A self-important debut that focuses on the plight of inner- city schools. Insel makes the mistake of thinking that an important topic, without a coherent and inventive story, can form the basis for a novel. Through a multi-perspective narrative, she relates the tale of the principal, the teachers, and the students at a failing urban high school that's suffering from low attendance rates, increasing violence, and low test scores. We see how a teenage student like Cirri can decide that school just doesn't help much when she's struggling to keep her junkie mother off the streets, her younger brother and sister clothed and fed, and herself from loving a heartbreaking fellow student and small-time drug dealer. We see how a school principal named Heck, after years of fighting the onslaught of drugs, violence, and poverty, can feel burned out, especially when he's losing control of his own daughter, who insists he's out of touch with the black community. We see an idealistic white teacher named Danny trying to raise her students' self-esteem as she strives to make it as a single mother of a 13- year-old boy. Just to round out the tale, Insel throws in a student who, being white in an overwhelmingly black school, prides himself on being the baddest dealer around; a schools superintendent stuck on test scores rather than the personal successes of kids; and an ex-con who teaches shop and gets fired for sexually harassing students (Danny has the hots for him, and when he says that in ``all my other jobs you whistled at the ladies,'' she actually excuses him as being ``out of his element''). Unfortunately, Insel's so busy trying to give every side of this story that she never explores any one side deeply enough to offer true substance. And the amateurish writing, with a melodramatic and unbelievable ending, rings studied and false. Agenda-driven drivel that fails to inspire understanding or compassion.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1995
ISBN: 1-883285-04-6
Page Count: 273
Publisher: Delphinium
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1994
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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