East meets West—or, more precisely, North meets South—and all hell breaks loose in new arrival Foley's raucous, vicious, and utterly brilliant satire of culture, religion, and literary ambitions in modern Ireland. Whatever else may be observed of the Isle of Saints and Scholars, it's certainly a small world. All the more so if you're young, bright, and living in Belfast, like Kyle Magee, the Protestant ``Zorba of the North,'' who carries his opinions on life and art into every room he enters. Supremely self-confident and ruinously charming, he sounds clever enough to know what he's talking about but is too offhand in his pronouncements to let anyone know for sure. Naturally, he attracts a following, and our narrator becomes Magee's chief acolyte in short order. He sees in Magee a way out of the Ulster provincialism that, for Catholic and Protestant alike, keeps life nasty, brutish, and if not short at least dull. So he and Magee set out to convert the natives to the saving grace of Art, broadcasting a radio program called ``Born- again Ulster,'' setting up theater troupes, and writing novels of modern Irish life. Along the way, they fall into the hands of the Herron sisters, upwardly mobile scions of a matriarchal clan of Catholic shopkeepers, and each man takes his pick: Magee marrying Liz Herron, and the narrator settling for her older sister Reba. The friendship is stretched by Magee's egomania and the narrator's jealousy, however, and even as brothers-in-law the two find less and less to hold them together once they've emigrated to Dublin and London. The time it takes the narrator to realize what manner of man Magee truly is works out to be nearly the whole of the story, but he does manage in time. A superb exposition of the dynamics of private lives played out endlessly in public—and written with an easy wit and casual sophistication that have all but vanished from the contemporary scene.
Pub Date: April 2, 1997
ISBN: 0-85640-576-0
Page Count: 342
Publisher: Dufour
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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