THE NIGHT BUFFALO

Name: THE NIGHT BUFFALO
Author: Guillermo Arriaga
ISBN: 0-7432-8185-3

by Guillermo Arriaga ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 23, 2006

A flashback-heavy movie concerning the obsessed mind of Manuel and his memories of Gregorio and Tania might make for a more...

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Though Arriaga has impressed with his provocative screenplays, the first novel published in the U.S. by the Mexican writer falls flat on the page.

Many of the themes here of blood, betrayal, loyalty and man’s animal instincts will be familiar to fans of 21 Grams and The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, both scripted by Arriaga. Even so, this novel follows a strong set-up with minimal payoff. At the core of the plot is a romantic triangle. Most of what’s significant reveals itself in the first few pages. Narrator Manuel feels guilt toward his best friend, Gregorio, who has recently been released from a mental institution after showing some severely self-destructive tendencies. Gregorio appears willing to reconcile with Manuel, who had slept with (and remains very much in love with) Gregorio’s girlfriend, Tania. Now in their early 20s, all three had been close friends at least since their early teens, until Tania chose Gregorio as her boyfriend and Manuel as her secret lover. Manuel has also slept with Gregorio’s sister and has an uneasy relationship with his younger brother. On page three, Gregorio commits suicide, leaving the characters with the rest of the novel to resolve their various issues of guilt, love and lust. Nothing ever really gets resolved, though Gregorio and his hallucination, the titular “Night Buffalo,” remain omnipresent in the mind of Manuel, in particular. As for Tania, it’s hard to know exactly what she’s thinking, whether her love and allegiance lie with the living or the dead. The combination of existential navel-gazing and south-of-the-border bloodlust (like a Mexican mélange of Albert Camus and Cormac McCarthy) wears thin over a couple hundred pages with minimal narrative momentum. The resolution offers too little, too late.

A flashback-heavy movie concerning the obsessed mind of Manuel and his memories of Gregorio and Tania might make for a more compelling experience than this curiously inert novel.

Pub Date: May 23, 2006

ISBN: 0-7432-8185-3

Page Count: 240

Publisher: Atria

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2006

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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DISTANT SHORES

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2002

Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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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.