An entertaining romp with a complex emotional core.
A mid-20th-century, coming-of-age novel follows two fraternity brothers.
Mac and Weber are every inch the slackers everyone from their Ohio University fraternity expects. While global tensions may be rising, their biggest concerns are the next party, the next conquest, the next gut-busting prank—even if Mac hasn’t managed to match the least of Weber’s apparent sexual exploits and calls a lot of their wasted time pathetic in retrospect. And it’s in precisely this tradition that they embark on the classic hedonistic pastime of hitchhiking, specifically to the Kentucky Derby, where they hope successful betting will take them to new heights of debauchery. But even on this kind of adventure, life catches up with the participants, and the boys are tested again and again, witnessing death, police brutality, and all manner of people at their very worst. The specter of the Vietnam War hangs over it all, as they encounter mentally ill veterans and see the consequences of the conflict much more closely than they had on their fraternity’s TV. For Mac, the trip is a quest for maturity, growth, and bravery, although it takes a while for him to realize that. Courage and conviction have a cost, and the act of paying it sets him on the beginning of an even more difficult path. McHenry’s (Black Lick Creek and the City of Broken People, 2016) tale delivers wit and wisdom. It is meandering and wild, ready at any time to offer an aside on the fraternity’s escapades or Weber’s constant bragging and storytelling. The down-to-earth prose and the quality of the pacing give the novel the feel of something that the reader is hearing about at a bar from one of the regulars, an organic sensibility that is the book’s greatest strength. At the same time, Mac’s introspection and self-loathing seem incredibly real and more personal than one might get from oral tales. His struggle with his lack of experience and cowardice is a frequent presence but not an overbearing one, giving the reader a sense of camaraderie with both him and Weber and a vested interest in how their saga ends.
An entertaining romp with a complex emotional core.Pub Date: Oct. 24, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-977973-03-0
Page Count: 278
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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