Vivid, horrific, visionary, disarmingly sentimental tales: let’s hope for a novel to follow soon.
The Pushcart Prize–winning memoirist and poet returns to the barren New Mexico landscape, troubled families, outlaw gangs, and despairing orphanages of his youth.
After recounting his nightmare childhood and criminal past in his superb A Place to Stand (2001), Baca offers a debut collection of eight stories, tales like “Matilda’s Garden,” about a Hispanic farmer, mourning his dead wife, who suffers a violent accidental death that may also have been a miracle. In the title piece, the man’s squabbling children, tempted by the seductions of mainstream American romance and security, nearly destroy their entire village when one of them sells a portion of the farm—until all is saved, once more in a miraculous fashion. In “The Three Sons of Julia,” Baca again mines the theme of antagonistic siblings—one criminally violent and proud of his Hispanic roots, the other educated and shamelessly aspiring to the gringo lifestyle—who drive their mother into a drunken delirium during a wretched family reunion. A Catholic orphanage makes for moments of heartbreaking sadness in “The Valentine’s Card” and for sadistic menace in “Runaway.” Baca is clearly searching for a meaning in the overwhelming cruelty and hardship his characters suffer, whether from their grim addictions to sex, alcohol, and greed, or from an unseen, possibly supernatural hand that guides them to a brutal, optimistic truth. Thus, when three vicious sociopaths are suddenly freed from prison in “Enemies,” the hatred that kept them alive behind bars turns into mutual respect. The only weak entry is “Mother’s Ashes,” a heavy-handed noir vignette of a debauched lawyer hoping to extort sex from a former client. Most impressive is “Bull’s Blood,” a gritty redemption tale about a burned-out, 40-year-old musician and a 20-year-old rodeo sweetheart who realize they love each other after enduring the gory spectacle of a bullfight.
Vivid, horrific, visionary, disarmingly sentimental tales: let’s hope for a novel to follow soon.Pub Date: March 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-8021-1765-1
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A moving, eloquent exploration of faith and its response to the refining fire of life’s challenges.
Molded by their backgrounds and childhood experiences, the individual members of two couples adopt beliefs which will define them—until they are confronted by a heart-wrenching challenge.
Writing with restrained lyricism, Wall’s debut—15 years in the making—offers a kind of literary chamber music, combining the viewpoints of a quartet of characters across multiple decades and events. Charles, the son of a Harvard professor, is a man reliant on research and insight. James, whose drunken father was broken by war, will grow up to be full of impatience and the urge to action. Nan, the daughter of a Southern minister, has learned patience and generosity while Lily, orphaned at 15, is happiest when withdrawn. Charles’ unswerving love for Lily is matched by James’ determination to marry Nan even though neither couple seems a natural fit. When both men opt for a life in the church, Nan is better equipped for the role of clergyman’s wife than independent, brittle Lily, who feels no obligation to conform. The four eventually connect when Charles and James are offered the joint ministry of Third Presbyterian Church in Greenwich Village. Old-fashioned in tone and subject matter, the story is set in the mid-20th century and evokes some of the stifling social norms of the era. Wall has a very precise sensibility, and there is no escaping the sense of tidy predetermination in the clear, fixed positions of her four figures and their various oppositions, seen through the debates, struggles, rejections, and consolations that arise among them. Finely drawn and paced and written with intense compassion, the novel shifts ground with a late development that will test and push forward each of the four, leading to a conclusion consistent with Wall’s grace and control.
A moving, eloquent exploration of faith and its response to the refining fire of life’s challenges.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-982104-52-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 12, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
PROFILES
Another triumph for Enright: a confluence of lyrical prose, immediacy, warmth, and emotional insight.
A daughter reveals the intertwined tales of her mother—a theatrical legend—and herself, a mature retrospective of sharing life with a towering but troubled figure.
Katherine O’Dell, star of stage and screen, blessed with beauty, red hair, and a gorgeous voice, “the most Irish actress in the world,” was not Irish at all. She was born in London, and the apostrophe in her name crept in by error via a review following one of her appearances on Broadway. However, the fact that Katherine is “a great fake” doesn’t cloud the love her daughter, Norah, has for her, a bond which exists alongside the unanswered question of Norah’s father’s identity, “the ghost in my blood.” The complexities of this mother/daughter relationship and its context in Ireland, the men it includes, and the turns both women’s lives take through the decades are the meat of this tender, possessive, searching new novel from Man Booker Prize–winning Irish novelist Enright (The Green Road, 2015, etc.). Saga-esque, it traces Katherine back to her parents, strolling players from another era who invited her on stage at age 10, scarcely imagining the luminous, internationally recognized figure this “useful girl” would become. But the novel is no fairy tale. Katherine’s life was marked with loneliness; disappointing, sometimes exploitative, and abusive men; the pressure of trying to remain successful; a desperate act of violence; and a breakdown. Norah narrates both her mother’s life and her own—she’s the author of five novels, a mother, a sexual being, and also the sole offspring of a parent she both adored and observed at a distance. Fame, sexuality, and the Irish influence suffuse the story, which ranges from glamour to tragedy, a portrait of “anguish, madness, and sorrow” haunted by a late, explanatory glimpse of horror which nevertheless concludes in a place of profound love and peace.
Another triumph for Enright: a confluence of lyrical prose, immediacy, warmth, and emotional insight.Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-324-00562-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
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