A sweet, albeit by-the-book, tale of human connection.
A sick young boy and an elderly man looking for something to live for form a deep bond in this debut novel.
Murray McBride is turning 100, but he’s in no celebratory mood. Still mourning the death of his beloved wife, Jenny, 18 months ago, Murray feels his life has run its course. He’s outlived not only his wife, but also his two sons, who died after long lives. His only remaining family, his grandson, Chance, seems to only be after his money. Murray’s Roman Catholic faith has been the main thing keeping him from suicide recently, but he resolves to make his 100th birthday the last day he takes the daily pill his lungs need to function, figuring such a death doesn’t really count. Vaguely hoping to comfort the ailing on his last full day, Murray wanders into a local heart ward and meets someone who changes his life: 10-year-old Jason Cashman, who desperately needs a transplant and must tote around an oxygen cart. After Jason leaves the hospital with his cold, money-driven father, Murray finds a list of the boy’s five wishes to be granted before he dies. Murray mourns lost time spent with his own sons due to his professional baseball career with the Chicago Cubs, and sees an opportunity to atone. With the assistance of Jason’s wise-beyond-her-years neighbor, Tiegan Rose Marie Atherton, Murray sets out to help the boy kiss a girl, hit a home run, and fulfill his dreams. Siple’s plot devices, messages, and character types will feel very familiar to fans of Hallmark movies and other inspirational tales, and these predictable beats mean his players sometimes feel more like moving cogs than fully complex human beings. But his story is still readable and well-told. Murray’s struggle to find meaning after outliving almost everyone in his life who mattered to him is one of the book’s most sensitively rendered elements. Jason’s reckoning with mortality provides some touching moments as well. But Siple struggles to capture the speech and mannerisms of a 10-year-old boy (Jason’s emails and ebullient statements are peppered with “Schweet!” and “Dude!”), which limits his impact as a character.
A sweet, albeit by-the-book, tale of human connection.Pub Date: June 28, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-68433-040-9
Page Count: 234
Publisher: Black Rose Writing
Review Posted Online: April 17, 2018
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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