This collection offers mostly innocuous tales of holiday festivities with a smattering of laughs, quite a few yawns, and very little genuine wisdom. In her introduction, London journalist Segrave asserts that Christmas tends to ``highlight human failure,'' and each of these 18 stories deals with this theme. The stories—some new and others that have appeared previously; by newcomers and writers as well-known as William S. Burroughs—explore our capacity for forgiveness in light of the expectations the holiday tends to invoke. Debut author Omar Sattaur looks at a peace offering to a jilted lover through the eyes of two young boys more concerned with whether a battery-operated Porsche and toy air rifle will appear under the tree than the with the loneliness of their Aunty Pearly, abandoned years ago by her husband (``A Neck Like Yours''). Mandla Langa's protagonist recalls the tragic death of a friend, when they were young boys working the docks in South Africa, and stops blaming himself (``Zizi''). But sometimes, forgiveness does not come easily. In A.L. Kennedy's sad tale of regret and spite, a father tries not to let his gentle daughters see how angry he is with the mother who failed them (``The Snowbird''). William Trevor provides a somber portrait of an Irish wife living in England who tries to reconcile her Irish husband with a longtime British family friend who won't show up for Christmas dinner because her hard-headed husband inadvertently suggested they approve of the bombings of innocent bystanders and now refuses to amend his statement (``Another Christmas''). And other times, forgiveness never comes. Mary Broke Freeman's wife finally leaves her cheating husband (``A Date with Santa''), and Andrew O'Hagan's rejected student exposes his teacher as a junkie (``Glass Cheques''). Christmas may represent hope and rebirth for many, but these slices of life, for the most part, fail to live up to such potentially powerful themes. More fun than fruitcake but less exciting than a Sear's wish book.
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 1994
ISBN: 1-85242-344-7
Page Count: 180
Publisher: Serpent’s Tail
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 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
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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