Loquacious but enjoyable.
Guggenmoose presents a campus mystery involving theft, murder and ancient Rome.
The Department of Pontifical and Pathological Philology at Life of the Mind University is the peaceful, if wordy, home to graduate students Morty Guggenmoose and his classmates. But that serenity is shattered when rare coins go missing from the Louis T. and Ernest R. Pfumpfermeister Museum and student Alvy Barg is accused of the crime. Visiting professor Gabriel Dewfinger thinks the young scholar is innocent, but when he catches Barg standing over the body of the recently deceased museum director Edler Nooken, Dewfinger accuses him of something far worse than pilfering ancient Roman currency. But who is responsible for the thefts? And who murdered Nooken? Guggenmoose and his colleagues—including Wilbur “Mashie” Micklechuck, a promising philologist threatening to decamp to business school—must get to the bottom of it while simultaneously decoding Horace’s odes and preparing a paper on his use of ablatives for the upcoming Regional Graduate Student Latin Conference. Guggenmoose, the main character and ostensibly the story’s author, is witty, acerbic and, naturally, verbose. At its best, his prose evokes midcentury campus comedies of manners; at its most grating, readers are reminded of impenetrable classroom lectures. The story seems to be set in Chicago, but we’re never quite sure of the era. The dialogue is stilted, but ultimately clever. And the story moves apace; the mystery propels the narrative and theclassics lessons about Roman numismatics and Latin literature entertain as well as educate. Overall, once the reader settles into the book’s idiosyncratic rhythms, the tale is quite engrossing. It’s a mystery on many levels; readers wonder what becomes of the story’s characters and who could be behind this anachronistic prose. Life of the Mind University may be a school readers want to enroll in again and again.
Loquacious but enjoyable.Pub Date: April 27, 2011
ISBN: 978-1550145403
Page Count: 178
Publisher: Leaping Lion
Review Posted Online: June 6, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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