If Joseph Conrad and H.G. Wells had cowritten scripts for Gilligan’s and Fantasy Island[s], they probably would have come up with something about as bad as this overinflated comic melodrama by the popular author of Crazy in Alabama (1993), etc. The story begins in 1972 when good-old-boy folk-rock superstar Ben “Superman” Willis is overtaken by a violent thunderstorm while flying his private plane and crashes it on a remote tropical island. He’s hauled out of the wreckage badly injured, and nursed back to health by a group of odd people who seem to have fled their past lives, including Daisy, a supernaturally luscious blond who looks exactly like . . . . Yes, Virginia, this is indeed Shangri-la (or Childress’s version of it), and numbered among the islanders are exact likenesses of “Anastasia. D.B. Cooper. Michael Rockefeller . . . Amelia Earhart . . . Marilyn Monroe . . . Jimmy Hoffa,— as well as a pill-dispensing “doctor” who claims they’re all his psychiatric patients and, lurking in the background, a string-pulling “Magician” who turns out to be exactly the famous disappeared person you expect him to be. “Superman” recovers—most visibly in a wild beachside sex scene with the compliant Daisy—and, appalled by evidence that the pristine “Isla del Mago” will fall victim to developers, undertakes a preemptive guerrilla campaign that climaxes with the grand opening of the Jungle Inn, a celebrity bash featuring Jerry Vale and Helen Reddy (whose “I Am Woman” is the object of the book’s best gag). Childress nods in the direction of involving Ben’s “widow” Alexa (the former Miss Southwest Louisiana) and son Ben Jr. in the narrative (the latter’s journey to find his missing father occupies a sizable fraction of the text), and both show up in time for the feel-good ending. But their presences are nominal, in a novel that’s very indifferently structured and nowhere near as engaging as its author seems to think. This one never takes off. Childress isn’t doing much more than taxiing, in what is pretty clearly his weakest book yet.
Pub Date: June 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-375-40021-4
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1998
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
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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