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LOVE AND INFAMY

Name: LOVE AND INFAMY
Author: Frank Deford
ISBN: 0-670-82995-1

by Frank Deford ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 7, 1993

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Patriotism, Christianity, love, and lust complicate the lives of some very likable young people in Japan in the last years before Pearl Harbor. Deford, NPR commentator, novelist (Casey on the Loose, 1989, etc.), and sportswriter, tackles the Japanese and Japanese-ness in this consistently interesting story about two friends who are sucked into the heart of the plans for the attack on Pearl Harbor. Cotton Drake and Kiyoshi Okuno have known each other most of their lives. Cotton is the son of Episcopal missionaries whose Japanese education and childhood friendships have made him truly bicultural. He and Okuno go off to Yale and Harvard, planning to go into business together, and they make a successful start in Hawaii in the late 30's. But Cotton's religious leanings get the better of him and he returns to Japan as a missionary. At the same time, a friendship with the great Admiral Yamamoto draws the disappointed Kiyoshi into a job spying on the Americans, whom he knows so well and whom he so admires. Yamamoto thinks an attack on Pearl Harbor will keep the Americans out of a Pacific war, and Kiyoshi believes him enough to help. As Kiyoshi scouts out the US Navy, Cotton tries to save Japanese souls while his own is imperiled by a most un-Christian attraction to Kiyoshi's wife, Miyuki, who has her own fascinating history. Meanwhile, intimations of Yamamoto's designs lead Cotton to intrigue with a Tokyo prostitute and put his friendship with Kiyoshi to test after frightening test. There's a lot of business with a treacherous American diplomat who wants the war to start and a Japanese general who shares his eagerness. Everything boils down to a desperate race to warn the Yanks. Always interesting, occasionally affecting: Deford's ambition to show the run-up to the war from the Japanese side is largely fulfilled. There's no wretched translato-speak; the coincidences that are the convention of the genre don't distract; and the scenery fascinates.

Pub Date: Dec. 7, 1993

ISBN: 0-670-82995-1

Page Count: 514

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1993

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
OVER TIME
by Frank Deford

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BLISS, REMEMBERED
by Frank Deford

- BOOK REVIEW
THE ENTITLED
by Frank Deford

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BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

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Sisters in and out of love.

Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.

Pub Date: May 1, 2003

ISBN: 0-345-45073-6

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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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.