Wolf doesn't quite fill the shoes of Jean Auel here, nor does her third prehistoric romance (after The Horsemasters, 1993) strike off in many new directions of its own. At the end of the Pleistocene era, the ``Allerîd'' (a global warming trend) poses a challenge for tribes living on reindeer meat and other game as temperatures rise, glaciers shrink, and the vast herds of reindeer migrate, leaving the people of Europe competing for dwindling food supplies. The tribes in the foothills of the Pyrenees are lucky; reindeer are still plentiful in their area. As traders spread the word, hungry reindeer hunters migrate to make this land their own. The Norakamo and Kindred tribes, both indigenous to the area and both Horsemasters (as opposed to horse eaters), cement their strategic relationship by marrying Nardo, son of the Kindred chief, to fair Alane, daughter of the Norakamo leader. Blonde Alane is a distant cousin to Auel's blonde Ayla- -apparently even at the dawn of history blondes had more fun— though not so big and adventurous (no riding on cave lions). When she goes to live with her husband's tribe, she highlights the differences between her patriarchal people and the matriarchal, Mother-worshipping Kindred. Her attempts at getting Nardo to spend more nights at home threaten her mother-in-law, who fears that the Mother Blood is in danger. In creating a matriarchal society, Wolf shows women a different way of perceiving themselves and their potential importance in society. She also invents new words (``da'' for ``yes,'' ``na'' for ``no,'' the all-purpose exclamation ``dhu'') and provides the usual stilted ``primitive'' language: ``Alane tried to raise her knee so that she could get him in a place where it would hurt.'' Wolf's anthropological fantasy is always interesting, but it gets weighted down in plot and explanation. A horse and reindeer show that never hits its stride. (Literary Guild selection)
Pub Date: Nov. 13, 1994
ISBN: 0-525-93848-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994
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
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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