Riveting material is given redundant and indifferent treatment in this misshapen first novel ``about horror and the macabre in India,'' by Siegel (Net of Magic, not reviewed, etc.), a professor of religion at the University of Hawaii. Its author-researcher's stay in the city of Varanasi steeps him in images—and evidence—of both fabulistic and factual horrors, beginning with the woman who transforms herself into the ``human bomb'' that assassinates Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, then focusing major attention on a locally famous itinerant storyteller, Brahm Kathuwala, a ghostly figure whom Siegel pursues throughout most of this book's duration. An extended story that Brahm tells listeners who gather about him nightly is juxtaposed, more or less, with Siegel's piecemeal recapitulation of the life of the tale- teller, a lonely and effectively motherless boy whose obsessive fascination with his near-namesake Bram Stoker is reflected in eerie coincidences between Stoker's lurid masterpiece and Brahm's own experiences and relationships. ``I wrote it in a former life,'' the latter Brahm says of Dracula, acknowledging that he may indeed be a reincarnation, if not something even more evanescent (``Sometimes I have to wonder . . . whether I'm a storyteller or a story told,'' he proclaims elsewhere). It's hard to know what this curiously organized fiction aims to say, beyond the obvious implication that horror takes many forms in the roiling chaos of political and religious instability that is India. The reader is kept at a confused distance by the ``novel's'' apparently arbitrary structure, profusion of epigraphs, surfeit of sickeningly visceral detail, and undifferentiated reappearances of lepers, poisonous snakes, flesh-eating corpses, and other stock paraphernalia that have the obviously unintended effect of diverting our attention from the putative central story—of Brahm Kathuwala, whoever, or whatever, he may be. In Dracula, Bram Stoker had the good sense to contain his otherworldly contrivances within a compelling linear narrative. One wishes the author of this unfortunately turgid homage to it had done the same.
Pub Date: Oct. 31, 1995
ISBN: 0-226-75688-2
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Univ. of Chicago
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1995
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
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
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