An intense, impressionistic exploration of art and sexuality.
A biographer of artists reflects upon his long-term romantic relationships with his painter wife and her novelist brother in Atwill’s (The Galisteo Escarpment, 2008, etc.) novel.
One July morning in 2011, Graham Obermann is handling the final details for a scheduled birthday party that evening for his wife, modern artist Celia Prosper. People will expect him to toast Celia at the party as the love of his life, but “that is not entirely true,” he tells readers. “I love another one of the Prospers as much, if not more.” The novel then crosscuts between Graham’s party preparations and his history with the Prosper family, which began when he and Celia’s brother, Karl, shared an apartment during graduate school in 1960. Graham soon accompanied Karl home to the Prosper compound in Santa Fe, New Mexico (where Graham now lives), which was dominated by patriarch Wingrave Prosper, the first of many artists about whom Graham will write biographies. Graham marries and has children with Celia, but she accepts the fact that he spends his summers in Europe with novelist Karl, where the two men pursue a sexual relationship as well as their individual writing. Several tragedies punctuate the proceedings—Wingrave dies in a blaze that has roots in his parental transgressions, Karl experiences trauma from his stint in the Vietnam War, and other Prosper relatives tragically perish. A wrap-up at the story’s end reveals yet another shocking event and a new relationship. Santa Fe–based Atwill has crafted a colorful, complex novel. He presents his main character in the first person in its 2011 segments and in the third-person in all others; the result is a rich, prismatic portrait that touches on Graham’s musings on his own nuanced sexuality as well as his various studies of postimpressionist artists. He draws secondary characters and subplots less successfully, though; Karl’s appeal, for example, is more stated than shown, and Wingrave’s sins are worthy of further development, perhaps in a separate novel. Overall, however, this is an ambitious, beautifully rendered effort.
An intense, impressionistic exploration of art and sexuality.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-63293-106-1
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Sunstone Press
Review Posted Online: March 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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