A coming-of-age tale with memorable and poignant characters but uneven prose.
In this debut novel, a man looks back on growing up with his five siblings in a family shaped by dysfunction and selfish maternal ambition.
In this first-person, coming-of-age narrative, Blydasafaulk Cain Bates has returned to his Southern hometown. The sight of the old corner house he grew up in sparks a 50-year-old memory of the day he saw his disabled eldest brother jabbed with an umbrella and called a “crippled urchin” by a passing stranger. The adult Cain continues recalling his life with his older sister, four brothers, and the cold mother who manipulated and dominated them all. Cain refers to her as “the mother,” an indication of the emotional remove he cultivated as self-protection. Dumas paints a poignant picture of a child who absorbed early on that his mother had no love to give, and who learned to scavenge crumbs of warmth and affection from his siblings. (The unassertive father is barely a presence.) The protagonist’s eldest brother, Ferdinand Freudenham “Freud” Bates (the children’s outlandish names are a symptom of the mother’s obsessive grandiosity), is the heart of Cain’s narrative. Intended from birth to be the family’s golden boy, Freud was physically disabled as a child and prone to seizures due to a brain tumor. Cain observes his brother as boy and adult with both guilt and compassion. Regrettably, Dumas undercuts his impressive characters and dilutes Cain’s narrative with numerous verbose, pedantic digressions: “If you be one of the rare persons who needed support that wasn’t present or if inquietude frequented your life as warmth passed you by, then follow my thoughts for a moment….The place where one departs from is no longer the same place. It might have the appearance of sameness. Quantumwise, it is majorly altered.” Nor is the book served by the stilted “dear reader” device (“Reader, before I return to our story”; “At this juncture, dear reader”). And the sudden, cryptic ending seems to belong to a different novel entirely, or at least needs further explanation. Errors in the text (such as “spill” for spiel; “thrills” for trills; and “self” for shelf) require attention as well.
A coming-of-age tale with memorable and poignant characters but uneven prose.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-975992-01-9
Page Count: 166
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: March 6, 2018
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
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
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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