A New Zealand novelist mixes fantasy with fact in this unusual recreation of his search through post-Communist Albania for the late dictator Enver Hoxha's former double. As a child, Jones writes, his knowledge of Albania was limited to what he overheard on a neighbor's short-wave radio: the self- congratulatory message that heroic Albanian Communists flourished under the guidance of their wise leader, Enver Hoxha. Years later, after Hoxha's death and the fall of his regime, the novelist heard rumors of the reappearance of the dictator's double, a village dentist forced to undergo extensive plastic surgery in order to stand in for Hoxha at official events. Once the dictator was dead, the dentist was so abused by Hoxha-hating Albanians that he attempted to cut out his eyes with a razor, then disappeared. Making it his mission to find this dentist, Jones arrives in chaotic Albania, where food is virtually nonexistent, electrical power switches on and off at will, and governments topple at a moment's notice. The author encounters citizens obsessed with recreating and recounting their own life stories after having been persecuted for decades due to supposed political flaws in their biografis, official dossiers compiled by the secret police. Overwhelmed by accounts of routine betrayal and torture, Jones abandons his attempt to find the real dentist and simply invents (without stating so in the text) a dying vagrant whose biografi is pieced together from the stories of people he met. A hard winter leads to this fictional dentist's death, while Jones—the character and the author—hightails it back home. Intended to reflect the bizarre, Alice-in-Wonderland quality of Albanian life in the 1990s, this account makes no distinction between what is and isn't true—which unfortunately imparts an annoying sense of unreliability to the tale. (First serial to Grand Street; Book-of-the-Month Club/Quality Paperback Book Club selections; author tour)
Pub Date: Oct. 17, 1994
ISBN: 0-15-600128-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Harvest/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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