Last of the Dracula trilogy begun with 1994's Covenant with the Vampire (not reviewed) and Children of the Vampire (1995), and a tasty feast it is. Volumes one and two were prequels to Bram Stoker's Dracula, while the new work carries the action straight into Stoker with an overlapping plotline that cleaves closely to the famous original— and to Francis Ford Coppola's superb film Bram Stoker's Dracula. In the film, Anthony Hopkins played with huge relish the glorious vampire-killer, Dr. Abraham (Bram) Van Helsing, and since Van Helsing is the main character here, the reader finds it hard to divorce grandstanding Hopkins from the author's Van Helsing, especially when Van Helsing's lines richly echo Hopkins's, as when he describes the only way to save Lucy Westenra from rising from the dead: ``We must cut off her head, put a stake through her heart, and fill her mouth with garlic.'' The Lord of the Vampires is an intensely dark figure who first gave Vlad (Dracula) immortality on the condition that he kill the first-born son of each generation of his family. Kalogridis keeps her genealogical spaghetti-tangle fairly clear. Van Helsing, the mortal son of Arkady, a vampire whom Van Helsing killed but failed to behead, must save his own son, wealthy Dr. John Seward, who owns and manages the famous madhouse where insect-eating Renfield is kept behind bars. Vlad must kill Seward. Kalogridis's story quickly dissolves into Stoker's, and familiar scenes pass by, viewed from a fresh angle. The new storyline involves the radiantly beautiful Elisabeth Bathory, who has thrived for many centuries by murdering virgins (600 and counting) and bathing in their blood. She is in search of a magic parchment that will help her kill the hopelessly medieval Vlad himself and bring vampirism up to speed in the 19th century. Kinky sex, a sly, literate narrative and liplicking action, even if largely reheated. Fun.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-385-31414-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1996
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
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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