Though presented as a mystery, this vivid tale employs mysticism, Catholicism, and murder to tell the story of a shining...
Haunted by dreams of a possible past life, a recovering alcoholic attempts to find her best friend’s killer in this debut novel.
Cassandra “Cass” DiSpirito and Gabriella “Kit” Labastiani have always been fun-loving North Shore girls, raised just outside of Boston and usually found at their favorite coastal bar, The Outrigger—which they, not always so affectionately, call “The Frig.” Cass’ life tragically ends there, as she is discovered beaten and strangled on The Frig’s roof, and Kit, using her skills as a journalist, vows to find her killer. Kit spends her days investigating her friend’s untimely demise, while her nights are filled with strange dreams of Germany in the 1600s, about a charitable country healer named Anke and her persecution by the church as a witch. Counter to Kit’s Roman Catholic upbringing and urged on by her grief, she comes to believe these dreams are the manifestations of past lives, the figures in them earlier incarnations of friends and family, their modern actions—and Cass’ murder—a karmic continuation of events long ago. Through them, Kit sobers up and comes to some level of acceptance and understanding about Cass’ death, even when faced with her killer. Campbell’s book builds on the culture of one of America’s oldest cities, the characters so wonderfully Bostonian that anyone with even a passing knowledge of the metropolis should find them instantly recognizable. The portrayal of Kit’s family, half-Italian, half-Irish, plays with the idiosyncrasies of both heritages with a decidedly un–PC and self-effacing sense of humor. Much of the book explores Kit and Cass’ friendship, beginning in the 1950s and ’60s, traveling with them throughout their years of terrorizing nuns in parochial school to eventually graduating to barhopping and burning gas from Boston to Ipswich. The girls come to life on the page, Kit slightly more well-behaved and intuitive, Cass more capricious and fashion-conscious, each smile-inducing detail of their love further driving home the tragedy of Cass’ death. Kit’s dreams, whether a former life or just a means to cope with her loss, further expand upon the novel’s themes of how vibrant and powerful women are viewed, the unjust and violent retribution they often draw, as well as the shortcomings of the church.
Though presented as a mystery, this vivid tale employs mysticism, Catholicism, and murder to tell the story of a shining friendship.Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-7414-9949-3
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Infinity Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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