Brown’s Fay (2000) remains his best—but it’s good to see him extending his range. The Rabbit Factory has much to recommend...
Relationships between people and animals and the hopes of both species that “love was out there for everybody, if they could just find it”: these are the central issues in this Alabama author’s relentlessly gritty latest.
In and nearby contemporary Memphis, several vividly sketched lovers and losers are quickly set into motion, and conflict. Septuagenarian Mr. Arthur explores ways to keep and sexually satisfy his smoldering younger wife Helen, who turns her attentions toward Eric, a young pet-store employee whose most meaningful relationship is with his (male) pit bull Jada Pinkett. Anjalee, a goodhearted whore marked by a history of family abuse, commits assault, goes on the lam, and attracts the stupefied devotion of Wayne Stubbock, a pugilistically gifted young sailor. Meanwhile, ex-con Domino D’Adamo, whose interstate drug business is compromised by his murderous gangster boss, experiences three unfortunate run-ins with cops, one of them an importunate black Amazon named Penelope—who takes up with Dom’s carjacking victim Merlot, a bachelor high-school teacher with a hidden secret love (named Candy). There’s considerable pleasure in Brown’s energetic deployment of these (really rather likable) grotesques, in a roiling, in-your-face melodrama whose comic-horrible details are variously reminiscent of Barry Hannah, Harry Crews, and the writer Brown most resembles: Erskine Caldwell. If the drumbeat momentum of his characters’ compulsively self-destructive behavior (symbolized by the title metaphor, a reference to the past Eric yearns to escape) seems forced, Brown nevertheless springs a few refreshing surprises. And the multiple staggered climaxes go a long way toward qualifying and contradicting what appears initially to be its rather generic naturalism.
Brown’s Fay (2000) remains his best—but it’s good to see him extending his range. The Rabbit Factory has much to recommend it.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2003
ISBN: 0-7432-4523-7
Page Count: 350
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2003
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
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
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BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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