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
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
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