An exploration of radical movements and the people involved in them, with both action and insight in digestible doses.
From Penney (Behind the Gates with the 1%, 2012, etc.) comes a novel about a new psychedelic movement, its charming leader and the variety of people caught up in the details.
Bruno Panoka has come a long way from being an evangelical preacher. “Whereas the documentaries of Bruno Panoka as a child prodigy televangelist…regularly opened with singing, clapping, and raising hands to the Lord,” the narrator says, “here he was kicking things off with a mesmerizing Chakra chant.” Panoka’s latest message is one of spiritual exploration with the aid of psychoactive mushrooms. With his Gaia/Universe organization, Panoka pledges to spread his beliefs. He proclaims on television that “because Sacred Mushrooms are at this time illegal and a tool of Empire’s thought control, it would be self-defeating…to actively promote or engage in the physical ingestion of Sacred Mushrooms.” However, he says, “If we can’t use Sacred Mushrooms, we can indeed talk about the ingestion of Sacred Mushrooms and the opening and freeing of minds—and indeed we will.” Utilizing financial resources and leagues of followers, Panoka is perceived as a threat by mainstream America. Organizing quickly, the opposition strikes with considerable force by protesting and hacking into the Gaia/Universe system. How a man as self-assured as Panoka will respond is anyone’s guess. Meanwhile, ex-convict Harry Wimple follows Panoka’s progress from his dilapidated north Phoenix apartment. Having fallen in love with a beautiful acupuncturist, Wimple is doing better than usual, though still not great. The acupuncturist has a boyfriend with whom she seems unlikely to part. When Panoka ends up looking for help from Wimple, he will be faced with a decision that could land him back in jail for the rest of his life. Mixed with characters of different stripes, the book focuses not just on major movers and shakers but on the people they affect. Panoka’s organization doesn’t function on his word alone; it requires administrators, devotees and, eventually, security. Throughout the drama, these and others play their parts; some change to provide novel perspectives, while others remain stereotypes. Whiskey-drinking Walter Dellenbach the Fifth belongs to the latter category, providing little insight into the type of man who wishes to crush Panoka, declaring merely that “We cannot render up control of the species to the rabble.” Slowed initially by Panoka’s penchant for wordy speeches, the action builds in later chapters as readers discover what happens when worlds of disparate philosophies collide.
An exploration of radical movements and the people involved in them, with both action and insight in digestible doses.Pub Date: June 7, 2014
ISBN: 978-1499277647
Page Count: 460
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
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
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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