An engaging, dynamic story that grapples intelligently with themes of race, class and morality.
In Fournier’s thoughtful debut novel, a young man comes of age in the tense atmosphere of a city teetering on the edge of chaos.
Jake Malone, a white college kid in suburban Detroit in 1967, gets kicked out of school and decides to earn a little money to get a car of his own. He ends up at Zug Island, a steelworking plant that’s a world away from his suburban home. When he first sees the place, it reminds Jake of Dante’s Inferno, but he doesn’t know yet how literal that perception will become. After a tense fight at the plant, he’s befriended by Theo Semple, an African-American man who came to Detroit for better wages but left a family and a tragic history back in the South. In their spare time, Jake and Theo hit the town seeking adventures. As the story unfolds, what they find is eye-opening for Jake—from prostitution and police brutality on the streets of Detroit to the casual racism found in the all-white suburbs. The racial tension builds, until one day it explodes in riots that turn Detroit into an inferno. Told from Jake’s perspective, the short novel—part journey through hell, part social document, part adventure story—depicts his struggles with race and class pressure. Fournier reveals what life was like not only on Zug Island, but also on the streets of Detroit, in its white suburbs and in white and black churches. Readers may wish the author had spent more time in some of the scenes, particularly the riots, which are described from a distance. The Vietnam War is mentioned, but its impact is left unexplored. Also, at times, Fournier steps back from the story to fill in general history that is illuminating, even though it breaks the narrative flow. On the whole, however, the novel is tightly written with a dramatic plot, well-rounded characters and clear insights into social history.
An engaging, dynamic story that grapples intelligently with themes of race, class and morality.Pub Date: June 15, 2011
ISBN: 978-1604945850
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Wheatmark
Review Posted Online: July 11, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A captivating allegory about evil, lies, and forgiveness.
Truth and deception clash in this tale of the Holocaust.
Udo Graf is proud that the Wolf has assigned him the task of expelling all 50,000 Jews from Salonika, Greece. In that city, Nico Krispis is an 11-year-old Jewish boy whose blue eyes and blond hair deceive, but whose words do not. Those who know him know he has never told a lie in his life—“Never be the one to tell lies, Nico,” his grandfather teaches him. “God is always watching.” Udo and Nico meet, and Udo decides to exploit the child’s innocence. At the train station where Jews are being jammed into cattle cars bound for Auschwitz, Udo gives Nico a yellow star to wear and persuades him to whisper among the crowd, “I heard it from a German officer. They are sending us to Poland. We will have new homes. And jobs.” The lad doesn’t know any better, so he helps persuade reluctant Jews to board the train to hell. “You were a good little liar,” Udo later tells Nico, and delights in the prospect of breaking the boy’s spirit, which is more fun and a greater challenge than killing him outright. When Nico realizes the horrific nature of what he's done, his truth-telling days are over. He becomes an inveterate liar about everything. Narrating the story is the Angel of Truth, whom according to a parable God had cast out of heaven and onto earth, where Truth shattered into billions of pieces, each to lodge in a human heart. (Obviously, many hearts have been missed.) Truth skillfully weaves together the characters, including Nico; his brother, Sebastian; Sebastian’s wife, Fannie; and the “heartless deceiver” Udo. Events extend for decades beyond World War II, until everyone’s lives finally collide in dramatic fashion. As Truth readily acknowledges, his account is loaded with twists and turns, some fortuitous and others not. Will Nico Krispis ever seek redemption? And will he find it? Author Albom’s passion shows through on every page in this well-crafted novel.
A captivating allegory about evil, lies, and forgiveness.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2023
ISBN: 9780062406651
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A moving portrait of rueful middle age and the failure to connect.
An acclaimed novelist revisits the central characters of his best-known work.
At the end of Brooklyn (2009), Eilis Lacey departed Ireland for the second and final time—headed back to New York and the Italian American husband she had secretly married after first traveling there for work. In her hometown of Enniscorthy, she left behind Jim Farrell, a young man she’d fallen in love with during her visit, and the inevitable gossip about her conduct. Tóibín’s 11th novel introduces readers to Eilis 20 years later, in 1976, still married to Tony Fiorello and living in the titular suburbia with their two teenage children. But Eilis’ seemingly placid existence is disturbed when a stranger confronts her, accusing Tony of having an affair with his wife—now pregnant—and threatening to leave the baby on their doorstep. “She’d known men like this in Ireland,” Tóibín writes. “Should one of them discover that their wife had been unfaithful and was pregnant as a result, they would not have the baby in the house.” This shock sends Eilis back to Enniscorthy for a visit—or perhaps a longer stay. (Eilis’ motives are as inscrutable as ever, even to herself.) She finds the never-married Jim managing his late father’s pub; unbeknownst to Eilis (and the town), he’s become involved with her widowed friend Nancy, who struggles to maintain the family chip shop. Eilis herself appears different to her old friends: “Something had happened to her in America,” Nancy concludes. Although the novel begins with a soap-operatic confrontation—and ends with a dramatic denouement, as Eilis’ fate is determined in a plot twist worthy of Edith Wharton—the author is a master of quiet, restrained prose, calmly observing the mores and mindsets of provincial Ireland, not much changed from the 1950s.
A moving portrait of rueful middle age and the failure to connect.Pub Date: May 7, 2024
ISBN: 9781476785110
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
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