Veteran novelist Carroll (Dog Eat Dog, 1999, etc.) offers a heady brew of military history and conspiracy theory that will appeal to aficionados of both.
The Pulitzer Prize–nominated journalist smartly centers this historical novel, an amalgam of fact and supposition, on a charming rogue. Lowell Brady is a junior naval officer looking for a safe place to ride out the seemingly inevitable World War II. As the son of a wealthy mother and the stepson of an influential senator, he sees it as his natural-born right; years later, he says, “[Y]ou run into men who say they want to be ‘tested’ in battle, but…ignorance explains the greater part of that. Being in a situation where heroes are made is damned poor planning in the first place.” His henpecked stepfather was a confidant of President Franklin Roosevelt, and FDR decides to use young Brady’s natural proclivity as a gossip to gather information at the highest levels of American and British societies. The president wants to find a way to overcome the American public’s aversion to joining the war effort before it’s too late. Brady undergoes a dizzying ascension, during which he meets such historical giants as Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin, but he eventually becomes a man who knows too much—and his minimal conscience ends up getting him in trouble with the powers that be. Later, in 1953, Smithsonian researcher Harriet Gallatin discovers Brady living under a pseudonym in a veteran’s home, where he tells her a shocking tale: Roosevelt, he says, “schemed to bring us into war with Japan, and even knew that their fleet was en route to Pearl Harbor.” As a result, she soon finds herself in danger as well. Carroll believably brings both historical and fictional figures to life while slowly and skillfully unreeling Brady’s story, which shifts back and forth between World War II and the early 1950s. The fast-paced story successfully juxtaposes Brady’s own first-person remembrances and Gallatin’s initially skeptical analysis of the man (“Brady said that most of the recent history I knew was bunk”). Overall, the author’s journalistic style develops a detailed portrait of an unlucky man caught up in events far beyond his control.
A riveting adventure that effectively explores the idea that history is written by the winners.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-0989826907
Page Count: 360
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2014
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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