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
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
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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