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UCHECHI

Name: UCHECHI
Author: Chukwudi Eze
ISBN: 978-1456749453

THE TRIUMPH OF LOVE

by Chukwudi Eze ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2011

An uneven but engaging story about racism and the transformative power of love.

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Eze’s (Leadership Stories of the Mother Hen, 2012) debut novel offers a study of racial prejudice as seen through the eyes of young lovers.

Uchechi grows up in an unnamed village, seemingly in Africa. As a child, Uchechi steals a wresting trophy that his and a neighboring village are fighting over and threatens to throw it in a river, thus preventing a war. Although Uchechi loves his community, his great intelligence and spirit create many options for him, including the opportunity to study at a famous university abroad. Once he arrives, Uchechi encounters racial prejudice for the first time; his naïveté about how to handle it may strike readers as somewhat unrealistic, but it helps showcase the extremity of the racism that he encounters. For example, a classmate, Annarossa, obsessively works to get a higher grade than Uchechi because it would “shame her family” to be surpassed by a dark-skinned boy from “that region.” But when she fails to top him, her view of racial superiority is turned upside down, and she abandons her hostility and tries to learn more about him. She and Uchechi soon fall in love and start on a tumultuous path that crosses forbidden racial boundaries in their town. Despite the novel’s title, the story is less about Uchechi and more about Annarossa’s journey to develop her own beliefs and confront her family’s militant racism. The novel explores racism’s erroneous, rigidly held assumptions, and depicts the courage it takes to stand up against such prejudice, as well as the cost of doing so. Although the story has its compelling moments, there are some clichés and incorrect word choices (“he recollected himself” instead of “he collected himself” and “the dye is cast” instead of “the die is cast”) scattered throughout. Some readers may feel that the narrative has little emotional depth, but the high personal stakes for the characters make it compelling.

An uneven but engaging story about racism and the transformative power of love.

Pub Date: March 10, 2011

ISBN: 978-1456749453

Page Count: 160

Publisher: AuthorHouse

Review Posted Online: Feb. 20, 2013

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

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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LAST ORDERS

by Graham Swift ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 5, 1996

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Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.