AT NODDER BUTTE

Name: AT NODDER BUTTE
Author: John Mogan
ISBN: 978-1-4251-6975-6

by John Mogan ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2008

An atmospheric ride, brief but realized, with a sure, discomforting hand at portent and a quicksilver administration of the...

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Otherworldly happenings are afoot when a Native American shaman withdraws from his calling in Mogan’s novel.

A butte rises 300 feet out of the soft-sand desert of the American Southwest. At its scorching foot sits a weather station where Tom has taken meteorological readings for the past six years, and where the Weather Bureau has posted Robin, a recent college graduate. Robin is a woman and a tad defensive in the male-dominated world of the service, but anxious to make her mark at a post that most people shun as too brutally desolate. Tom unnerves her at first, a calm but reticent gentleman who has a line of Navajo seers in his blood, though he has distanced himself from that life. He has an uncanny talent for describing the land during his weather reports; these can be somewhat fruity—“The east and west are like the edges of a giant ladle in which the liquid energy of the light pours”—but more frequently sharp in the mind’s eye: “As the sun sinks lower, each grain of sand casts a shadow on the next.” In writing that echoes the milieu—sere, elemental (“the moon was full—daylight without depth”) and touched with an ominous foreboding, like a bad omen sits just over the horizon—Tom encourages Robin, who is both drawn to the desert and finds it ungraspable, to meld with the land, invite it inside her and give herself over to it. As they grow more at ease with one another, and despite the strange episodes in the nighttime when Tom sleepwalks and Robin sees apocalyptic reflections in his fixed stare, they explore the butte together, there to find both the sacred and the profane, and to unleash a force from deepest history that will be their undoing.

An atmospheric ride, brief but realized, with a sure, discomforting hand at portent and a quicksilver administration of the surreal.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2008

ISBN: 978-1-4251-6975-6

Page Count: 130

Publisher: Trafford

Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2010

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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SUMMER ISLAND

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2001

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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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.