Bell is a gifted veteran, and though the more realistic half of this novel is more compelling and affecting than the mystic...
From Bell (The Color of Night, 2011, etc.), a novel about a young woman finding her way back aboveground both literally and metaphorically after a misadventure beneath the surface of things.
Julie ditches school for an overnight motorcycle trip into the badlands with her best friend, a potential love named Jamal, and two untrustworthy toughs. These last two turn out to be wannabe pornographers who have dosed her water with what appears to be LSD, and they chase Julie and Jamal up into the carious moonscape of cliffs and rocks, many of which have extensive graffiti tags ranging from contemporary spray paint to ancient Native American drawings. In her impaired state, Julie tumbles into a narrow and deep cave shaft, and it's almost two days before Jamal can bring help. After she's extricated, the "Cave Girl" spends weeks in a coma, with Jamal at her side—and with one of their assailants lurking menacingly, threatening to silence both of them. Meanwhile, Marissa, who gave her infant daughter up for adoption 17 years earlier, has suffered a shock of her own—a priest she worked with and loved dies suddenly of a heart attack. In a susceptible state, Marissa leaves her job and, heeding a mysterious impulse, goes looking for the daughter she abandoned. She quickly finds her in the comatose Cave Girl. In intercut chapters, Julie has embarked on a kind of vision quest inspired by the cave art and the landscape. Marissa and Jamal join forces, and eventually—with the help of a Native American enforcer/bounty hunter/shaman named Ultimo—they head both outward into the badlands and inward into a hallucinatory alternate reality to try to coax Julie back to ordinary reality and those who care about her.
Bell is a gifted veteran, and though the more realistic half of this novel is more compelling and affecting than the mystic fever dream, the whole is lyrical, ambitious, and well worth reading.Pub Date: May 15, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-87286-744-4
Page Count: 280
Publisher: City Lights
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2017
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
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BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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