The individual voices are not always easily made out, and the song is off in the land of Pierrot Lunaire. Still, brilliant,...
A symphony of a novel, with a master singer—an oltrano, capable of hitting notes most dogs can’t hear—at center stage.
Tropes mutate. Indeed, they mutate “into life itself, taking command of the text altogether, making its story their story—so that it may be said of certain texts not so much that they are lifelike as that the reading of them is like the experience of living.” Thus warned early on, the gentle reader should know that we are somewhere in the interstices among fiction and philosophy and criticism—the realm of the postmodern, in other words. Fear not, for McCourt (Queer Street, 2003, etc.) does not descend into the incomprehensible thickets just for the sake of doing so or to disguise not having anything to say; his language is precise, always lyrical, even if the reader may be forgiven for not knowing entirely where he or she is. Suffice it to say that Mawrdew Czgowchwz—a “famously temperamental mezzo-soprano” whose second name rhymes with “gorgeous”—has a story to tell, a sort of “Moby-Diva,” some of it involving a drunk Josef Stalin, some of it involving wanderings among New York, Ireland and Italy, always congenial country for characters who command a dazzling range of languages and references, coming and going and talking of Michelangelo—and Schopenhauer and higher mathematics and Wittgenstein and “the incurable anguish of the world” and a few dozen other eminently mutable tropes. The plot is as anarchic as a Marx Brothers film, and sometimes as funny, at least if you’re a philosophy don or a connoisseur of gnomic utterances. In the end, not so much happens, but the reader is in for a fine teasing out of the proposition that “language bends not happily to man’s will.” Bend here it does.
The individual voices are not always easily made out, and the song is off in the land of Pierrot Lunaire. Still, brilliant, experimental fun.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-933527-08-6
Page Count: 536
Publisher: Turtle Point
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2007
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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
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BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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