Full canvas as the blood flies.
Fourth or fifth “Return to Treasure Island” novel striving to re-create Stevenson’s breezy blood-and-thunder in a new course on the old chart—and tempting the reader with leftover loot still awaiting its return to civilization.
Stevenson’s mesmerizing storytelling voice remains unique, but pseudonymous Bryan (“a very prominent British broadcast journalist”) captures much of the original narrative’s fast action and flying musket balls. With Jim Hawkins now 21, Bryan sensibly upgrades the story from boys’ adventure to young adult, adding a large dollop of sexually subliminal love-interest along with a fresh sense of “drink and the devil” among pirates. Also back: the charming rascality of Long John Silver, last seen making off with a bag of coins and his parrot, Cap’n Flint. Jim is now an innkeeper who has invested his earlier share of the treasure in outfitting his late father’s Admiral Benbow Inn and attracting a higher clientele than rapscallions like Blind Pew, Bill Bones, and Black Dog, who once hid out there roaring oaths and singing “Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest.” The first body drops early. Grace Richardson, on the run with her unruly 12-year-old son Louis, approaches Jim to help her find Joseph Tait, the roughest of three pirates left marooned on Treasure Island as the Hispaniola sailed off. On the road, Grace and Jim are attacked by the Duke of Berwick, and Jim accidentally kills him. Then bad guys chasing Grace and Louis fire upon, and attempt to blow up, the Admiral Benbow. Accused of murder by Sir Thomas Maltby, Jim takes Grace and Louis to his uncle Ambrose for shelter. Soon Jim, Captain Reid, and the Hispaniola are off again for the island to find Tait. Is terrible Tait Louis’s father? Is Louis a love child? How old is Grace—too old for Jim? We are kept in the dark until tale’s end.
Full canvas as the blood flies.Pub Date: May 13, 2002
ISBN: 0-670-03089-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2002
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
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
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