Maybe not a homer—it gets a bit preachy toward the end—but a ringing double off Fenway's Green Monster.
Savvier than The Natural, almost as sad as Bang the Drum Slowly, Tooke’s vastly entertaining debut is, like all good baseball novels, about more than just baseball.
Casey Fox loves hitting for distance and probably does it as well as anyone ever has, his hand-to-eye coordination exactly that extraordinary. “I see the ball. I hit the ball,” he explains when pressed. The truth is he adores every aspect of the game, from its intricacies to the stunning beauty of its best moments. What he can't abide are the parasites: exploitive owners, rapacious agents, and fat-cat marketers who make it so insistently about money, undermining the innocence and joy that are baseball's beguiling reasons for being. Reporter Russ Bryant is similarly alienated. Casey catches for Pawtucket, a minor league team of no distinction. Russ covers the club for the Providence Daily Journal, a newspaper he despises for its essential second-rateness. The two become friends, drawn to each other by loneliness, a leaning toward self-destruction, and a shared recognition that they could be better people than they are, though neither really knows what that entails. But Molly, an earth mother at 22, does know. She grew up in the same foster home that Casey did and has aspirations for him that have little to do with baseball and everything to do with a life well lived. When she meets Russ, Molly takes him under her wing too; instantly in love, he's glad to join Casey, who was there before him. Suddenly the Boston Red Sox need a catcher; Casey is called up and becomes an immediate sensation, propelling the floundering Sox into a blistering pennant race. While Tooke does the contest full justice, he cares about the triangle as much as the diamond.
Maybe not a homer—it gets a bit preachy toward the end—but a ringing double off Fenway's Green Monster.Pub Date: March 18, 2003
ISBN: 0-385-50640-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2003
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
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