Born-and-bred southerner Jones, author of six previous novels (Last Things, 1989, etc.), imparts an authentic redneck flavor to this way overplotted but nonetheless amusing tale of one family's woes and ultimate downfall in the Appalachian foothills. It's the 1950s, and just outside Riverton, in eastern Tennessee, the Moss family is trying to make ends meet—or at least some of them are. Partly the trouble is that everyone for miles around sees the family as worthless white trash; partly it's also that out of them all—Mama, Daddy, and the eight kids—only Mama, Eve, Coop, and Chester (who narrates) have any sense at all. Daddy's a dimwit and full of lame-brained, money-making schemes; Dud and Stack are lumbering fools; Mabel and Dorcas have hardly a brain between them; and Bucky is in fact brain-damaged (though he's the only one of the Moss men who earns any money). Chester wants more out of life for himself and his siblings, as do Coop and Mama, but clearly the cards are stacked against them. Then, after long- lost Uncle Clarence shows up and is promptly murdered by the relentless Sheriff Tipps (whose hatred of the Moss family is never fully explained), an even steeper downward spiral of trouble begins. Dorcas, the only beautiful Moss sister, falls in with the wrong crowd and ends up pregnant; Stack becomes an example at the evil hand of Tipps; and even Coop winds up in big trouble when the death of the fortune-teller Madame Shula is pinned firmly on him. By the time the Moss family lose their farm, even Chester's hopes have dwindled, and the story ends with a whimper as the surviving Mosses either move into a dismal trailer or flee the scene. Jones manages to make what could be just another quirky-white- trash-characters assembly-line output into a flawed but often funny novel worth reading for laughs, if not enlightenment.
Pub Date: May 21, 1996
ISBN: 1-56352-278-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Longstreet
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
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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