Much of the humor is as stiff as the corpses in this weak satirical debut. Quirks abound, and the subject is certainly an original one, but this modern fairy tale about homegrown embalmer Andy Archway rarely works. Discovered by famed funerary scout Wake Wakefield setting up one of his trademark tableaux in the barn behind his parents' house, Archway seems destined to revolutionize the funeral business: Rather than simply placing corpses in caskets, he arranges them in diorama-like settings that recall their major interests. Wakefield arranges a scholarship for Archway at the Thomas Holmes University of Embalming and Funerary Practices, promising employment with funeral maestro P.T. Sunnyside in Rancho Norman Rockwell, Calif., upon graduation. The text alternates bumpily between satirizing baseball (e.g., the title, Archway's participation on his school's competitive embalming team) and spoofing the funeral business (Sunnyside and his arch rivals, the Drabford brothers, literally feuding over dead bodies). This lack of focus is not helped by Archway's change in directions: Initially his gift is artistic, but he soon becomes involved with trying to break the speed-embalming record. The characters are fairly well fleshed out, but their personalities are random rather than organic to the story. Archway's relationship with a woman who carves tombstones, for example, gains nothing from the fact that she is Mexican. The action takes place in a vaguely modern time period whose fuzziness adds to the plot's lack of definition. Competition in the funeral business may very well be cutthroat, but as presented here the idea of workers toiling to build a gigantic pyramid of synthetic stones under the supervision of an Oxford- educated Egyptologist seems bizarre rather than funny. Too many passages cause the reader's head to shake, not in amusement but in confusion. A clever idea that buries itself.
Pub Date: March 28, 1995
ISBN: 0-312-11910-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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