bookshelf

OFF TELEGRAPH

Name: OFF TELEGRAPH
Author: Joseph V. Rodricks
ISBN: 978-1463623951

A NOVEL OF BERKELEY IN THE SIXTIES

by Joseph V. Rodricks ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 21, 2011

A novel featuring warmed-over nostalgia among the academic set.

bookshelf

A high-stakes techno-thriller about researchers in 1960s Berkeley, California.

Graduate student Will Getz is at the top of his game. He has a supportive professor at one of the pre-eminent research institutions in the country; a beautiful, talented girlfriend; and a future that seems full of promise—until he makes one giant mistake. His attempt to synthesize pfaffidine, a naturally occurring plant compound with potential uses in cancer treatments, hits a wall when he can’t repeat the 12th and final step in his experiment. Rather than admit failure, he commits the ultimate sin against science by falsifying his results, setting off a calamitous chain of events that will eventually claim more than one life. The term “sin” is apt here, as Rodricks’ novel is Christ-haunted, to borrow a term that author Flannery O’Connor once applied to her native South. It features at least one lapsed Catholic priest, a host of newly secular scientists (among them Will and his on-again, off-again girlfriend, Gina), a nominal Zen monk, and a dangerous cult that appropriates some of Christianity’s more macabre iconography. Throughout, the author keeps the plot moving at a quick pace, but never sacrifices character development. Readers learn, for instance, about Will’s and Gina’s fraught family lives—their commonalities, no doubt, serve to bring them closer. But for all the novel’s vaunted civil rights and counterculture sympathies (it name-checks the Rev. Martin Luther King and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, and pillories the Vietnam War), its female characters get short shrift. Although Gina and another woman, Elaine, occasionally speak about subjects other than men, their lives are wholly defined by their associations with them, primarily Will himself. Rodricks’ prose is authoritative, particularly when he describes the science behind pfaffidine, and it’s often pleasurable to read. However, he stalks too-easy quarry; other authors have already adequately eulogized the lost idealism of the ’60s, and Rodricks neither adds to that literature nor runs counter to its chief claims.

A novel featuring warmed-over nostalgia among the academic set.

Pub Date: Sept. 21, 2011

ISBN: 978-1463623951

Page Count: 404

Publisher: CreateSpace

Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2017

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

bookshelf

BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

bookshelf

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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

bookshelf

TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

bookshelf

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.