bookshelf

YOU CAN'T PUSH A ROPE

Name: YOU CAN'T PUSH A ROPE
Author: Clint Trafton
ISBN: 978-1552123386

by Clint Trafton ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 6, 2006

bookshelf

A historical novel in the vein of John Steinbeck about a long disputed New Mexican territory and the Hispanic and White families that call it home.

This is an admirably ambitious book, with much to say about race, colonialism, civil rights and man’s relation to the earth. The novel focuses, promisingly, on the uneasy relationship between its two strongest characters: Joaquin Peralta, a fiery leader of a community group devoted to winning back the title to land they believe was stolen by gringos from their Mexican and Spanish-settler ancestors; and Joaquin’s stepson Chava Traxler, a half-white, half-Hispanic teenager who comes to question the group’s increasingly militant tactics. However, that story is diluted by the novel’s overly large reach. The characters are too often used as vehicles for exposition and info-dumping, with long speeches about the technical details of the land dispute stemming the flow of the narrative. The point-of-view shifts too often to incidental characters whose lives and thoughts are not fleshed out fully enough to coalesce into true, necessary plotlines. Action is well written, and between all the guns, shooting and storming of properties, there’s lots of it. At times, however, the book reads like a newspaper article dutifully reporting all the facts, rather than inevitabilities that should spin out from the motivations and psyches of the characters. The biggest missed opportunity of the book is Joaquin; despite opening with his point of view, Trafton confusingly moves away from him in the second chapter and never fully returns. Enough groundwork is laid out to suggest an intriguing, charismatic personality on the level of Malcolm X, but readers are deprived of access to Joaquin’s interior thoughts and feelings; the result is an angry, one-note cutout. Chava exhibits greater self-reflection and character development, but in the end he, too, is unable to break free from the novel’s dogged, didactic devotion to its larger sociopolitical themes. Vivid and well-mapped-out, but ultimately closer to history lesson than novel.

Pub Date: July 6, 2006

ISBN: 978-1552123386

Page Count: 316

Publisher: Trafford

Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2012

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

HISTORICAL FICTION | GENERAL FICTION

bookshelf

TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

bookshelf

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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE LAND OF SWEET FOREVER
by Harper Lee ; edited by Casey Cep

- BOOK REVIEW
GO SET A WATCHMAN
by Harper Lee

- SEEN & HEARD
The Snowy Day Is NYC Library’s Most Popular Book

- SEEN & HEARD
ALA Releases List of 2020’s Most Challenged Books

- SEEN & HEARD
NYT Readers Voting on Best Book of Past 125 Years

bookshelf

DISTANT SHORES

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2002

Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...

bookshelf

Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.

After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?

Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).