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JACK KEROUAC’S AVATAR ANGEL

Name: JACK KEROUAC’S AVATAR ANGEL
Author: Chuck Rosenthal
ISBN: 0-9676003-2-4

HIS LAST NOVEL

by Chuck Rosenthal ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2001

There’s hopped-up frenzy and plenty of wit here, but with a dead-Beat premise and more lampooning than plotting, this story...

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The zaniness of Beat-specialist Rosenthal continues into his fifth novel (Loop’s End, 1992, etc.), as Kerouac comes back from the dead to see what’s shaking in his old haunts.

Except that he’s not Kerouac: in this incarnation all the names have been changed. So “Jack Duluoz” comes back to himself in Mexico (in 1982, for reasons that remain obscure), but hotfoots it quickly to Boulder, home of the Beat-beneficiary Naropa Institute, which is hosting a Jack Duluoz Conference. He meets ex-wife Parker and gets thrown out of her hotel room, wanders into Ginsberg’s place and helps himself to the whiskey before being shown the door, heads out of town on the night wind with Corso, to end up in Disneyland (via Vegas), where they get off the boat and pester the fake gorillas before being arrested with their Mickey Mouse ears askew. Bailed out by Burroughs, they retreat to Venice, then Jack hops a bus to Frisco, but it’s all piano bars and cover charges, and Ferlinghetti has been co-opted by the Young Republicans, so he hops another bus to New York, has a layover in Davis with Snyder that turns into a pleasant interlude, largely because Snyder is able to accept that he’s Jack-back-from-the-dead. But the road beckons, and New York leads him to a poetry reading in the Village by his daughter, who’s changed her name, and to an epiphany in her poems that sends him on the last leg of his cross-country tour—to Lowell, Massachusetts, where he was born and died (the first time).

There’s hopped-up frenzy and plenty of wit here, but with a dead-Beat premise and more lampooning than plotting, this story hasn’t a ghost of a chance.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2001

ISBN: 0-9676003-2-4

Page Count: 150

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2001

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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SUMMER ISLAND

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2001

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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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.