An intensely conceived study of the varieties of contemporary religious experience that teases the mind intriguingly while never quite fully becoming the fiction it aspires to be. The story begins in the fall of 1999, with the random notebook jottings of a writer seeking a fictional subject, meanwhile worrying the idea of the physical universe’s “profound, disastrous, hopeless infinitude,” and what this may imply about the indifference, malevolence, or perhaps nonexistence of God. A subject soon presents itself: a brass cross disappears from St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church in Manhattan, then inexplicably turns up on the roof of the nearby Synagogue of Evolutionary Judaism. The writer, Everett, makes the acquaintance of Episcopal priest Thomas Pemberton, a freethinking cleric distrusted by his superiors, with whom Everett exchanges life stories. The novel exfoliates ambitiously, as Pemberton bonds impulsively with the Synagogue’s Rabbi Joshua Gruen and his wife Sarah (herself a rabbi); then, following Joshua’s death during a “mission” to Europe, Thomas and Sarah fall in love, and Thomas begins the (literally) soul-searching process of converting to Judaism. Against this spare fictional framework, Doctorow (The Waterworks, 1994, etc.) counterpoints eloquently phrased and argued related “documents”; the story Sarah’s elderly father tells of his experience of the Holocaust; Everett’s re-creations (in free verse form) of his father’s and brother’s service in both world wars, and his own in Vietnam; his sardonic interpretations of the religious meaning implicit in American popular songs (such as “Me and My Shadow”), the avocation of birdwatching, and the culture of movies; and'in the boldest imaginative stroke'his invention of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s diary, which opposes to the Nazis’ destructive Weltanschauung an impassioned defense of the inquiring mind’s potential for creativity. City of God both is and isn’t a dramatization of the experience of questioning, losing, then partially regaining one’s faith. There’s something to pique and challenge the reader’s imagination on virtually every page. But, like the novel it most resembles (Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five), what it actually dramatizes is its own (failed but fascinating) attempt to organize its own teeming content into fictional form.
Pub Date: Feb. 17, 2000
ISBN: 0-679-44783-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2000
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
