An admirable but too-squeaky-clean protagonist in a story that capably manages its contentious subject matter.
In first-time novelist McBride’s dramatic thriller, a successful businessman is shocked when his troubled teenage son accuses him of molestation.
Shane Connelly has made something of himself, a young hooligan–turned–college graduate now launching his own high-tech firm, Parallax Café Technology. His home life, however, is a different story. Both his wife, Tara, and teenage son, Nick, have mental problems, exacerbated by Tara’s heavy drinking and Nick’s frequent drug use. Shane, fed up with Nick’s late-night partying and family cars mysteriously vanishing only to turn up again, finally kicks him out of the house. That same day, Tara files a restraining order against Shane; Nick, it seems, has alleged that Shane’s been molesting him. Shane has believers in daughters Jaclyn and Caitlyn Joyce and his sister Katie, but he faces an uphill battle, struggling with the charges and confusion over why his son would accuse him of such things. The novel sometimes terrifies, showing how a simple allegation can make a person appear guilty. One of the cops who interrogates Shane, for instance, threatens him, while most people, even those supporting Shane, warn him that he’ll almost certainly be killed in prison. McBride ably develops sympathy for his protagonist, perhaps a little too well. Anticipation gradually diminishes as the case against Shane becomes increasingly rickety, especially with schizophrenic paranoid Tara as the only person who fully believes Nick’s claim. The story gives Shane a chance at romance with Lia, a woman he meets just before his troubles begin. He falls in love a little too fast—“Could she be the one?” he thinks, before Lia’s even talked about herself—but scenes with the two, as well as Jaclyn and CJ, are welcome reprieves from Shane’s tirelessly proclaiming his innocence. The story takes place in 2001, beginning months before 9/11, but McBride doesn’t allow the tragedy to be a mere backdrop. Shane and Lia’s helping others at ground zero, in fact, solidifies their relationship. The ending is predictable but absolutely satisfying, and Shane even earns a surprising, unlikely ally along the way.
An admirable but too-squeaky-clean protagonist in a story that capably manages its contentious subject matter.Pub Date: Jan. 27, 2015
ISBN: 978-1483421971
Page Count: 222
Publisher: Lulu
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
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
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.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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