A mixed bunch, a little below last year’s standard. (Not seen: pieces by Jon Gertner, Paula Peterson, and David Sedaris.)
The third in this catchall series is weighted toward fiction and has an international flavor.
Included are two cartoons and four nonfiction pieces: David Mamet’s notes on language, “Secret Names,” suggestive but in need of shaping; Michael Hall’s “Running For His Life,” a stirring tribute to an ethnic cleansing survivor from Burundi, now an ace runner/coach in Texas; Michael Paterniti’s workmanlike account of an Iranian living in a Paris airport for 15 years (“The Fifteen-Year Layover”); and Transmissions From Camp Trans, Michelle Tea’s long examination of prejudice against transsexuals among feminists that gets bogged down in its convoluted sexual politics. The fiction has more of a sheen, including three very strong stories with foreign settings. “Half of a Yellow Sun,” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, is a heartbreaking evocation of the 1960s rise and fall of Biafra; Daniel Alarcón’s “City of Clowns” provides a memorable portrait of turbulent family life in Lima, Peru; and Gina Ochsner’s “Hidden Lives of Lakes” is a sweet fantasy about the allure of the afterlife for some ordinary Russians. Looking for something quintessentially American? Try the always-dependable Christopher Buckley’s “We Have a Pope!” (a juicy account of a p.r. campaign for an American pope), or Lance Olsen’s “Sixteen Jackies”: far away from the tabloid versions of Jackie Kennedy, the one true Jackie, all 246 pounds of her, is kicking back in her Caribbean hideaway. Some editorial judgments are puzzling. Why include Thom Jones’s ho-hum study of craziness (“Night Train”) when you already have the brilliant and terrifying portrayal of a father’s madness infecting his son (Ben Ehrenreich’s “What You Eat”)? And we don’t need both John Haskell’s “Good World” and Tom Kealey’s “Bones,” experimental offerings with similar structures. With family life, however, the range is impressive, from tight-knit Orthodox Jews (Julie Orringer’s “The Smoothest Way is Full Of Stones”) to the failed family that sells its babies (“The Promise of Something,” by Cheryl Printup).
A mixed bunch, a little below last year’s standard. (Not seen: pieces by Jon Gertner, Paula Peterson, and David Sedaris.)Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2004
ISBN: 0-618-34122-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 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
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