In this posthumous compilation of stories, Tufts (1907—91) presents somewhat naive though likable vignettes of Mexican-American life in pre-WW II Los Angeles. Extending from the exploits of ten-year-old Pedro Gonzalez, the stories meander in and out of the lives of his neighbors on Pico Street. From the solemn JosÇ Gonzalez, Pedro’s father, and his roguish Uncle Luis, to the fiery Carmelita, who keeps a dagger in her garter belt, and the pedantic Father Lomita, love, loss, and family bonds amid poverty are considered in these 11 tales, most previously published, beginning in 1946, in the Saturday Evening Post. “The Fortunes of Pedro” opens the collection, introducing Tufts’s innocent protagonist, who wants to buy his father an expensive fishing rod like the kind the gringos use off Santa Monica Pier. Pedro, who lives with his father and uncle in a one-room shack, collects bottles on the beach, sifts through sand for loose change, and almost has enough for the prized birthday present when Uncle Luis steals the money to buy booze. And so Pedro learns a lesson that’s repeated throughout here: The more one possesses, the more one becomes burdened by those possessions. By contrast, “The Merry-Go-Round” is a romantic tale of a man who works magic with his riches to bring happiness to all. Retired Fernando G¢mez, having escaped the poverty of Pico Street, now dreams of buying the dilapidated merry-go-round at the beach. The restoration of the beautiful old carousel, and Fernando’s wily plan to unite his stubborn daughter Rosa with the charming Sam Hondo, develops into a sweet scheme to operate the merry-go-round for free. Socializing at the barbershop, scavenging at the dump, making a fortune with a shoeshine cart—Tufts’s stories offer an amiable if by now old-fashioned simplicity, often with an 0.Henry twist. A charming assemblage of characters, in an inevitably dated and unsurprising collection.
Pub Date: April 1, 1998
ISBN: 1-880284-27-8
Page Count: 206
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1998
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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