A big breast-beater of a book about how one man vanquishes the demons devouring his soul. This foray draws heavily on the writer's own life, his experiences in Hollywood, and the Jewish immigrant heritage that by turns drag him down and, when finally confronted, allow him to realize himself. When the story begins, Gideon Zadok is a writer seeking to break through a painful block by joining the Lion Battalion of the Israeli Army in its surprise attack at Mitla Pass during the 1956 Sinai War. Gideon has pulled along his wife, Val, and their two daughters, leaving them in Rome as he attempts to maintain the tense truce that is his marriage. Val wanted Gideon to sell out to Hollywood after the success of his first book, Men in Battle (about his experiences as a marine in the Pacific), but Gideon shook himself free from Mammom to research a book on Israel. Once there, he continues his extramarital ventures, started back in Hollywood, by taking up with an aide to Ben-Gurion, Natasha Solomon. Meanwhile, just before the Sinai invasion, Uris freezes the action to launch into a long flashback through several generations of Zadoks wandering across Russia, the Holy Land, and, finally, America. Gideon's mother and stepfather, a communist labor organizer, give him a peripatetic and mostly unloving childhood, leavened only by his relationship with a grade-school teacher who deserts him to fight the Fascists in Spain (where she gets Hemingway to drop him a line about the rigors of writing). Gradually, Gideon's problems come clear: he feels worthless and unloved. Then, with the Egyptians blasting away at the Lions at Mitla, Gideon spills the beans about his experiences in WW II, when, he fears, he caused the death of his best buddy. He does much better at Mitla; and just before he tells Natasha goodbye to join his wife in Rome, he absolves himself of his guilt, presumably going on to write a magnum opus. Unfortunately, this is too fragmented and self-involved to be Uris' own magnum opus; nonetheless, it has flashes of dramatic vividness reminiscent of the writer at his Exodus and Trinity best.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1988
ISBN: 0553282808
Page Count: 532
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1988
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
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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