobriety. Simultaneously masking the motivations of those surrounding our heroine, Green sets up a surprising karmic lesson.
As she seeks to repair bridges, Cat awakens anger and treachery in the hearts of those she once betrayed. Making amends, like addiction, may endanger her future.Pub Date: June 23, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-04734-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: April 1, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2015
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