A crude but lively morality play.
Parents spare the rod and turn their child into the mythic founder of the Bloods in this lurid gangster saga.
There are familiar social influences at play in Rodney “Neon” Robinson’s development into a fearsome crime lord during the 1960s. His mother Doris walks out on her cheating husband Earl, transplants her brood from a small Texas town to Los Angeles’s crime-ridden Compton ghetto and raises them without an appropriate male role model in the home. But by far the most important factor is that–from the time little Neon throws a tantrum and receives a hot dog instead of a spanking–his parents refuse to mete out the whippings his misbehavior so richly deserves. Everything flows from that misguided lenience–arson, robbery, rape and murder, all of it crescendoing to a Sophoclean family tragedy. Along the way, Neon and his less epic brother Rap start the Bloods street gang during a stint in juvie, using candy shipments from Earl and Doris–there is no limit to their indulgence–as a patronage fund. (The origin of the Bloods’ nemeses, the Crips, is traced to one Willie Wright, a legendary bum-legged prison bodybuilder whose simmering beef with Neon sparks the historic red-vs.-blue antagonism.) Neon is a stone-cold thief and killer with no redeeming qualities except a lingering sentimentality toward his mom, and his story is an old-fashioned parable. As the heartbroken Doris is reminded by a succession of commentators, from the many well-meaning LAPD officers to the spirit messengers who appear to her in a vision, Neon’s infamies are the inevitable result of her failure to take a timely belt to his hide. The novel’s chief virtue is its vigorous and pungent, though stereotyped, portrait of ghetto life, stocked with sassy hookers, smooth pimps, menacing thugs and hapless wannabe hoodlums–and lots of earnest strivers wondering where their kids went wrong.
A crude but lively morality play.Pub Date: April 15, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-595-50877-8
Page Count: 264
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
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
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
