A few compelling ideas in a book as misguided as its protagonist.
Lehner (What to Wear to See the Pope, 2004) returns with a novel about pursuing sainthood.
Alice Fairweather is a devoted mother and (sometimes) devoted wife to her philandering husband Waldo. She is also a passionate career woman, until she loses her job as host of The Dream Radio Show. (The overused dream motif does nothing new here.) Alice is not particularly likable: Her attempts at humor are either scathing or annoyingly self-conscious; her actions and speech often seem contradictory. A bizarre set of circumstances lead her to befriend and then fall for Waldo’s college roommate, a dashing Nicaraguan named Lalo, who comes to New York City on a mission to canonize his great aunt. When Lalo has to leave the States, Alice weirdly takes up the torch in his stead, immersing herself in the Hagiographer’s Club and eventually boarding a plane to Nicaragua. Though the novel starts strongly with an original premise (laid out in an extremely well-written prologue), the narrative line soon weakens and eventually peters out all together; Part II entirely fails to develop plot or characters. Lehner often chooses showy words when simpler ones will do, and as a consequence the syntax distracts from the story. An excessive number of plot points, ranging from the health of the family dog to the history of saints, give the narrative an unfocused, scattered quality. Lalo’s quirky, sassy family and Alice’s precocious sons are promising characters, but they’re secondary, not crucial. Though the story revolves around whether or not Lalo’s great-great aunt will achieve sainthood and whether or not Alice and Waldo’s marriage will survive, readers won’t care by the time this undirected saga staggers to a close.
A few compelling ideas in a book as misguided as its protagonist.Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-15-101429-3
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
Steinbeck is a genius and an original.
Steinbeck refuses to allow himself to be pigeonholed.
This is as completely different from Tortilla Flat and In Dubious Battle as they are from each other. Only in his complete understanding of the proletarian mentality does he sustain a connecting link though this is assuredly not a "proletarian novel." It is oddly absorbing this picture of the strange friendship between the strong man and the giant with the mind of a not-quite-bright child. Driven from job to job by the failure of the giant child to fit into the social pattern, they finally find in a ranch what they feel their chance to achieve a homely dream they have built. But once again, society defeats them. There's a simplicity, a directness, a poignancy in the story that gives it a singular power, difficult to define. Steinbeck is a genius and an original.Pub Date: Feb. 26, 1936
ISBN: 0140177396
Page Count: 83
Publisher: Covici, Friede
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1936
IN THE NEWS
SEEN & HEARD
An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it...
Harris, creator of grand, symphonic thrillers from Fatherland(1992) to An Officer and a Spy(2014), scores with a chamber piece of a novel set in the Vatican in the days after a fictional pope dies.
Fictional, yes, but the nameless pontiff has a lot in common with our own Francis: He’s famously humble, shunning the lavish Apostolic Palace for a small apartment, and he is committed to leading a church that engages with the world and its problems. In the aftermath of his sudden death, rumors circulate about the pope’s intention to fire certain cardinals. At the center of the action is Cardinal Lomeli, Dean of the College of Cardinals, whose job it is to manage the conclave that will elect a new pope. He believes it is also his duty to uncover what the pope knew before he died because some of the cardinals in question are in the running to succeed him. “In the running” is an apt phrase because, as described by Harris, the papal conclave is the ultimate political backroom—albeit a room, the Sistine Chapel, covered with Michelangelo frescoes. Vying for the papal crown are an African cardinal whom many want to see as the first black pope, a press-savvy Canadian, an Italian arch-conservative (think Cardinal Scalia), and an Italian liberal who wants to continue the late pope’s campaign to modernize the church. The novel glories in the ancient rituals that constitute the election process while still grounding that process in the real world: the Sistine Chapel is fitted with jamming devices to thwart electronic eavesdropping, and the pressure to act quickly is increased because “rumours that the pope is dead are already trending on social media.”
An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it is pure temptation.Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-451-49344-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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