A complex, out-of-the-ordinary thriller loaded with worldly characters.
Fulbright’s (The Man with a Charmed Life, 2014) novel details a hostage situation and the mysterious information it uncovers.
When Phil Harrington and his partners decide to take hostages, their reasoning is altruistic. Calling themselves New METRO—“Because we aim to give new meaning to our city’s underground system through those five letters M, E, T, R, O: Meaningful Endeavour To Reach Out. To reach out to London’s homeless and dispossessed”—the group hatches a scheme that involves Uzis and a crowded London theater. Without spilling any blood, they successfully capture the prime minister’s son, among others in the theater. The group feels they might be on to something, despite some less than supportive press—“West End madmen tell Hastings: Help the homeless or we kill your son,” one headline reads; “Semtex suicide sadists sabotage Stoppard,” says another—which they dismiss as “right-wing garbage.” After one of the kidnapping collaborators discovers a vault connecting to the theater, the story takes a strange turn. It’s full of invaluable art as well as a mysterious casket. Could its contents redefine history? Heavy on word count (at 600-plus pages) and wordplay—“ ‘Selling Oyster cards?’ said Devonshire. ‘Must have been where he got his pearl of a brainwave’ ” —the story features cultivated characters discussing sophisticated subjects. “Whatever you may care to believe to the contrary,” a hostage says, “a smutty 20th century magazine purveying toilet-door plautitudes (sic) is not the ideal source for glosses to Gibbon’s Decline and Fall.” With mentions of everything from Kramskoi’s Christ in the Wilderness to Goethe’s Faust to the Septuagint, the frequent dialogue is dense with cultural references and educated assertions, often with a lighthearted touch. The value of such references relies largely on the reader’s tolerance for remarks such as “Methinks he was flatulent. Difficult to dazzle students with the square on your hypotenuse, while you’re producing fragrant ellipses from your anus.”
A complex, out-of-the-ordinary thriller loaded with worldly characters.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2015
ISBN: 978-1784621278
Page Count: 626
Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd.
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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