A year after his lawyer wife was killed in a car accident, a burglary in his house makes New Orleans film reviewer Mike Barnett wonder whether her death was really accidental. Five years before she died, Joan Barnett was hired by black developer Tom Grieve to sue real-estate mogul Sheldon Retif for withholding the right to build Thomas Jefferson Magnet High School on the site that Retif sold Grieve. Losing the case on a shaky verdict by distinguished Judge Leon Delacroix, Joan argued the appeal all the way to a procedural victory in the Supreme Court— but too late to change the location of the school (which had already been built) or help Grieve (who died soon after). Now that the burglary has alerted Mike to Joan's missing Grieve v. Retif files, though, nagging questions return. What did Retif hope to get by building the school on a plot of land the University of New Orleans had donated to the city? Why had Delacroix ruled against Joan's client? Why has Tammy Dieter-White, Joan's old antagonist in the case, forbidden her associate Johnny Chambers, formerly of Joan's firm, to talk to Mike? And what does Joan's death have to do with the current executions of gay men throughout the city? Readers who can get past the leaden badinage of Mike and Joan in extended flashback—plus the oracular wisdom of Mike's endless film reviews, heavy with liberal uplift—will find the answers satisfyingly revealing about racial politics, big-city corruption, and the self- created mythography of the Big Easy. Though it may make you impatient with the characters—how long is it going to take Mike to realize that Joan's death was no accident?—the mystery plot lends Barton (The El Cholo Feeling Passes, 1985; Courting Pandemonium, 1986) a new momentum and a cumulative power that's surprisingly moving.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-679-40813-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1993
Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of...
Lifelong, conflicted friendship of two women is the premise of Hannah’s maudlin latest (Magic Hour, 2006, etc.), again set in Washington State.
Tallulah “Tully” Hart, father unknown, is the daughter of a hippie, Cloud, who makes only intermittent appearances in her life. Tully takes refuge with the family of her “best friend forever,” Kate Mularkey, who compares herself unfavorably with Tully, in regards to looks and charisma. In college, “TullyandKate” pledge the same sorority and major in communications. Tully has a life goal for them both: They will become network TV anchorwomen. Tully lands an internship at KCPO-TV in Seattle and finagles a producing job for Kate. Kate no longer wishes to follow Tully into broadcasting and is more drawn to fiction writing, but she hesitates to tell her overbearing friend. Meanwhile a love triangle blooms at KCPO: Hard-bitten, irresistibly handsome, former war correspondent Johnny is clearly smitten with Tully. Expecting rejection, Kate keeps her infatuation with Johnny secret. When Tully lands a reporting job with a Today-like show, her career shifts into hyperdrive. Johnny and Kate had started an affair once Tully moved to Manhattan, and when Kate gets pregnant with daughter Marah, they marry. Kate is content as a stay-at-home mom, but frets about being Johnny’s second choice and about her unrealized writing ambitions. Tully becomes Seattle’s answer to Oprah. She hires Johnny, which spells riches for him and Kate. But Kate’s buttons are fully depressed by pitched battles over slutwear and curfews with teenaged Marah, who idolizes her godmother Tully. In an improbable twist, Tully invites Kate and Marah to resolve their differences on her show, only to blindside Kate by accusing her, on live TV, of overprotecting Marah. The BFFs are sundered. Tully’s latest attempt to salvage Cloud fails: The incorrigible, now geriatric hippie absconds once more. Just as Kate develops a spine, she’s given some devastating news. Will the friends reconcile before it’s too late?
Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of poignancy.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-312-36408-3
Page Count: 496
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2007
BOOK TO SCREEN
Not as thematically ambitious as Whitehead’s earlier work, but a whole lot of fun to read.
Another surprise from an author who never writes the same novel twice.
Though Whitehead has earned considerable critical acclaim for his earlier work—in particular his debut (The Intuitionist, 1999) and its successor (John Henry Days, 2001)—he’ll likely reach a wider readership with his warmest novel to date. Funniest as well, though there have been flashes of humor throughout his writing. The author blurs the line between fiction and memoir as he recounts the coming-of-age summer of 15-year-old Benji Cooper in the family’s summer retreat of New York’s Sag Harbor. “According to the world, we were the definition of paradox: black boys with beach houses,” writes Whitehead. Caucasians are only an occasional curiosity within this idyll, and parents are mostly absent as well. Each chapter is pretty much a self-contained entity, corresponding to a rite of passage: getting the first job, negotiating the mysteries of the opposite sex. There’s an accident with a BB gun and plenty of episodes of convincing someone older to buy beer, but not much really happens during this particular summer. Yet by the end of it, Benji is well on his way to becoming Ben, and he realizes that he is a different person than when the summer started. He also realizes that this time in his life will eventually live only in memory. There might be some distinctions between Benji and Whitehead, though the novelist also spent his youthful summers in Sag Harbor and was the same age as Benji in 1985, when the novel is set. Yet the first-person narrator has the novelist’s eye for detail, craft of character development and analytical instincts for sharp social commentary.
Not as thematically ambitious as Whitehead’s earlier work, but a whole lot of fun to read.Pub Date: April 28, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-385-52765-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2009
BOOK TO SCREEN
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