Most dog-lovers (and many others) will be moved by Angus’s stories and adore being drowned in his sensibilities, which...
A memoir told telepathically by a dying Jack Russell terrier named Angus who’s owned by author Siebert (Wickerby: An Urban Pastoral, 1997) and his wife Bex, known herein as Huge-Head and Sweet-Voice, a questionable device when Angus the terrier knows many place names as well as the names of people he’s never met.
But one willingly suspends disbelief and allows Siebert all the latitude he needs to get his story underway. This tale, however, lies in the consciousness of an 11-month-old dog, making less for a great plot than for a series of episodes whose interest resides not in the action but rather in Siebert’s powers of recording Angus’s synesthetic sensation-thought-feelings. And the devilishly stubborn and willful Angus is a fabulously gifted telepathist who, with Siebert’s help, writes better than most of his listener-readers. The power of scent in a terrier has seldom been as strongly captured, though Siebert’s skill at this falls slightly short of Tolstoy’s affective power to enter animals’ minds (see “Strider: The Story of a Horse”), a comparison Siebert probably can live with. In England, Angus was taken from his mother at ten weeks by Huge-Head and Sweet-Voice, whose dog Lucy was deep into her last days. Quite amusing is Angus’s trip to Canada by a plane also carrying a rhino, horses, two emus, and a parrot. Unfortunately, his reckless character has him rushing out into the woods each evening, following scents, and when at times he doesn’t return, being sought by his owners. One night in the woods he’s attacked by a mysterious animal (a mother coyote protecting her pups). He tells us his adventures during his months in Canada while trying to drag himself back home, unable to answer the voices calling for him.
Most dog-lovers (and many others) will be moved by Angus’s stories and adore being drowned in his sensibilities, which Siebert invests with many powerful lyric moments indeed.Pub Date: May 2, 2000
ISBN: 0-609-60494-5
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2000
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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