Mosher covers too much familiar territory to make this a really memorable debut, but it contains enough good things to whet...
Predictable but often moving first novel about a boy's coming-of-age summer in Montana.
Kyle Richards has been in love with the Big Sky country for most of his 14 years. His father was born and grew up in Montana; Cole Richards, his grandfather, still lives there. From books, atlases, films, and every other source he can lay hands on, Kyle has fashioned a larger-than-life idea of the state that makes his own native New York seem drab and overdomesticated. Kyle yearns to go West, so as a birthday present his parents give him a bus ticket and permission to spend the summer with Grandfather Cole. It doesn't take long for reality to put a damper on romanticism. Kyle arrives late at night to find no one waiting to meet him in the bleak and deserted bus terminal. Tired and a bit scared, the boy is temporarily stranded. Grandfather Cole was supposed to be there, but he had other things on his mind—namely, booze and women. Kyle quickly learns this is standard operating procedure for his grandfather, who soon hauls him off to the Six Point Saloon to meet an array of unsettling types. Among them are Darla and Dell Fishtrapper, lively, hefty, morally untrammeled Sioux maidens, both entranced with Grandfather Cole. In the succeeding weeks, Kyle is shaken and sobered by a series of hard knocks: a near-drowning, a beating at the hands of a mean-spirited bully, and a violently hormonal response to a local beauty. Most of all, however, he experiences Cole Richards, last of the real Montana men, from whom he learns a variety of lessons. Some are beneficial, some are not; none are easy.
Mosher covers too much familiar territory to make this a really memorable debut, but it contains enough good things to whet the appetite for his next.Pub Date: April 30, 2001
ISBN: 1-56792-146-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Godine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
Hammond (stories: Breathe Something Nice, 1997, not reviewed) definitely goes for the baroque here. Overwrought and crammed...
Incest, suicide, and a dead baby—who could ask for anything more in a first novel?
Theodora Mapes writes copy for the kind of children’s catalogues that feature perfect velvet dresses and wooden toys. She’s not amused by the irony when she finds herself unexpectedly pregnant: any child of hers will have more than its share of psychological baggage. Her own mother, Marian, committed suicide when Theo was eight. Her cold, remote father denies it still, though he does admit his dead wife had a drinking problem. Theo can relate to that: she’s separated from husband Jackson, a phlegmatic midwesterner with an unquenchable thirst for beer. Living in southern California after leaving their Colorado home, Theo seeks the truth about the deaths of her mother and her baby sister Charlotte. The family is less than forthcoming: Dad says only that babies died more often in those days; older brother Corb is closemouthed to the extreme; even Evan, their garrulous former housekeeper, has nothing to add. Theo consoles herself with former boyfriend Gregg, churns out precious, adjective-laden copy, and continues her search for any concrete information about her mother’s demise. She happens upon a cache of medical and psychological evaluations and learns that Marian had attempted suicide several times, undergoing electroshock treatment and a stint in a mental hospital before succeeding. Then Theo finds her mother’s letters and discovers that not only had her grandfather raped Marian and younger sister Lyla, he’d done the same to four-year-old Theo. But wait There’s worse to come, as Marian’s correspondence continues with confessions of her own lurid misdeeds. Nothing daunted, Theo gives birth in due time to a daughter and showers her with healthy mother love and . . . milk.
Hammond (stories: Breathe Something Nice, 1997, not reviewed) definitely goes for the baroque here. Overwrought and crammed with often revolting detail.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2001
ISBN: 1-57962-034-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Permanent Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2001
Distinguished by a keen sense of period detail and sharp pacing: Geary serves his subject with dignity and grace.
The author/illustrator of Jack the Ripper (1995) continues to focus on Victorian crime in this latest historical comic, part of a series on 19th-century murder, based on a true-life story so compelling it inspired a short story by Edgar Allan Poe. While Poe was intrigued by the philosophy of detection in the case, Geary’s apparent interest lies in its revelations about urban lowlife of mid–19th-century New York City. His thick-lined black-and-white narrative, with its loose, curvy edges and distinctive bulbous lettering, well suits this historical curiosity. Geary’s well-researched book recounts the mysterious death of Mary Rogers, a young single woman who lived with her mother near present-day City Hall. When her corpse washed up on the western side of the Hudson River, many journalists became fascinated by the possible reasons for her fate. Was she an innocent, brutally murdered by one of the boarders at her mother’s house? Was she killed by a jealous lover or by one of the many male admirers who patronized the tobacco store where she worked? Or was it a botched abortion? These questions captured the imagination of the contemporary public and press because, in Geary’s view, Mary’s story was a powerful cautionary tale of emerging city life, which the artist illuminates in many sidebar historical drawings. Unsolved in part because of the period’s inadequate forensic techniques, the story becomes “a testament to the unknown and unknowable,” and Geary’s visual airiness perfectly captures the mysteriousness at its core. This is certainly a far cry from his early work for National Lampoon and Heavy Metal.
Distinguished by a keen sense of period detail and sharp pacing: Geary serves his subject with dignity and grace.Pub Date: May 1, 2001
ISBN: 1-56163-274-0
Page Count: 80
Publisher: NBM
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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