When the book’s set in Sydney, it’s good; when it shifts to other locales, it's less compelling.
A willful Australian girl falls in love with a black soldier during World War II and battles to keep the relationship afloat in Sayer’s inconsistent historical romance (Dreamtime Alice, 1998, etc.).
A year after Pearl Willis dies, her nephew Jimmy discovers a cache of audio tapes she left for him. Much to his surprise, the tapes contain a detailed autobiography, a story that, as she tells him on the tape, she tried many times to write, but somehow couldn’t. Instead, she hopes that Jimmy, an author, will do the job for her. As he listens to each tape, Jimmy learns the true story of Pearl and her twin brother, Martin, both accomplished jazz musicians who play saxophone at a fancy club and sometimes sit in on gigs at an underground night club. It’s at one of these gigs that young Pearl meets James Washington, a black GI who’s recorded with some of the most famous jazz musicians of the era. The smitten couple is denied permission to wed, so they decide to run away together. But their plans are thwarted when James has second thoughts and is transferred to Queensland. Never fear, though. Pearl’s one determined Aussie who’s not about to let racism or war keep her from her man. Seizing opportunity, she shrugs off a botched suicide attempt and her reluctant engagement to the doctor who treated her and concocts a new plan to reunite with James, who’s now been transferred to a unit in New Guinea. Pearl should have stayed in Sydney and waited out the war for her hero’s return, since unfortunately, it’s at this point that the book begins a downward slide with repetitious action, naïve characters and ludicrous behaviors bogging down the core of the story until, blessedly, the book grinds its way to a predictable conclusion. By the end, it’s Pup the dog who deserves the most sympathy: She certainly wouldn’t be wagging her tail so much if she could see into her future.
When the book’s set in Sydney, it’s good; when it shifts to other locales, it's less compelling.Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4516-7846-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
"This soil," concludes the young narrator of this quiet chronicle of garrotted innocence, "is bad for all kinds of flowers. Certain seeds it will not nurture, certain fruit it will not bear." And among the exclusions of white rural Ohio, echoed by black respectability, is ugly, black, loveless, twelve-year-old Pecola. But in a world where blue-eyed gifts are clucked over and admired, and the Pecolas are simply not seen, there is always the possibility of the dream and wish—for blue eyes. Born of a mother who adjusted her life to the clarity and serenity of white households and "acquired virtues that were easy to maintain" and a father, Cholly, stunted by early rejections and humiliations, Pecola just might have been loved—for in raping his daughter Cholly did at least touch her. But "Love is never better than the lover," and with the death of her baby, the child herself, accepting absolutely the gift of blue eyes from a faith healer (whose perverse interest in little girls does not preclude understanding), inches over into madness. A skillful understated tribute to the fall of a sparrow for whose small tragedy there was no watching eye.
Pub Date: Oct. 29, 1970
ISBN: 0375411550
Page Count: -
Publisher: Holt Rinehart & Winston
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1970
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
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