The moral of this fine novel is that there's hope for everyone, unless of course you screw it up.
Angus Truax is a thoroughly odious character—55 years old, adrift, overweight, insensible, unforgiving, and a cynical smartass. As the novel begins, Angus is setting a date 30 days out for ending his life, and, honestly, we do not care. Then things begin to turn as Laser works writing magic, and a run-of-the-mill story with a boring protagonist becomes something quite engaging. Angus quits his job writing columns about hard-luck cases for a northern New Jersey newspaper, but no matter, since his end date is arriving. Though he felt nothing but scorn for his subjects, his column did surprisingly raise money for them, so he accomplished much good in spite of himself. His brother, a Buddhist monk (Brother Bob as he calls him), arrives unannounced, and Angus is irritated by family as well as life in general. The caregiver to his elderly landlady upstairs is a Georgian immigrant, and he's derisive in his thoughts of her—until he engages and finds out she's dying from mercury poisoning she acquired from eating fish in her homeland. Eka is a good, caring woman, needy in her dying state, worried about her son, Davit. Angus begins to help her, and the novel becomes a seesaw of tender moments, total screw-ups, and a suspense that becomes unbearable for Angus and the reader. As Angus reflects, “I am a dead man with a crush on a dead woman.” Every advance as a human being by Angus is met with an incomprehensible step backward until everyone truly gets what he or she deserves.
Laser lulls you into dislike of his protagonist and then mounts a steamroller of a novel. This book is a well-written, welcome surprise.Pub Date: July 16, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-57962-400-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Permanent Press
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
Categories: GENERAL FICTION
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A love letter to the power of books and friendship.
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Women become horseback librarians in 1930s Kentucky and face challenges from the landscape, the weather, and the men around them.
Alice thought marrying attractive American Bennett Van Cleve would be her ticket out of her stifling life in England. But when she and Bennett settle in Baileyville, Kentucky, she realizes that her life consists of nothing more than staying in their giant house all day and getting yelled at by his unpleasant father, who owns a coal mine. She’s just about to resign herself to a life of boredom when an opportunity presents itself in the form of a traveling horseback library—an initiative from Eleanor Roosevelt meant to counteract the devastating effects of the Depression by focusing on literacy and learning. Much to the dismay of her husband and father-in-law, Alice signs up and soon learns the ropes from the library’s leader, Margery. Margery doesn’t care what anyone thinks of her, rejects marriage, and would rather be on horseback than in a kitchen. And even though all this makes Margery a town pariah, Alice quickly grows to like her. Along with several other women (including one black woman, Sophia, whose employment causes controversy in a town that doesn’t believe black and white people should be allowed to use the same library), Margery and Alice supply magazines, Bible stories, and copies of books like Little Women to the largely poor residents who live in remote areas. Alice spends long days in terrible weather on horseback, but she finally feels happy in her new life in Kentucky, even as her marriage to Bennett is failing. But her powerful father-in-law doesn’t care for Alice’s job or Margery’s lifestyle, and he’ll stop at nothing to shut their library down. Basing her novel on the true story of the Pack Horse Library Project established by the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s, Moyes (Still Me, 2018, etc.) brings an often forgotten slice of history to life. She writes about Kentucky with lush descriptions of the landscape and tender respect for the townspeople, most of whom are poor, uneducated, and grateful for the chance to learn. Although Alice and Margery both have their own romances, the true power of the story is in the bonds between the women of the library. They may have different backgrounds, but their commitment to helping the people of Baileyville brings them together.
A love letter to the power of books and friendship.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-399-56248-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
Categories: GENERAL FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
Categories: GENERAL FICTION
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SEEN & HEARD
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