A first novel from Australian author Meehan, whose young protagonist, like a Cormac McCarthy boy, is compelled by enormous emotional confusion to undertake a perilous journey that pits him against nature for survival.
Skinny, uncomfortable in his skin, the boy “wrapped himself in his father’s heavy peajacket and wore it even through the high heat of the day,” along with a “battered army slouch” and “heavy boots that . . . needed the aid of rolled newspaper and bandages just to stay on his feet.” He has two idols: Joe Spencer, a strong, muscular farmhand; and Cabel Singh, a storytelling hawker from India with legendary knowledge of the Outback. As the boy tries to understand through them the route to manhood, into his seething thoughts and the family farm stumbles Eileen, a wild, sensual girl-woman. When she disappears, leaving behind a bloody dress, the boy’s journey into the Outback begins. When a writer like Meehan is compared to Faulkner and McCarthy, a reader expects stylish prose to abound. And it does here. In the night, the boy steals from his bed and rounds up his old pony and “pup” and leaves to track Cabel, hoping to find Eileen—the action spans 11 pages. Faulkner reigns here. But at the end of the second act, the story broadens jarringly. Across the rough Outback terrain, a man comes peddling strenuously on an old, decrepit bike. They meet, and soon the man philosophizes about Cabel Singh and life, especially his own war experience and subsequent stay in Paris. Becket! From philosopher to dead man in a tree dressed in red-and-white striped pajamas, from beginning to fiery end, the boy encounters bizarre situations, following in the footsteps of his storytelling idol, physically and metaphorically.
A bold, stylized debut that doesn’t always work, yet is mainly compelling.Pub Date: May 1, 2001
ISBN: 1-55970-567-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Arcade
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2001
Categories: GENERAL FICTION
Did you like this book?
BOOK REVIEW
While a few weeks ago it seemed as if Praeger would have a two month lead over Dutton in their presentation of this Soviet best seller, both the "authorized" edition (Dutton's) and the "unauthorized" (Praeger's) will appear almost simultaneously. There has been considerable advance attention on what appears to be as much of a publishing cause celebre here as the original appearance of the book in Russia. Without entering into the scrimmage, or dismissing it as a plague on both your houses, we will limit ourselves to a few facts. Royalties from the "unauthorized" edition will go to the International Rescue Committee; Dutton with their contracted edition is adhering to copyright conventions. The Praeger edition has two translators and one of them is the translator of Doctor Zhivago Dutton's translator, Ralph Parker, has been stigmatized by Praeger as "an apologist for the Soviet regime". To the untutored eye, the Dutton translation seems a little more literary, the Praeger perhaps closer to the rather primitive style of the original. The book itself is an account of one day in the three thousand six hundred and fifty three days of the sentence to be served by a carpenter, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov. (Solzhenitsyn was a political prisoner.) From the unrelenting cold without, to the conditions within, from the bathhouse to the latrine to the cells where survival for more than two weeks is impossible, this records the hopeless facts of existence as faced by thousands who went on "living like this, with your eyes on the ground". The Dutton edition has an excellent introduction providing an orientation on the political background to its appearance in Russia by Marvin Kalb. All involved in its publication (translators, introducers, etc.) claim for it great "artistic" values which we cannot share, although there is no question of its importance as a political and human document and as significant and tangible evidence of the de-Stalinization program.
Pub Date: June 15, 1963
ISBN: 0451228146
Page Count: 181
Publisher: Praeger
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1963
Categories: GENERAL FICTION
Did you like this book?
Hannah’s sequel to Firefly Lane (2008) demonstrates that those who ignore family history are often condemned to repeat it.
When we last left Kate and Tully, the best friends portrayed in Firefly Lane, the friendship was on rocky ground. Now Kate has died of cancer, and Tully, whose once-stellar TV talk show career is in free fall, is wracked with guilt over her failure to be there for Kate until her very last days. Kate’s death has cemented the distrust between her husband, Johnny, and daughter Marah, who expresses her grief by cutting herself and dropping out of college to hang out with goth poet Paxton. Told mostly in flashbacks by Tully, Johnny, Marah and Tully’s long-estranged mother, Dorothy, aka Cloud, the story piles up disasters like the derailment of a high-speed train. Increasingly addicted to prescription sedatives and alcohol, Tully crashes her car and now hovers near death, attended by Kate’s spirit, as the other characters gather to see what their shortsightedness has wrought. We learn that Tully had tried to parent Marah after her father no longer could. Her hard-drinking decline was triggered by Johnny’s anger at her for keeping Marah and Paxton’s liaison secret. Johnny realizes that he only exacerbated Marah’s depression by uprooting the family from their Seattle home. Unexpectedly, Cloud, who rebuffed Tully’s every attempt to reconcile, also appears at her daughter’s bedside. Sixty-nine years old and finally sober, Cloud details for the first time the abusive childhood, complete with commitments to mental hospitals and electroshock treatments, that led to her life as a junkie lowlife and punching bag for trailer-trash men. Although powerful, Cloud’s largely peripheral story deflects focus away from the main conflict, as if Hannah was loath to tackle the intractable thicket in which she mired her main characters.
Unrelenting gloom relieved only occasionally by wrenching trauma; somehow, though, Hannah’s storytelling chops keep the pages turning even as readers begin to resent being drawn into this masochistic morass.Pub Date: April 23, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-312-57721-6
Page Count: 416
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2013
Categories: GENERAL FICTION
Did you like this book?
© Copyright 2021 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
