This prolific author (Fair Peril, 1996, etc. etc.) has a remarkably vivid style, but it's not enough to sustain a plot this...
A feminist tale about a middle-aged housewife who’s abandoned by her philandering husband.
So frumpy Sassy Hummel struggles into an ill-fitting pink polyester uniform and goes to work as a maid in an immense, pretentious hotel. The drudgery is endless, although after 27 years of a miserable marriage, it's apparently all she knows how to do. Sassy is befriended by Racquel, the transvestite owner of the hotel boutique selling fabulous feathered dresses and accessories; but Racquel's flamboyant manner and outrageous get-ups make Sassy feel all the dowdier. Life just can't get any worse, it seems—until the day a lost parakeet poops on Sassy's head. It's magic doo-doo, however, which bestows upon Sassy the amazing ability to see the inner birds of others. Racquel, for example, is a hornbill. And when Sassy looks in the mirror, she sees the reflection of an ordinary little budgie. Then the mirror's surface shimmers . . . and dissolves . . . and Sassy steps through it into a mysterious parallel world, a lush jungle where extinct birds like moas and ivory-billed woodpeckers and passenger pigeons still live. There, she encounters heretofore hidden aspects of herself: a strange nature deity bedecked with brilliant feathers, a glorious bird of paradise, and so forth. Eventually, Racquel joins Sassy (and feels right at home). For a while, then, the two pop back and forth between the mirror world and mundane reality. Meantime, Sassy's husband—clueless and flightless—chases after the reluctant Racquel, while Sassy talks it all over with Lydia, a local bird-lover. Yes, the heroine learns to spread her wings and fly again, and there are lots of other well-worn symbols of newfound freedom.
This prolific author (Fair Peril, 1996, etc. etc.) has a remarkably vivid style, but it's not enough to sustain a plot this thin. And passages written from the point of view of the lost parakeet are plain silly: “At this singproud pairdance time, Kleet felt his loneliness most keenly.”Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-380-80120-5
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Anyone who believes in true love or is simply willing to accept it as the premise of a winding tale will find this debut an...
True love flares between two people, but they find that circumstances always impede it.
On a winter day in London, Laurie spots Jack from her bus home and he sparks a feeling in her so deep that she spends the next year searching for him. Her roommate and best friend, Sarah, is the perfect wing-woman but ultimately—and unknowingly—ends the search by finding Jack and falling for him herself. Laurie’s hasty decision not to tell Sarah is the second painful missed opportunity (after not getting off the bus), but Sarah’s happiness is so important to Laurie that she dedicates ample energy into retraining her heart not to love Jack. Laurie is misguided, but her effort and loyalty spring from a true heart, and she considers her project mostly successful. Perhaps she would have total success, but the fact of the matter is that Jack feels the same deep connection to Laurie. His reasons for not acting on them are less admirable: He likes Sarah and she’s the total package; why would he give that up just because every time he and Laurie have enough time together (and just enough alcohol) they nearly fall into each other’s arms? Laurie finally begins to move on, creating a mostly satisfying life for herself, whereas Jack’s inability to be genuine tortures him and turns him into an ever bigger jerk. Patriarchy—it hurts men, too! There’s no question where the book is going, but the pacing is just right, the tone warm, and the characters sympathetic, even when making dumb decisions.
Anyone who believes in true love or is simply willing to accept it as the premise of a winding tale will find this debut an emotional, satisfying read.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-57468-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
More faithful to the original but less astonishing than Christopher Logue’s work and lacking some of the music of Fagles’...
Fresh version of one of the world’s oldest epic poems, a foundational text of Western literature.
Sing to me, O muse, of the—well, in the very opening line, the phrase Wilson (Classical Studies, Univ. of Pennsylvania) chooses is the rather bland “complicated man,” the adjective missing out on the deviousness implied in the Greek polytropos, which Robert Fagles translated as “of twists and turns.” Wilson has a few favorite words that the Greek doesn’t strictly support, one of them being “monstrous,” meaning something particularly heinous, and to have Telemachus “showing initiative” seems a little report-card–ish and entirely modern. Still, rose-fingered Dawn is there in all her glory, casting her brilliant light over the wine-dark sea, and Wilson has a lively understanding of the essential violence that underlies the complicated Odysseus’ great ruse to slaughter the suitors who for 10 years have been eating him out of palace and home and pitching woo to the lovely, blameless Penelope; son Telemachus shows that initiative, indeed, by stringing up a bevy of servant girls, “their heads all in a row / …strung up with the noose around their necks / to make their death an agony.” In an interesting aside in her admirably comprehensive introduction, which extends nearly 80 pages, Wilson observes that the hanging “allows young Telemachus to avoid being too close to these girls’ abused, sexualized bodies,” and while her reading sometimes tends to be overly psychologized, she also notes that the violence of Odysseus, by which those suitors “fell like flies,” mirrors that of some of the other ungracious hosts he encountered along his long voyage home to Ithaca.
More faithful to the original but less astonishing than Christopher Logue’s work and lacking some of the music of Fagles’ recent translations of Homer; still, a readable and worthy effort.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-393-08905-9
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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