An extravagantly far-fetched novel that ogles celebrity even as it professes artistic detachment.
A world-class photographer has close calls in Fidel’s Havana and Saddam’s Baghdad in the latest from novelist/critic Lentricchia (Crimes of Art and Terror, 2003, etc.).
Days before the 1962 Missile Crisis, while she was a college senior, Ruth Cohen went to Cuba and took seemingly artless photographs of ordinary Cubans that rocketed her to overnight fame, causing rumors to swirl that she had slept with both Fidel and JFK (not true, though Adlai did make a pass at her at Bobby and Ethel’s place). But something terrible happened in Havana. Ruth was the innocent dupe of two Cuban double agents working for Uncle Sam; the plot to kill Castro went awry, and a small girl died in agony before Ruth’s eyes. Ruth feels responsible for the girl’s death; she seeks anonymity and eventually gives up her career. In 1990, in Utica, N.Y., she meets Thomas Lucchesi, a dismally unsuccessful Italian-American experimental novelist; he’s 59, she’s 46. They marry the next year and retreat to the remote Adirondacks, to live on land given to Ruth by a Rockefeller. At this point, the author fastforwards to 2002, as the build-up to the war in Iraq begins. New Yorker magazine plucks Ruth from obscurity to photograph Saddam; Thomas accompanies her. The shoot is a great success, but then Thomas is grabbed by Saddam’s goons; it’s all a farcical misunderstanding, but he disappears for good. On the surface, this love story makes little sense: Why would Ruth be drawn to the wimpy, hypochondriac Thomas when she’s attracted to men of power (she enjoys Saddam, to her horror)? Buried beneath it, there’s a far more interesting story about an artist looking for redemption, though it’s mystifying that we learn nothing about Ruth’s background, but far too much about Thomas’s (and Lentricchia’s) Utica.
An extravagantly far-fetched novel that ogles celebrity even as it professes artistic detachment.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-9766593-5-2
Page Count: 195
Publisher: Ravenna Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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