Apart from the title piece itself, this collection of McPhee articles from The New Yorker doesn't really deliver full value. The most interesting, for its subject, is "The Atlantic Generating Station," about a prospective nuclear-power plant floating on an immense hull off the coast of New Jersey; prospectively, too, a magnet and threat to sea life. One man's inspiration that mushroomed, the project (since shelved) enlists the range of McPhee's sympathies and skills, and his peerless knack for signification. Then there's a disarming, if slightly arch, "Talk of the Town" tidbit, "The Pinball Philosophy," about two preeminent players, the Times' Tom Buckley and Pulitzer journalist J. Anthony Lukas ("who, between tilts, does some freelance writing"); there's a characteristic McPhee sortie into the wilds, with a characteristically ill-sorted, well-suited lot of super-woodsmen. And there's the notorious story of "Otto" the pseudonymous chef at an unnamed, out-of-the-way country restaurant who reportedly served McPhee the "twenty or thirty" best meals of his life—and whom New York food writers zealously tracked down and found wanting. (Worse, the usually-meticulous New Yorker had to apologize for an unwarranted slur to four-star restaurant Lutece.) The piece reads like a parody, with its testimonials to the "educated, sensitive, intelligent," dedicated, publicity-shunning proprietors, its 50 pages of magisterals pronouncements on microscopic food topics: a sendup, in short, of the whole self-important food scene. But apparently McPhee means this as seriously as he means us to take, for instance, canoeist John's appraisal of the St. John River ("some flavor of the upper Androscoggin . . . more presence than the Penobscot . . . you have reminiscences of it in the Delaware . . ."). Happily, though, there's also "Giving Good Weight," about New York's flourishing new Greenmarkets—where local farmers, an endangered species, sell fresh produce to deprived cityfolk in a heady atmosphere of banter and beefs, blaring Panasonics and instant friendships that McPhee scripts like a scene from a Robert Altman movie. A mixed bag, then, best in its larger reaches.
Pub Date: Nov. 26, 1979
ISBN: 0374516006
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1979
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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