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TO SLEEP WITH GHOSTS

Name: TO SLEEP WITH GHOSTS
Author: G.F. Michelsen
ISBN: 0-553-08932-3

by G.F. Michelsen ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 15, 1992

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Tantalizing echoes of Achebe and Conrad in an ambitious first novel. Set in a nameless East African country, where an aging president has power for life and the official (and only) political party, NAFU, controls every aspect of life, the story is as much about the struggles of hapless Samuel Kimbu to find meaning in existence as an indictment of what the West and corrupt Africans have done to the continent. Samuel—a customs officer at the port of Mutara, where Arab dhows and freighters share dockage—spends his day examining lading bills and responding to queries from sea captains and merchants. A former merchant marine officer, unfairly punished for an accident, he dreams of returning to his beloved sea but instead finds himself caught up in a web of intrigue involving the CIA and Inspector Zulu, head of Security. Sent to Yemen as a spy, Samuel takes passage on a mysterious dhow that's supplying guns to a putative liberation group. He's caught, jumps ship, and nearly dies, but then is rescued—only to find that the promise to get him a job at sea was merely a ruse. Increasingly bitter, Samuel discovers next that his boss has enriched himself by smuggling, and that lethal chemicals from abroad have been dumped in Shebeen Town, the poorest quarter of the city. Forced to participate in an initially unsuccessful raid on the rebel group, he has, while their party awaits rescue, a brief affair with the daughter of the CIA official who's there to direct the operation. Back in Matara at his old job, Samuel has lost his faith in God and man—all that remains are the stories in us, ``as if every human in the last analysis were only a story told more or less well.'' Requisite local color and characters all well done, but the promising narrative peters out into a not-so-subtle—though understandably outraged—indictment of the usual villains. Still, Michelsen is a writer to watch.

Pub Date: July 15, 1992

ISBN: 0-553-08932-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Bantam

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1992

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE ART AND PRACTICE OF EXPLOSION
by G.F. Michelsen

- BOOK REVIEW
HARD BOTTOM
by G.F. Michelsen

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SUMMER ISLAND

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2001

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...

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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

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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LAST ORDERS

by Graham Swift ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 5, 1996

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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.