With complexity, honesty, and, above all, a sense of home, this book delivers a striking tale of a young émigré in the...
A debut novel encapsulates American traditions, bringing New York and immigrant stories together in that often overlooked part of the metropolis, the Bronx.
How do you fit in as an uncertain young man in a country going through uncertain times? It’s a question that haunts many and lies at the core of this story. But it’s even more relevant to Joey, who begins his American experience living on the outside looking in. His first years after his family emigrates from Italy are lonely, but survival leads to new opportunities, and the clan moves to the Bronx in the 1960s, putting Joey among relatives, friends, and his own people in the United States for the first time. But while the support and leadership of his cousin Spike and the rest of the local gang open up the world to Joey, they’re not enough to keep him from feeling like an outsider. There are times when he acts like one of the gang, chasing girls, dodging the dangers of the city, and having the madcap adolescent adventures he’s dreamed of. But too often he’s overcome by a sense that he doesn’t quite belong and that some terrible upheaval is coming. Case in point: the enigma of Rudy Kazoody, a figure who seems to represent Joey’s hopes, his terrors, and the sense of cultural shift and shock that pervades the boys’ corner of the city simultaneously. But for all that, and the fact that Kazoody only comes up in times of anguish, the other boys won’t tell Joey a thing about him. While Freda’s novel takes some expected turns, weaving in the love and loss that accompany any coming-of-age yarn, there’s more to this work than just those tropes. The mystery of Kazoody gets at a unique piece of immigrant experiences: the confusion, isolation, and even despair that come with growing up between two worlds. This narrative is only furthered by the tumultuous backdrop of the ’60s, with war and cultural change informing the boys’ trajectories. Brought to life by Joey’s complex narrative voice, the story cuts to the heart of America.
With complexity, honesty, and, above all, a sense of home, this book delivers a striking tale of a young émigré in the turbulent ’60s.Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4602-9242-6
Page Count: -
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Nov. 14, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2017
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
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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