From deep inside the man’s head there’s no denying the completeness of his transformation, but even so the brutality of the...
Taking a thread from his last novel, The Cosmology of Bing (2001), for his fifth, Cullin uses a true story and his true gift for grit to record the unraveling of a high-school English teacher as he moves a bit too inexorably from heterosexual family life to a gay nightlife, and ultimately to murder.
In a beginning reminiscent of a Terry Gilliam movie, the reader stands on the edge of a world of subterraneans: furtive characters emerging from their sewer- and drain-pipes only long enough to find food and firewood. But the futuristic feel quickly falls away, revealing the city of Phoenix just over the saguaro-studded hill, and one man comes to the fore. Nameless, befriended by a kindly crazy with an idea about zippered cattle as a perfect food source, “the man” sleeps badly and remembers too well. First, he reveals his former middle-class life: nice wife, two great kids, a job he loves. But his wife’s not interested in sex anymore, so night after night, the family asleep, he prowls—first just driving, then visiting the backrooms of an adult bookstore, where he discovers the delights of the “glory holes,” and finally to the dimly lit public toilet in a Phoenix park where the real action is. But an undercover cop is murdered there while the man is busy in a stall, and his double life is undone. Feeling guilty about having bolted the scene (and perhaps about his other secrets as well), he agonizes over what to do, and decides to tell his name and story to the police—an act that instantly makes John Connor a prime suspect. He hides among the homeless, hoping to find his partner from the night of the murder, who can vouch for him. By luck he does, but instead of redemption Connor winds up with another murder on his hands.
From deep inside the man’s head there’s no denying the completeness of his transformation, but even so the brutality of the endgame here seems to go a step too far.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2002
ISBN: 1-57962-077-9
Page Count: 166
Publisher: Permanent Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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