An overly long, sometimes meandering tale that still achieves a vivid portrait of an important moment in time.
A coming-of-age novel about a group of college freshman grappling with growing up during historically tempestuous times.
Sanford’s first effort bristles with ambition and follows a cast of teenagers starting their first year in 1966 at Ezra Bible College in Illinois. By turns, they struggle with their spirituality in the face of both disbelief and zealotry, the looming specter of the Vietnam War, their painful maturation into adults and the complications of their blooming sexuality. Ultimately, this is a collective bildungsroman, a parable about the grinding effort to find one’s adult self amid the emotional chaos of adolescence. Though an ensemble, the narrative centers around Jim Scott, a complicated young man from a small town in Indiana trying to come to terms with his understanding of the world. His supporting cast is picked artfully—perhaps too neatly—to represent a range of human types and the social issues they personify. Duke is the outspoken musician from the Midwest; Solomon, the alienated African-American; Jane, the disaffected urbanite; and Marsha, earnestly faithful. The question of religion’s authenticity is always in the background, sometimes appearing as a warrant for intemperance and sometimes as a tonic to moral license. At a college known for its “high standards for their students—spiritually, morally, intellectually, socially and athletically,” coming to terms with war and fledgling sexuality proves tough; the oppressive “hellfire and brimstone” sermonizing of Rev. Jennings, who transforms Jesus into a “five syllable word ‘Ja-eez-a-suz-a,’ ” certainly doesn’t help. And the confusions of war are only exacerbated by religious doctrine, used as a rhetorical bludgeon to support both military engagement and peace. Sometimes, the narrative lingers too long on childish high jinks, especially of the lascivious kind, but the author also shows impressive restraint by not mentioning marijuana until more than 150 pages in to the story. The tangled intersection of war, morality and youthfulness crescendos in a lurid crime committed against a female student and an even darker act of revenge, punctuating the darkness that seeps into the act of self-discovery, both at the individual and national levels.
An overly long, sometimes meandering tale that still achieves a vivid portrait of an important moment in time.Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2013
ISBN: 978-1475245998
Page Count: 456
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2013
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
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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