Dribs and drabs of blackish comedy, poorly seasoned.
Murder and bad cooking make for surprisingly cozy bedfellows.
It’s not exactly the most promising of setups for first-novelist Lang. Henry Blain is a white-haired old gent, the chief cook at Strangeways prison, but he hasn’t been able to go to work for some time because the 1,600-odd prisoners are rioting. He can see the action pretty well from his house, whose view he’s currently leasing out to members of the media desperate for a good view of the chaos. While there are news reports aplenty about what’s happening inside Strangeways, the reader never gets a firsthand glimpse of them, stuck instead inside Henry’s meandering mind, which is obsessed mostly with thoughts of revenge and musings on his favorite writer, Shakespeare. We find out that he was once a ship’s cook in the merchant marine and given to expressing his displeasure at the crew members (over a rude word, insolent look, or pretty much anything) by lacing the food with laxatives or other unpleasant additives. This is a habit he apparently has continued in his work at Strangeways, and certain messages communicated by the rioters to the outside world indicate that Henry’s wretched grub was one of the reasons (maybe the main one) for their taking over the prison. Although a septuagenarian, Henry still has a pretty active sex life, the more recent examples of which provide some lusty interludes (with one of the reporters renting out space in his house) in what is otherwise a fairly tedious piece of work. It’s not that Lang doesn’t have an interesting character in mind; with his mixed loves of Shakespeare, sex, and making people ill (not to mention suggestions of murderous impulses); it’s that Henry should be a devilishly entertaining person. Lang, however, never builds up any sort of momentum here, letting the scenes fall where they will without much to back them up.
Dribs and drabs of blackish comedy, poorly seasoned.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2003
ISBN: 0-75381-413-7
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Phoenix/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2003
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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