by Jack Fuller ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 14, 2000
An optimistic, intricately layered rewrite of The Aspern Papers, with grimy jazz clubs standing in wonderfully for James’s...
Chock-a-block with religious imagery, mystical epiphanies, rhapsodic lectures on music theory and splendid evocations of the tawdry-but-hip jazz milieu, this sixth novel from Fuller (News Values, 1996, etc.), a journalist who is now president of the Chicago Tribune Company, reconstructs the life of a brilliant but doomed black jazzman through the eyes and ears of his quixotic biographer.
A composite drawn from the best, and worst, of John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, Dexter Gordon, and Ornette Coleman, Fuller’s fictional tenor saxophonist Jackson Payne remains a musical enigma to Charles Quinlan, a white, middle-aged, recently divorced college professor on leave to write what he hopes will be the ultimate biography of an American jazz musician. Quinlan feels he knows Payne’s music well enough to hear honesty, despair, confusion, drug-induced euphoria, religious revelation, and lots of pain. But what of the man himself? Digging up Payne’s Army buddies, agents, sidemen, lovers, wives, and rivals, Quinlan predictably gains some insights, but they’re not enough to settle the disturbing ambiguities: Did Payne, born poor in Chicago, die of a drug overdose, or was he murdered by those he had betrayed? What relationship did a sexually abusive Baptist minister and a prison cabal of homosexual Muslims have on his bitter affairs with women and on his last-chance attempt to redeem his daughter from prostitution? Quinlan embarks on an awkward romance with Lasheen, the secretary of a private investigator he’d hired. A frustrated concert pianist who favors Bach over Basie, Lasheen can’t let Quinlan forget the subtle racism that taints his vision. Quinlan’s meandering interview transcripts and quirky notebook jottings end as an ironic metaphor for his endeavor: biographers will never know why artists do the things they do, but the truth-seeker’s journey offers enough even to make the failure worthwhile.
An optimistic, intricately layered rewrite of The Aspern Papers, with grimy jazz clubs standing in wonderfully for James’s sinking Venice.Pub Date: June 14, 2000
ISBN: 0-375-40535-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2000
Share your opinion of this book
More by Jack Fuller
BOOK REVIEW
by Jack Fuller
by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
Share your opinion of this book
by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
Share your opinion of this book
More by J.D. Salinger
BOOK REVIEW
More About This Book
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.