Cooper (Closer, ) specializes in graphic forays into the punk/gay subculture of pornographic sex and mad-slasher violence. To justify such indulgence, he layers the narrative with references to Sade and Genet, his patron saints—but his latest, about a narrator obsessed with fantasies of sexual mutilation, fails to transform voyeurism into art, despite its pretensions. Narrator ``Dennis'' is fixated on death and sex, especially when the two are combined as a way to gain esoteric knowledge. While AIDS has made it more difficult here to romanticize death in that way, Cooper assembles his usual assortment of fetishes, embodied in such characters as Julian (``as far as I'm concerned, love's what you feel for someone you don't know very well, if at all''); Julian's kid brother Kevin (``a Julian replica, only shorter, and sort of too pretty''); and Henry (``Sometimes...I wish I could just sort of temporarily die''). Cooper on one level paints a grotesque, effective portrait of disaffected and marginalized homosexuals, but he overplays his hand so garishly that much of this reads like self-parody or black humor, depending on your tastes. At any rate, it comes to a finish in Holland, where Dennis has gone to live, writing back to Julian about men and boys he has murdered in a series of ritualistic killings. But Julian, fascinated, arrives with Kevin only to discover that it's all a figment of Dennis's imagination. On the train, Julian is left with pleasant memories of Dennis—not ``the psychotic me, but the teenager gazing purposefully into the holes in boys' bodies.'' Only Cooper's ability to get away with murder saves this from being a total put-on, for at least he does offer a sober glimpse of aimless dissipated lives. It's too bad that his conventional pseudo-clinical treatment of such lives is more jaded and monotonous than revelatory.
Pub Date: May 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-8021-1399-0
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1991
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
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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