In some ways reminiscent of playwright O’Neill’s familial Sturm und Drang, this masterfully intense tale of woe and...
A dynamic, many-tendriled drama (on the Booker short list last year) by Irish writer Tóibín (The Story of the Night, 1997, etc.) shapes a complex view of intergenerational conflict at once modern and timeless, as a family assemble on the coast of Ireland to tend to one of their own, a young man losing ground in his struggle with AIDS.
Helen has just packed off the husband and kids for a few days so that she can focus on hiring a teacher, as well as on her other administrative duties, at the end of a school term, when a stranger comes to her door to say that her brother is in the hospital, wanting to see her. Declan hasn’t wanted to tell Helen that he has AIDS, but now, as the disease approaches its ravaging endgame, he needs her to know: what he needs is for Helen to tell their mother and bring her to him. Helen is more estranged from Lily than Declan is, but she does as asked and fetches her mother from work. Declan wants to leave the hospital and go to his grandmother’s house seaside, where he and Helen spent a painful period of their youth while their father was dying from cancer. But he also wants his two closest gay friends to accompany him, and as this volatile mix settles in to the damp old house on a crumbling cliff, remarkable things happen. Worlds apart as they all seem at first, old and young, gay and straight, there are ties that bind them—not least their shared love for Declan—and in this respite from the mundane routines that would otherwise consume each of them, Lily’s own long-unscalable cliffs of detachment begin to crumble, so that at last Helen and her brother can glimpse the mother they once knew and need so desperately now.
In some ways reminiscent of playwright O’Neill’s familial Sturm und Drang, this masterfully intense tale of woe and redemption has much to say about the primal forces that shape us.Pub Date: Aug. 22, 2000
ISBN: 0-684-87389-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 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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