A solidly grounded rendering of cop culture, but spotty as a story of personal redemption.
In her latest novel, editor and essayist Golden (Don’t Play in the Sun, 2004, etc.) examines the vexing problem of cops who kill unarmed civilians.
It’s night when a traffic stop goes bad for officer Carson Blake. Carson, 12 years on the force, has never fired his gun. Afraid for his life, he shoots the driver dead, realizing too late the driver’s gun was a cell phone. This happens in a deserted parking lot in suburban Maryland; both Carson and the victim are black. Golden shows both men at fault: Carson should have waited for backup; the victim should have stayed on the ground and kept his hands away from his waistband. What comes next for Carson is anguished remorse and endless bad dreams. He’s a decent man; no saint, but certainly not a psycho. He and his wife Bunny, a commercial artist, live comfortable lives, with three beautiful kids. Carson’s low point comes when he puts a gun in his mouth; he is saved by a vision of his loving family. Then come sessions with Carrie Petersen, cop-turned-therapist. Carson talks about his harsh father, Jimmy; the revelation that he was not his actual daddy drove him to the streets, where he felt in control as he mugged easy victims. Control. Isn’t that why Carson joined the force, probes Carrie? Reluctantly, Carson agrees. Though he is cleared by a grand jury and Internal Affairs, Carson still feels far from redemption. All this is entirely credible, but here Golden falters, switching for a while to the grieving parents of the victim, then jumping forward two years (Carson has left the force and become, implausibly, a real-estate agent), and lastly having his stepfather’s hatefulness surface in Carson, who tears into his 15-year-old son Juwan for being gay. It’s too late in the game for these eruptions, which distract from Carson’s attempt to make peace with the victim’s family.
A solidly grounded rendering of cop culture, but spotty as a story of personal redemption.Pub Date: May 16, 2006
ISBN: 0-385-51222-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2006
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
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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