A slow-to-start but ultimately absorbing anatomy of a riot in the writer's native Trinidad—a first novel that is more about passion and political intrigue than about the policies that ostensibly provoke it. Setting his story in 1903, when Trinidad was still a British colony, Anthony revisits a seminal event in the island's struggle for independence as he details a plot to turn the vote on a Waterworks Bill into a riotous rebellion. The plotters are led by two women—Eva, a washerwoman, and Lolotte, a street vendor—and include Greasy Pole, famed for his jail-breaking skills; lawyer Maresse-Smith; and Clem, Eva's new boyfriend. Their plans to incite a riot are threatened by the British authorities and their informers (especially psychopathic cop Sergeant Holder, with whom Eva once lived) and also by moderates like Mzumbo Lazare, Eva's uncle and a prominent lawyer, and white fire-chief Captain Darwent, who's in love with Eva. As oppressors go, the British are pretty tame: At first, they just stand around as mayhem breaks out, waiting for a justice of the peace to be found to read—literally- -the Riot Act. Meanwhile, even though there's much exposition about the state of Trinidadian society, the sustained narrative tension, nicely detailed intrigue, and a number of quixotic individual concerns make this much more than a liberation treatise. Eva, using all her wiles, schemes to get Mzumbo out of town, Darwent to leave his firehouse at a crucial time, and Greasy Pole to escape from jail. And though the riot occurs, it isn't the British reaction but a spurned lover's jealousy that most threatens Eva, as an obsessed Holder stalks her through the violent crowd. The unfolding drama, the vivid characters, and a nail-biting finale, in which the political and the personal converge, more than compensate for this first novel's often earnest politics and prose.
Pub Date: June 19, 1996
ISBN: 0-435-98944-8
Page Count: 250
Publisher: Heinemann
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
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
Steinbeck's peculiarly intense simplicity of technique is admirably displayed in this vignette — a simple, tragic tale of Mexican little people, a story retold by the pearl divers of a fishing hamlet until it has the quality of folk legend. A young couple content with the humble living allowed them by the syndicate which controls the sale of the mediocre pearls ordinarily found, find their happiness shattered when their baby boy is stung by a scorpion. They dare brave the terrors of a foreign doctor, only to be turned away when all they can offer in payment is spurned. Then comes the miracle. Kino find a great pearl. The future looks bright again. The baby is responding to the treatment his mother had given. But with the pearl, evil enters the hearts of men:- ambition beyond his station emboldens Kino to turn down the price offered by the dealers- he determines to go to the capital for a better market; the doctor, hearing of the pearl, plants the seed of doubt and superstition, endangering the child's life, so that he may get his rake-off; the neighbors and the strangers turn against Kino, burn his hut, ransack his premises, attack him in the dark — and when he kills, in defense, trail him to the mountain hiding place- and kill the child. Then- and then only- does he concede defeat. In sorrow and humility, he returns with his Juana to the ways of his people; the pearl is thrown into the sea.... A parable, this, with no attempt to add to its simple pattern.
Pub Date: Nov. 24, 1947
ISBN: 0140187383
Page Count: 132
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1947
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