Undisciplined work from a writer who becomes tangled up in his own obsessions.
An offbeat jeremiad inspired by America’s cultural decline.
For his seventh work of fiction, White (Requiem, 2001, etc.) borrows the name of his protagonist, Hans Castorp, from Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain. Like the other Hans, this one is visiting his cousin at a health facility, but otherwise there’s little resemblance between Mann’s eloquent confrontations and White’s scattershot satirical jabs. Hans is 22 and from Downstate, Illinois. A recent graduate, he has his first job lined up but, at his aunt’s urging, is checking on his cousin Ricky, who’s been at the Elixir, a “recovery spa” in central Illinois, for a long time. Realism gives way to surrealism as Ricky screams obscenities at a placid taxi driver and insists on giving Hans a revolver. There’s nothing grand about the spa: It looks like a strip mall of disused commercial buildings, set in a dreary landscape of slag heaps and toxic lakes, with foul winds blowing through. Hans is housed in a former Mr. Donut, where the previous occupant had been a young woman who’d raped her intoxicated father. What follows is a patchwork of narrative and monologues by such Elixir notables as Mayor Jesse, who is convinced someone has borrowed his genitals, and Professor Feeling, an aging hippie who refers to himself alternately as a Toxic Adult Child and the future Revlon Lama. Hans makes one friend, Cecile, an older woman with an impressive cleavage, but, timid virgin that he is, rejects her when she hugs him. White directs broadsides at the fast-food industry and academic jargon, among other things, but primarily he debunks the nuclear family, awash in alcohol, centered on boozy fathers in thrall to television (an old target of White’s). In the process, he neglects Hans’s predicament (is he trapped, or simply assimilating?) and fails to pursue other narrative leads (that revolver, say, or the exotic LaCrema, who leaves phone messages but never materializes).
Undisciplined work from a writer who becomes tangled up in his own obsessions.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2004
ISBN: 1-56478-369-3
Page Count: 231
Publisher: Dalkey Archive
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2004
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
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
