Poet and novelist Manrique (Latin Moon in Manhattan, 1992, etc.) returns with further tales of Santiago (Sammy) Martinez, a gay Colombian writer/filmmaker tormented by past and present horrors despite his picaresque, cosmopolitan life. In the first of five sections, Sammy is living an impoverished, bohemian life in the homophobic Madrid of the '70s. Cadging meals, raptly watching Pasolini movies, and posing as a Texan to get English-teaching jobs, he falls in love first with a naive, devoted teenaged boy and then with a worldly friend from Colombia. But Sammy's true purpose is to become ``the Colombian Sylvia Plath''; and in a frantic two weeks, he writes a violent, surrealistic novel designed to shock his family. Manrique's narrative takes a turn for the bizarre as we are plunged into a long, dreamlike fiction-within-a-fiction, apparently part of Sammy's work. In Sammy's tale, a farcically aristocratic Colombian diplomat smothers his dying father, whose body is stolen from the funeral parlor during the raucous, sex-and-death-suffused atmosphere of Carnival. Some autobiographical links between Sammy and his creation become apparent in subsequent sections, as Sammy explores his own feelings about illness, family, and his native country. Many years later, he finds work as a film professor in New York. Working on a documentary about the homeless, he can only watch helplessly as a brilliant student succumbs to crack addiction while chronicling his self-destruction in a film inspired by Kafka's ``Hunger Artist.'' In the last major episode here, Sammy finally returns to Colombia. As he visits friends and family, Sammy confronts Colombia's tumultuous politics, remembers past events both joyous and terrible, and uncovers his druglord uncle's brutal history. The material is dark and the narrative disjointed, but Manrique handles his complicated story with deftness and ready humor. A powerful take on various forms of violence, suicide, political repression, sexual abuse, and the possibility of transcending them through love and art. (Author tour)
Pub Date: March 25, 1997
ISBN: 0-571-19901-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Faber & Faber/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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