A debut collection of 14 stories that highlights the author's personaland highly effectiveuse of magical realism. The title story, in which Ione discovers a door in her apartment she's never noticed before and finds it leads to another world, is an apt metaphor for Heuler's prevalent theme of the magical. The best here feature a seamless blend of the mundane and the fantastic, as ordinary characters undergo extraordinary experiences. In ``Like a Piston, Like a Flame,'' Vera, a ballerina extraordinaire, loses a leg; after months of grueling practice with a wooden replacement, and with the assistance of her circus- performer husband, she puts on the performance of her life. ``The Hole Story'' pokes fun at people who think hiding garbage in dumps makes it disappear: When George Wilcox falls into the hole that's appeared in the center of town and doesn't come out, his wife jumps in after him; inside, they find where the world's refuse is storedand rediscover each other in the process. Cleverness is only one of Heuler's tools for exploring her subjects; astute observation on themes as complex as friendship is another. In ``The Revolt of Everyday Things,'' Fran Rood and so-called best friend Becky are friends only ``because each measured herself quite victoriously against the other.'' And daunting social issues are not taboo``The Light at the End'' goes beneath the ``should one give homeless people money'' question to explore the points of view of all parties involved: giver, recipient, and bystander. When Heuler misses the mark (rarely), it's not by much. Although the cryptic ``Overpowering Joy'' gets lost in itself, ``Notes From the Attic,'' a mystical play on a theme with a gritty core, raises serious feminist concerns. Symbolism that's occasionally too obscure, but Heuler can take up issues and at the same time show the inventive powers behind the door of her imagination.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-8262-1041-4
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Univ. of Missouri
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1995
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
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
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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