And art still moves us in ways propaganda can’t even imagine. A year or so from now, the Pulitzer Prize people ought to take...
A dramatic panorama of Italian-American family life during the 1930s and ’40s emerges from this impressive collection of 26 subtly linked stories.
Papaleo (the novels All the Comforts and Out of Place, not reviewed) risks losing us with an annoyingly belligerent “Prologue for an Ethnic Life,” which condemns the stereotyping seen in The Godfather and The Sopranos, and righteously proclaims, “There will be no deceit or trickery in this volume . . . . Just my screaming voice telling you the truth.” The stories speak far more eloquently. A series of “Immigrant Epiphanies” focuses on the Mauro family of the Bronx, and particularly their son Johnny, through whose wide eyes we observe la famiglia’s weary tolerance of a “disgraced” aunt (“The Weeks of Charity”), Johnny’s gnomic, poetry-spouting elderly grandmother (“Nonna”), and his own preadolescent vacillations between religiosity and sexuality (“Mission”), among other matters. Other Mauros and their relatives and acquaintances filter through later tales grouped as “Losing the Bronx” and “Blendings and Losses.” Some of the best portray a frustrated cardiac patient who secretly courts “The End,” a prosperous pornographer facing his father’s imminent demise and the threat of deportation (“Leaving Vermont”), a disillusioning return to the old country (“Twenty-Nine Steps towards Re-Adhesion”), and Johnny Mauro again, now a middle-aged son who sweet-talks his aged father into accepting psychoanalysis rather than simply moving to Florida (“Shrinks”). One infers that there’s a lifetime of experience and reflection, as well as anger, behind these tightly plotted, deftly written, and often very funny pieces. The abundance of realistic detail makes credible and moving such expressions of ethnic indignation as the following protest against economic disadvantage: “We make rockets that can do everything but talk, but we still live in little shitboxes the way they did ten thousand years ago.”
And art still moves us in ways propaganda can’t even imagine. A year or so from now, the Pulitzer Prize people ought to take a close look at Papaleo’s Italian Stories.Pub Date: Jan. 29, 2002
ISBN: 1-56478-306-5
Page Count: 298
Publisher: Dalkey Archive
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2001
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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