In Callaghan's latest (Mothers, 1984, etc.), the real turns surreal as an emotionally distraught Irish novelist and teacher, stalked by the ghost of her long-dead Irish-American grandfather, investigates an old crime only to get into more contemporary trouble. Anne O'Brien, a bestselling writer of Irish historical romances, is on her way to take up a teaching assignment at a Pennsylvania college when a man resembling her grandfather, Marcus Quilligan O'Neil, appears. At first she thinks that she's imagined him, for no one else can see him. Could he be a product of her drinking or her distress, both induced by her fear that her husband Fergal is dating a younger woman? Then the old man appears at a cousin's house and also pops up again at the college. He is, indeed, it turns out, Marcus's ghost, and he pesters Anne to write his biography. She's reluctant to undertake the project but finds herself researching his life, in part because her dying mother had told her that Marcus had never been a proper father. Suspecting sexual abuse, Anne begins her sleuthing. The inquiry is also an opportunity to give a brief reprise of the Irish experience in the New World as the writer describes how Marcus, born in America after his family had fled the famine, took various jobs, some unsavory, to earn enough money to pay for tuition at Yale Law. Once graduated, he moved to New York, practiced criminal law, became part of the Tammany Hall machine, and was rewarded for his loyalty by Woodrow Wilson with an ambassadorship to the Dominican Republic. In present time, an affair with a sexually abusive colleague, the irritations of academic political correctness, the attempted suicide of a gifted student, and Marcus's ghostly visitations nearly destroy Anne, but husband Fergal's fidelity, newly assured, and a new book idea end her ordeal. A witty and appealingly wry protagonist overwhelmed by a story that has more plots and subplots than an afternoon soap.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-7145-3019-0
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Marion Boyars
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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