More Pynchon than Percival, this madcap fish story updates the Grail quest with unsettling violence, preposterous schemers,...
Heywood’s fourth (The Domino Conspiracy, 1992, etc.), a mystical, irreverent wisdom quest, imagines a vast international conspiracy that links spies, loquacious sexpots, bumbling journalists, a famous macho writer, and trout fishers hunting for a mythic insect.
Born in 1945 in a shack deep in the Michigan forests, Bowie Rhodes grows up tall, spectacularly good-looking, reasonably adept at writing, and ever-curious about the relationship between his father, a taciturn, chain-smoking trout-fisher, and his powerfully dominant mother. He’s haunted by memories of a dead man his father pulled out of the local stream, as well as by the beguiling attractions of Raina Chickerman, the brilliant, sexually precocious, trout-fishing daughter of the closest neighbor upstream. Later on, as Bowie matures, gets a scholarship to Michigan State, and studies journalism, he becomes positively obsessed with Raina, who appears at odd moments, teases him sexually or intellectually, then blows away before he can touch her—and with a lost manuscript about the snowfly, a legendary insect that hatches once every 20 to 40 years and is simply irresistible to big trout. Bowie’s journalistic pursuits take him to Viet Nam, England, and Russia, where he finally tracks down the manuscript, which is written in some kind of unbreakable code by a mysterious German scientist. Naturally, other good and bad folks want this item, too. The trail leads to a passel of renegade mountain men, led by Raina and that famous macho writer (clue: he didn’t commit suicide), all of whom are waiting for the snowfly to help them land the biggest fish of all.
More Pynchon than Percival, this madcap fish story updates the Grail quest with unsettling violence, preposterous schemers, and an abundance of randy women who dispense pithy statements on the meaning of life—and can’t wait to jump into the nearest trout stream.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2000
ISBN: 1-58574-020-9
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Lyons Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2000
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
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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