Serious fun and a rare, rich feast for many: Schickler’s unabashed use of allegory and his skillful weaving of the dark and...
Enchanting debut novel by Schickler (Kissing in Manhattan, stories: 2001), who stitches together a kind of crazy-quilt picaresque that seems to be inspired in equal measure by Pulp Fiction and Parsifal.
There’s an unhappy hood named Henry Dante who works for the creepy Chicago mobster Honey Pobrinkis. Honey (who isn’t above freezing people to death in restaurant coolers) has just managed to buy a seven-stone diamond collection known as the Planets through a middleman who subsequently pockets the stones and plans to flee the country with them. Along with Honey’s other two strong-arm guys—his sinister nephew Roger and screwbally, comic-foil Floyd—Dante is sent to bring them back. But when Roger tries to turn the pickup into a hit, Dante spares the mark, punches out both of his partners, and takes the Planets himself. What do you do when you’ve beat up Honey’s nephew and stolen $40 million worth of ice? You hit the road, of course, and don’t ask where. That will eventually bring you face-to-face with Grace McGlone in Janesville, Wisconsin. The daughter of a devout God-fearing mother and a worthless, unknown father, Grace is a kind of Manichean schizophrenic, a bit like Lara from Dr. Zhivago, who manages to fall in love with Christ despite being raped by her mother’s revivalist preacher: a Christian gospel radio show evangelist by the name of Bertram Block. When Grace and Dante meet at the car wash in Janesville, it’s love at first sight—albeit a very strange love indeed. The deep-down honorable Dante confesses his mob past to Grace, upon which she proceeds to marry him and help him get away. As they flee across the country to outrun Honey’s inevitable retribution, they give away the Planets one by one, until, after a climactic showdown at another God’s Will revival, there’s nothing left but Earth. But, in the end, Earth is enough.
Serious fun and a rare, rich feast for many: Schickler’s unabashed use of allegory and his skillful weaving of the dark and comical make him one of the best new voices in years.Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2004
ISBN: 0-385-33568-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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