An insightful, sometimes witty look at the life of a seasoned Navy pilot.
Zimberoff’s debut drama is the story of a veteran combat fighter pilot’s life in the U.S. Navy, both on and off an aircraft carrier.
Cmdr. Eric “Spyder” Greene meets young aviators Lt. Steve “Rolls” Royce and Lt. Junior Grade Grace “Drone” Miller at a naval officers’ club. Spyder, a Top Gun graduate, tells the others about his career, beginning with his arrival at the Miramar Naval Air Station in San Diego. The occasionally insolent senior officer seems to prefer a time when women weren’t on carriers, much to Drone’s chagrin; his tales include downtime with strippers or prostitutes. But Spyder also tells of the camaraderie among fellow pilots before ultimately returning to the story that apparently started the conversation: the tragic loss of several of his squadron mates. The author, a Top Gun graduate like his protagonist, relays his expertise through intelligent, perceptive narration. Typically, readers can use context to understand the unfamiliar jargon—an “OK 3-wire,” for instance, is a good landing on the carrier. Zimberoff, however, doesn’t immediately spell out most acronyms, of which there are many; an accompanying glossary is definitely helpful, but readers will either have to peruse it prior to the main text or repeatedly flip to the end while reading. Obnoxious Spyder is a fascinating character; his unfiltered statements, especially regarding women, cause Drone to at one point leave and miss a sizable part of his story. But good humor keeps him from becoming wholly unlikable: He acknowledges the debauchery of Wog Day, an initiation for sailors (it entails a large amount of rancid liquids), and he amusingly refers to some women as “femists” before Drone corrects him. Spyder devotes a lot of time to the pilots’ recreations—including a stop in Australia, where he spent a few days and nights with a girl he met in a bar—but he also delves into intense flight experiences: e.g., a dogfight with Soviet jets near Vietnam and a downed jet in the carrier’s landing area that prevented airborne planes from landing despite their being disturbingly low on fuel. Overall, Spyder’s distinctive accounts resemble a short story collection more than a standard novel, but that makes it no less entertaining.
An insightful, sometimes witty look at the life of a seasoned Navy pilot.Pub Date: July 25, 2014
ISBN: 978-1492881810
Page Count: 248
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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