Stilted prose combines with creaky allegory in a very odd family saga—a mix, perhaps, of Mister Rogers, Roots, and The Good...
A third novel from playwright and storywriter Cooper (The Future Has a Past, 2000, etc.) follows five generations of African-Americans from the Deep South of the Civil War to a Chicago suburb in the 20th century.
You get a feel for the outline of the story here early on, when the narrator tells you that her tale is about the good people who live in a neighborhood called Dream Street in a town called Place. The narrator herself speaks in a tone that falls somewhere between Diogenes and Ecclesiastes, relating the vanities of those who manage to make their way in the world and the travails of those who don’t. Among the latter are some of the descendants of an ex-slave named Eula, who, in the late 19th century, manages to leave the South and make her way north to Oklahoma. Her children work as sharecroppers at first, and their children move farther north with each generation until they reach Illinois. In the lean years of the Depression, Eula’s granddaughter, Eula Too, sets out for Chicago, but she’s raped, beaten, and left for dead along the way. She’s rescued by a high-class bawd named Madame LaFon and given a job and a place to live in Madame’s Chicago brothel. Madame grows to love Eula Too and provides her with a good education. Madame grew up in the woebegone little town of Place, in a dreary little house on Dream Street. Her dying mother lives there still, and Madame looks after her with Eula Too’s help. There are all kinds of people living on Dream Street, including the Chinese immigrant Ha and the Jewish refugee Maureen Iris, both of whom (like Eula Too) had to struggle against great odds to get there.
Stilted prose combines with creaky allegory in a very odd family saga—a mix, perhaps, of Mister Rogers, Roots, and The Good Earth.Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2004
ISBN: 0-385-49682-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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