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LOW RENT

Name: LOW RENT
Author: Kurt Hollander
ISBN: 0-8021-3408-4

A DECADE OF WRITING FROM THE PORTABLE LOWER EAST SIDE

edited by Kurt Hollander ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 1994

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A welcome opportunity for book readers to discover the pleasures of a periodical that was to the Reagan-Bush era what Evergreen Review was to the 1950s. Begun by Hollander in the mid-1980s as a photocopied and stapled bundle, The Portable Lower East Side got some unwanted national exposure in 1992, when conservatives used it as an example of the obscene and blasphemous material funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. Now it can be read on its own terms. New York City's Lower East Side is as much a state of mind as a literal neighborhood: Wherever there are drugs and sex, you're likely to find some of these contributors. When Veronica Vera decided to write an article about ``the game of sex and money,'' she went to The Forty-Second Street Show World Sex Emporium, interviewed employees, and worked one of the ``booths'' herself to gain firsthand experience. Christopher O'Connell's ``Williamsburg Seizure Sites'' details epileptic seizures that, ironically, sound almost identical to the drug-induced states captured by other contributors. Some of the finest stories and memoirs present New York City as viewed by newcomers. Jack Henry Abbott, just released from prison, offers a chilling portrait of the Bowery in 1981, depicting street life that later spread throughout New York City; his increasingly staid, unflinching reactions parallel those of many city-dwellers. Guy-Mark Foster follows the man he loves to a city he knows almost nothing about (except that it's not nearly as clean or peaceful as they city they've left). Hubert Selby, Herbert Huncke, Grace Paley, and photographer Robert Frank are among the better-known contributors. Pieces by Italian, Russian, Hungarian, and Cuban immigrants—some translated from the authors' foreign-language originals—recapture the melting-pot flavor the area had 100 years ago, but with a decidedly contemporary in-your-face quality. Some will be offended, but this groundbreaking volume's artistic merit is indisputable.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994

ISBN: 0-8021-3408-4

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Grove

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1994

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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SUMMER ISLAND

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2001

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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LAST ORDERS

by Graham Swift ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 5, 1996

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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.