Rice (Crazy Loco, 2003, etc.) pulls stories from his native ground, that fertile bicultural soil along the Rio Grande where the great border river makes its way to the sea.
The book includes nine pieces of original “sudden fiction,” often no longer than two pages, all of which are told in the first person. As with some of the previously published pieces, many seem autobiographical, and all explore the life of a child in the vibrant Mexican American culture of south Texas. Rice has a fondness for a sharp turn at a story’s end, not an O. Henry ending, but delightful all the same. The sudden fiction includes “Man vs. Beast,” wherein two little brothers are stung while maliciously killing a jellyfish, and “Dad Shoots to Kill,” about a boy who worries about his National Guard father, sent to watch for looters prowling the hurricane-ravaged streets of Brownsville. The longer works come from Rice’s collection Give the Pig a Chance and his contributions to anthologies. The author makes death a character in more than one of the pieces, and there are BB guns, mythical beasts, curses and even teenage experiences in hospitals that inspire medical careers. The most emotionally affecting may be “Tina La Tinaca,” in which a lonely, unattractive single woman becomes guardian to Hector, the son of her drunken brother. A day at Astroworld and a Major League baseball game—“The best time I ever had in my whole life”—ends in tragedy. Throughout, Rice displays a gift for descriptive turns of phrase—e.g.,“[Mother] shook her now-angry dishrag.” The book concludes with the script of a play authored by Mike Garcia based on a Rice short story, “She Flies.” That play, with its theme of opportunities lost and taken by young Hispanic women, has been performed in front of audiences across the nation.
An intriguing variety of stories about growing up Mexican American.
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-931010-79-5
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Bilingual Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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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