Highly enjoyable when in all-out-action mode, though it tends to get stuck in the lower gears.
In this two-fisted melodrama, the debacle of the Bay of Pigs invasion is only the start of the troubles facing a luckless Cuban counterrevolutionary who, following the awful kidnapping of his beloved daughter, becomes the frustrated puppet of a nasty KGB officer.
Atcho, the son of a wealthy Cuban landowner, lost everything—including his wife and father—when Fidel Castro and company seized control of his tiny island homeland. Since then, the naturally embittered hero has valiantly tried to shield his surviving child, Isabelle, from further harm, while he leads a small band of counterinsurgents equally committed to tossing out the cigar-chomping communist. However, for the anti-Castro crowd, betting on the United States to fully back their play turns out to be a bad move: Atcho is ultimately captured and summarily sent to a series of hellish island prisons. West Point–educated and almost supernaturally gifted in the art of combat, he manages to survive decades of incarceration and a failed prison break only to confront an even bleaker reality being orchestrated by Govorov, a KGB heavy. Part war saga, part prison drama, this sometimes adrenaline-fueled adventure yarn is loaded with punchy prose: “Atcho sprang. Cupping his hand over the guard’s mouth, he pulled the man down and broke his neck.” Too quickly, however, Atcho’s bone-breaking odyssey loses its footing on the slippery slopes of soap opera–like setups best exemplified in the mushy relationship between father and daughter. Initially loving and welcoming, long-lost Isabelle considers flipping on dear old dad, seemingly at a point when some interpersonal drama is deemed necessary to counterbalance all the shooting and neck-breaking. Marinating in his own twisted machinations, and endlessly self-satisfied, Govorov also suffers from a stock portrayal that relegates him to the ranks of so many other dastardly but unexamined villains. Atcho is at his best when he’s being Atcho—taking names and kicking ass.
Highly enjoyable when in all-out-action mode, though it tends to get stuck in the lower gears.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2013
ISBN: 978-0989802574
Page Count: 328
Publisher: Stonewall Publishers, LLC
Review Posted Online: Feb. 10, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
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
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