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WINGS OF DUST

Name: WINGS OF DUST
Author: Jamal Mahjoub
ISBN: 0-435-90984-3

by Jamal Mahjoub ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1994

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The fictional memoirs of an expatriate North African suffer from a sense of incompleteness. A middle-aged man named Sharif, writing from French exile, tells how he and several other young countrymen came to postWorld War II England to get a European education that could be applied in their unnamed, recently independent country (which sounds an awful lot like the Sudan). While his classmates study, Sharif marries a local widow and runs off to Paris in pursuit of an American jazz singer. He becomes her manager, travels the world, and forgets about his homeland until circumstances find him saving the reputation of a powerful countryman caught in a compromising situation with a prostitute. After this man rises in the latest coup at home, Sharif becomes governor of the desert region where he grew up. There he wheels and deals with his old classmates and causes the desert oasis to bloom with crops and buildings, miracles that are eventually wiped out by dust storms and narrow-minded military rulers. Mahjoub (Navigation of a Rainmaker, not reviewed), son of an English mother and Sudanese father, captures the innocent idealism of the nomadic young men who came to Europe for enlightenment, as well as the cynicism and bitterness of present- day Sudan, but his characters lack purpose. We never know why Sharif does anything, how he feels about the historically incredible situations he stumbles into, and how he was (or wasn't) transformed by his experiences. The same goes for his fellow students, who all wind up in powerful positions in the government or the opposition intelligentsia. Has nothing been learned from the destruction of Sharif's homeland and his youthful curiosity? An interesting point of view and a smart, observant voice are regrettably underutilized here.

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1994

ISBN: 0-435-90984-3

Page Count: 218

Publisher: Heinemann

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1994

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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SUMMER ISLAND

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2001

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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LAST ORDERS

by Graham Swift ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 5, 1996

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Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.