Ambitious in scope, at times poetic with strong imagery, this is a literary work that ultimately resonates with hope.
A complex coming-of-age story about an only child of Holocaust survivors whose keen sense of outsiderness and otherness is intensified by her struggle with coming out as a lesbian.
This debut novel is set largely in Montreal between 1959 and 1970. Goliger (Song of Ascent, 2003) creatively structures the narrative into five parts to correspond with important and often painful passages in Toni Goldblatt's life. "The Mountain" introduces Toni at eight years old, a tomboy who regards dresses as "a frilly prison," loves that "their street hugs the wild side of Mount Royal" and can't possibly live up to "be the miracle child her mother insists God delivered at Toni's birth." Conflicts abound. Her mother Lisa, originally from the Bohemian town of Karlsbad, sews alterations at Shmelzer's and fiercely wants a better, bigger life for her family. The author effectively weaves strands of residual Holocaust fears with Toni's own confusing secrets regarding her emerging sexuality. At 15, she's sent to Camp Tikvah, a Jewish camp in the Laurentians, where she feels like "loose debris," even more of an outcast than at school, and falls in love with the "sassy" (and straight) song instructor Janet. Swept up by the excitement of the Six Day War, Toni, now 18, embarks for Jerusalem; she returns to Montreal when her beloved book-rescuing father dies. The pace picks up when Toni discovers Loulou's, an under-the-radar lesbian bar where she continues to question "Who am I? Neither male nor female, neither fish nor fowl"—and moves even faster in part five when Toni does indeed become a "girl unwrapped," with all its complications and meanings. The personal is emphasized over the political, which is in fact dealt with somewhat superficially, but that is most likely the author's intent.
Ambitious in scope, at times poetic with strong imagery, this is a literary work that ultimately resonates with hope.Pub Date: May 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-55152-375-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Arsenal Pulp Press
Review Posted Online: April 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2011
The derivative plot is enlivened by Candis’s energetic prose. What truly distinguishes this debut, however, is the infusion...
The deep religious faith of a Florida homicide detective helps her bust up a white supremacist group and survive a personal crisis.
In spite of sexism and racism, African-American single mom Jael Reynolds is the leading homicide detective on the Dadesville police force. Jael and her handsome partner Rick Sills are investigating the death of an apparent drug dealer in a local crack house and a second shooting on the street that may be related. Jael’s mood is not improved by another showdown with her egotistical ex Virgil, arriving to take their eight-year-old son Ramon away for the weekend. And her anger turns to grief when Tee Tee, the younger brother of her friend and prayer partner Brenda, becomes the next victim. At this crime scene, someone slips Jael an anonymous note threatening more crimes. Enter hunky African-American FBI agent Eric Grant. Setting aside their mutual physical attraction—as required by both professionalism and morality—the duo investigates an activist group called MAD DADS, which Grant suspects is either a front or a pawn of white supremacists. They’re close to cracking the case when Ramon is kidnapped. With the strength of the Lord, Jael confronts a villain who is “evil incarnate.”
The derivative plot is enlivened by Candis’s energetic prose. What truly distinguishes this debut, however, is the infusion of Jesus into every facet of the story and every aspect of the heroine’s life.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-446-69315-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2004
Turrill (A Bridge to Eden, not reviewed, etc.) can be rambling and slow to set the scene, but offers a taut and highly...
A preacher suffers adversities, has visions, gathers disciples, and sets out to fulfill God’s mission for him.
The Gudsens are old-school Michigan Lutherans: upright, honorable, and dull as dishwater. But lately they’ve been acting kind of strange. Herkimer Gudsen, the pastor of St. Luke’s Church in Saginaw, made headlines a while back when he was shot through the skull with a hunter’s arrow and miraculously lived to tell the tale. Surgeons had to leave part of the arrow shaft embedded in his head, but Herkimer suffered no ill effects whatever—or so it seemed. Now, though, he begins to hear God speaking to him, and the church elders aren’t entirely thrilled by his messages. They expel Herkimer from his church when he refuses to oust two openly gay parishioners who are living together, so he founds a church of his own with the pair of gay refugees as his first followers. His wife Megan, hopelessly ill with skin cancer, is wary of her husband’s visions but becomes a believer in short order when her cancer goes into remission and Herkimer is cured of his impotence. Even Herkimer’s jaded brother Jim, a world-weary Vietnam vet, gets in on the act, forsaking his agnosticism and pledging God his celibacy in exchange for Megan’s cure. When Herkimer declares that God has promised a cure for Megan in exchange for saving 12 lost souls, Jim and his brother take to the road. As they make their way to California, they gather in fallen women, junkies, hypocrites, and sinners of every age and condition. They also find a sister they’d never known about, and a father they’d given up for dead. Will Megan recover? Hard to say—but there’s no shortage of miracles on hand.
Turrill (A Bridge to Eden, not reviewed, etc.) can be rambling and slow to set the scene, but offers a taut and highly focused narrative once he gets going.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2004
ISBN: 1-59264-090-7
Page Count: 444
Publisher: Toby Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2004
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