A competent and earnest historical novel.
In this third book of a planned tetralogy, Rochester (Madrone, 2014, etc.) continues the story of Nathaniel “Nate” Hawthorne Flowers, now a promising young writer, who’s almost roped into an infamous 1970s revolutionary group.
Things are going great for Nate. Not only is he back in school at the University of California, Santa Cruz, but he’s also back in the arms of Jane Chandler, his one true love. On top of that, his short story collection has just been published. At the first stop of his book tour, in Chicago, who should show up but Tim Rosencrantz, whom Nate knew in the Air Force. Tim is now with Weatherman, the bomb-planting splinter-group of the Students for a Democratic Society. He likes to blow things up and, like Lord Byron, he’s mad, bad, and dangerous to know. Nate and Jane try to distance themselves from Tim (who later surfaces with a new name, “Jude Lennine”) but he keeps hanging around, especially at Ethereal Ranch, the gang’s hippie pad in Santa Cruz. Young Crystal has a crush on Tim, and to say that he leads her wrong is a tragic understatement. This novel is as much Tim’s story as Nate and Jane’s. He’s a wonderfully drawn character—an idealistic loner who’s conflicted about his sexual orientation, and who can be manipulative and charismatic, by turns. He is, in fact, kicked out of Weatherman because, despite his loyalty, they fear that he’s a loose cannon—so he goes rogue as a (mostly) one-man operation. Meanwhile, the FBI—which Rochester sometimes portrays as Keystone Kops-inept and other times as deadly proficient—is closing in, and Nate and the others are torn between selfish fear and touching concern. Indeed, one point that Rochester makes well is that peace-and-love hippies and anarchists were arguably two sides of the same coin. The dialogue in this novel can sometimes be a bit clunky and didactic, but revolution can invite overheated posturing, after all. A preview of the next book in the series shows that Nate’s problems are far from over.
A competent and earnest historical novel.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-62787-590-5
Page Count: 294
Publisher: Wheatmark
Review Posted Online: April 25, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
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
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