A heartening, honest portrait of public education and generational responsibility.
A lively novel about the trials and tribulations of teaching in the 21st century.
Mitchell Munson, known lovingly as Mr. Mumbles, is a teacher who has sharpened too many pencils and erased too many blackboards to tell lies. His passion for teaching is very much intact after decades of instruction, but he knows the score and doesn’t pretend he can’t see his tiny role in the great social sift. This witty, sardonic but never cynical approach to education and society is evidenced in his playful inner-monologues and the incessant discursive dialogues on topics from the movie Titanic to intellectualized fodder like the “American Meritocracy.” Like the best students, Mumbles still questions. Coach Jackson is, as befitting his station, more methodical and strategic in his approach to teaching and life. His simple vision of social progress is analogized in his relationship to basketball, a sport he believes has progressed and evolved into a superior form over the 20th century–a sport which has charted America’s obsession with perfection but also its disappointing civil relationships. The game, he concludes, is better than it was 50 years ago–though he’s quite certain Jerry West would have held his own in a modern game. Mumbles and Jackson, more than being a simple odd couple, are more the split-protagonists of the novel. They represent complementary and often contradictory attitudes, but their dialectic may be essential in rearing a generation capable of navigating the future. An epistolary subplot develops after Jackson finds letters his mother penned during his father’s service in the World War II. These elements aren’t always set as elegantly in the broader narrative as could be, but the letters are so compelling–even heartbreaking–that is likely due to all the rhetorical ground Bennett wants to cover. Still, Mumbles and Jackson’s friendship makes the novel memorable and satisfying.
A heartening, honest portrait of public education and generational responsibility.Pub Date: March 4, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-578-00804-2
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
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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BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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