An urgent report on the state of American aspirations and a haunting dispatch from forsaken streets.
Ambitious, moving tale of an inner-city Newark kid who made it to Yale yet succumbed to old demons and economic realities.
Novelist Hobbs (The Tourists, 2007) combines memoir, sociological analysis and urban narrative elements, producing a perceptive page-turner regarding the life of his eponymous protagonist, also his college roommate. Peace’s mother was fiercely independent, working nonstop in hospital kitchens to help aging parents keep their house. His father, a charming hustler, was attentive to Robert until his conviction on questionable evidence in a double murder. Mrs. Peace pushed her bright son toward parochial school, the best course for survival in Newark, already notorious for economic struggles and crime. Compulsively studious, Robert thrived there—a banker alumnus offered to pay his college tuition—and also at Yale. Hobbs contrasts his personal relationship with Robert with a cutting critique of university life, for the privileged and less so, capturing the absurd remove that “model minority” and working-class students experience. At Yale, Peace both performed high-end lab work in his medical major and discreetly dealt marijuana, enhancing his campus popularity, even as he held himself apart: “Rob was incredibly skilled in not showing how he felt [and] at concealing who he was and who he wanted to be.” After graduation, Peace drifted, as did many of his peers: Hobbs notes that even for their privileged classmates, professional success seemingly necessitated brutal hours and deep debt. But Peace drifted back into the Newark drug trade; in 2011, he was murdered by some of the city’s increasingly merciless gangsters due to his involvement in high-grade cannabis production. Hobbs manages the ambiguities of what could be a grim tale by meticulously constructing environmental verisimilitude and unpacking the rituals of hardscrabble parochial schools, Yale secret societies, urban political machinations and Newark drug gangs.
An urgent report on the state of American aspirations and a haunting dispatch from forsaken streets.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4767-3190-2
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2014
PERSPECTIVES
Brisk, sharp, and elegant.
Film critic and memoirist Sayre (Previous Convictions, 1995) recalls her astonishing circle of acquaintances in mid-1950s London.
“Like millions of young Americans with knapsacks and bicycles,” she writes, Sayre headed to England at 22 to find what London might hold. There her resemblance to any typical American youth ends. The daughter of a New Yorker writer, she was soon taken up by her parents’ London friends (a cross-section of the period’s intelligentsia that few 22-year-olds could ever dream of meeting) and enjoyed a five-year stay in the company of history makers. Her first apartment came courtesy of Arthur Koestler, Tyrone Guthrie hired her to research scripts for his theater company, critic John Davenport helped her navigate the London literary scene, and A.J. Liebling became her dinner companion. In the wrong hands, such a tale could be insufferably smug; happily, Sayre is a charming raconteur with a light comic touch that comes into play when she recalls such incidents as Graham Greene, outraged by a savage review from Liebling, running in circles around her and a companion who had been seen with Liebling earlier in the evening. Interleaved with tales of stars—Katherine Hepburn grousing about a friend’s rusty garden tools, Ingrid Bergman’s musings on Casablanca’s two final scenes—is fine political history. An extended chapter on the blacklisted Hollywood community gives vivid insight to the motivations of the exiles and provides an excellent précis of what was happening in the artistic community back home, long before most Americans had a comprehensive view of the anticommunist battle. “All this history was new to me. . . . About twenty years passed before it was publicly discussed in my own country.” Sayre is not above the tasty details, however; she lards her entire narrative with descriptions of who wore what and how their houses were decorated.
Brisk, sharp, and elegant.Pub Date: June 5, 2001
ISBN: 1-58243-144-2
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Counterpoint
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
Highly detailed and as exciting as the best Patrick O—Brian novel, this is one of the best accounts of the great British admiral’s dazzling achievements, from the deputy director of England’s Royal Naval Museum. Published to commemorate a pivotal year in the “Nelson decade” (the period from 1795 to 1805, of which the bicentennial is currently being marked), this brief account looks at the period that solidified Nelson’s position as Britain’s chief hope in maintaining her position as the world’s leading maritime power. The author combines outstanding scholarship with narrative skill to capture the excitement of such events as the evacuation of Elba, the Battle of Cape St. Vincent, the blockade of Cadiz, and the attack on Tenerife (in which Nelson lost his arm). White also debunks many of the myths that have surrounded Nelson over the years, such as his supposed disobedience at the Battle of Cape St. Vincent—a “disobedience” that saved the battle and won an earldom for Sir John Jervis, the commanding admiral of the British fleet at St. Vincent. Illustrated throughout by period paintings (unfortunately not in color), the book utilizes boxed sidebars to present new information on Nelson and his battles. This varies in importance, from done-to-death topics like who really cut off Nelson’s arm to such really juicy bits as the revelation that a former Nelson mistress, Adelaide Correglia, spied for him during his blockade of the Italian port of Leghorne (Livorno). Written with sweep and excitement, capturing the spirit of Nelson by looking at one memorable year, this will be a treat for any naval history fan.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-7509-1999-X
Page Count: 176
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1999
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