A fixture of the gay literary scene for decades, Picano (To the Seventh Power, 1989, etc.) merits more respect for his earnestness and the expansive nature of his latest effort, an attempt to sum up queer culture since the end of WW II, than he does for his prose. Picano paints with broad strokes, adopting the now familiar gay-novelist tactic of integrating a few personal narratives with the sweep of history. In the closeted 1950s, staid narrator Roger Sansarc is visited by his precociously flamboyant cousin, Alistair Dodge, the sort of bratty twerp who takes coffee with the grownups, makes other kids watch Fred Astaire flicks with him, and still manages to affect a formidable carapace, mainly because he woos authority while trashing its rules. After a gap of several years, during which both boys hit teendom, Picano relocates the story to the West Coast, where Roger is visiting Alistair: By far the book's snazziest, this section reads like a campy, more conservative precursor to Bret Easton Ellis's Less Than Zero. Gay ideologies eventually take over, however. The narrative's structure shifts between the present and the slippery past: In the former, Alistair has been ravaged by AIDS, and Roger has taken up with a much younger man whose politics are solidly ACT UP; in the latter, Rog and Stairs float from coast to coast, bumping into each other at places like Woodstock and sharing an obsession for Matt Loguidice, a not-too- swift poet who functions as the novel's Achilles, right down to his bum foot, the result of an encounter with a mine in Vietnam. When the Grim Reaper finally catches up with the mercurial Stairs, matters at last rise above the level of mere chronicle and bitchy humor, but it's too little, too late. A wonderful survey from someone who knew everybody and saw it all. But knowledge and experience are not always enough.
Pub Date: July 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-670-86047-6
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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