A wondrous novel of trauma, individuality, and poetry.
Margetson, in his debut novel, explores the fates of two interwoven families against the backdrop of Brazil’s 1964 coup d’état.
Two families, one rich and one poor, anchor this fictional look at the ways that society fractures along lines of class, race, fortune, and ambition in Río de Janeiro. There, life is as colorful as it is fleeting, and the heat is as oppressive as the police force. Nothing highlights the disparity quite like the column of army tanks that appears in the streets one morning in 1964, during the season of carnival. The lowly bartender Afonso, who serves as the reader’s guide, is a quixotic figure in the most literal sense, driven by some childhood malady (or defense mechanism) to see the world in his own poetic terms. He diminishes the threat of the tanks, for example, by determining them to be a pack of elephants. His young nephew has inherited the practice; the boy calls himself “the Wolfman” and wears a carnival mask that he believes renders him invisible. Such poetic actions transmogrify the violent life of the favelas (urban slums) into something manageable, even beautiful. Meanwhile, the Wolfman's grandmother Zoilma works for a wealthy family that includes teenage photographer Agnes, her blind mother, and her absent, politically active father. Most of the characters are emotionally scarred, and the sins of the previous generation may determine the fate of the current one. Margetson effectively imagines the sweat and samba of Río de Janeiro from half a century ago and, perhaps more impressively, sheds American notions of novelistic structure, pacing, and expectation. The book lingers and leaps with a Latin American rhythm and a heightened tolerance for horror that feels significantly more immersive than the majority of American fiction set in the Third World. The author’s prose keeps readers’ attention locked in the minutiae of his characters, even as events of greater objective importance unfold at the story’s margins: “She kept time, struck the match. Still keeping time with her foot she blew out the match and quickly put it in her mouth, removed it, then exhaled a single smoke ring.” The book is full of these rhythmic moments, which are somehow more vibrant and enduring than the background political events. The author captures not just the facts of a moment in history, but also the humanity at its center.
A wondrous novel of trauma, individuality, and poetry.Pub Date: Aug. 24, 2014
ISBN: 978-1500962807
Page Count: 182
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
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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BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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