Irish writer Martin’s audacious second novel (after Breakfast in Babylon, 1997) traces the odd lives and uncertain prospects of the five children of a self-absorbed mother and a father hounded by mental illness. At the heart of this sad, sharp-eyed story is a quest. Aisling, the eldest child, the one most like a real mother to the other four as they—re growing up, eventually flees the children’s native Ireland, communicating only intermittently with the family. Later, several of the other children depart as well, to England or to America, restlessly searching for some sort of life worth living. Keelin, the youngest, most nearly stable, and most responsible, is finally persuaded by her mother to go in search of Aisling, who, after years of adventures abroad, has disappeared. The sensual, assertive Aisling has left a variety of beguiled or battered figures in her wake, and as Keelin retraces her sister’s erratic path—leading her to the seamy underside of Tokyo, then on to America’she begins to sense a liberating effect: new possibilities, a life outside the old rather dull certainties, suddenly seems possible. There are other adventures along the way: Keelin’s sister Orla reclaims a son she gave up for adoption many years before; Patrick, Keelin’s only brother, sinks deeper into a series of phobic, self-destructive rituals. And Oscar, Keelin’s uncle, who is both gay and a priest, finds his carefully suppressed past irresistibly catching up with him. Martin renders all of this in a prose of exuberant power and velocity. While the fate of many of the characters is more grim than joyful, and while Keelin’s climactic confrontation with Aisling in a setting of tropical squalor is more painful than liberating, the novel nonetheless carries a kind of jaunty, defiant good humor right to its close. Startling, distinctive work that’s about the way families shape lives, and that charts with a kind of unflinching precision the costs of escaping from the past. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Feb. 15, 1999
ISBN: 0-395-91871-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
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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