Completely juvenile and thoroughly enchanting.
Silly and very droll debut by a London paleontologist who likes pirates and has obviously grown up on old Monty Python reruns.
The story of the high seas, daring, romance, ham, and men who like to dress up in women’s clothing begins in the 1850s near the Galapagos Islands, where a crew of jolly—very jolly—pirates loll about the beach all day, planning sumptuous Ham roasts and toying with astrolabes (or possibly sextants—they can never quite get them straight). Worried that discipline is getting slack, the Pirate Captain decides to take his men to sea and set upon the first vessel they find, which happens to be the Beagle, with Darwin aboard. After ransacking the ship for not much plunder, the pirates agree to spare Darwin’s life in exchange for a trip back to London with him and his trained chimpanzee, Bobo. Darwin expects to make a fortune off Bobo on the music-hall circuit, though he faces stiff opposition from the dastardly Bishop of Oxford, Soapy Sam Wilberforce, who has invested heavily in P.T. Barnum’s traveling freak show and dislikes competition. The bishop has gone so far as to kidnap Darwin’s brother Erasmus in hopes of persuading Darwin to cancel the show. Back in London, Darwin puts the pirates up at the Royal Society, passing them off as scientists. Bobo takes the West End by storm (his enactment of The Journal of the Plague Year is a great smash), and the pirates are soon the toast of the town. They manage to save Erasmus, vindicate Darwin, and thwart the bishop’s scheme for extracting the life force from nubile young women (hint: the machine won’t work on men in drag). They even manage to invent a dirigible and go a fair way toward getting Darwin laid. All that’s missing are some silly songs and Terry Gilliam animations.
Completely juvenile and thoroughly enchanting.Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2004
ISBN: 0-375-42321-4
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2004
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
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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