Taforo-Murphy is a born storyteller with a poet’s ear and eye, making every line of her hilarious, biting, and vengeful book...
A debut novel about a religious family that will pack a real wallop for Catholics (or ex-Catholics) of a certain age.
Taforo-Murphy takes readers back to post–World War II San Francisco and the struggling Kenny family. The story is about Ann Mary Kenny, a devout Catholic, and narrated in retrospect by her middle child, Theresa. This is a family that’s slowly being torn apart by the issue of contraception—or rather the prohibition against it, as dictated by the holy mother church. It’s an age-old bind for married women: to celebrate the connubial act (as the church—and one’s husband—encourages) but then to be terrified that it may result in yet another mouth to feed. One funny and sad chapter has a bewildered Ann Mary trying to follow along while a doctor explains in detail the “rhythm method,” the only birth-control option that the church approves. Henry, the non-Catholic father, becomes more frustrated, angry, and distant, and Ann Mary goes slowly, literally, insane as Theresa watches. The book is an unapologetic polemic, and conservative Catholics may be enraged, but Taforo-Murphy gives no quarter. There are good people in this story, such as Father Capwell, the pastor of St. Cyril’s parish, who “really was a kind man, a man with the unselfconscious sweet innocence of an angel, a rather dim angel, one settled into an only minimally reflective goodness.” But there’s the rub: this old, feckless priest is the best of the bunch. As Taforo-Murphy portrays it, the church as an institution is rule-ridden, absolute, and smugly, unshakably certain, even if it costs a woman’s sanity. Parochial school also gets its lumps here, as it’s apparently designed to instill a lively guilt. Young Theresa herself, aiming in her own twisted way to save her mother from hell, becomes a moral fanatic, a confessional junkie. The Mission Band, a tag team of visiting priests, preaches sermons that would make any Puritan look wishy-washy. Thus are people ground down with the best of intentions in this novel. An afterword reveals that young Theresa’s story was based on Taforo-Murphy’s own, so readers will know why she pulled no punches.
Taforo-Murphy is a born storyteller with a poet’s ear and eye, making every line of her hilarious, biting, and vengeful book a pleasure to read.Pub Date: May 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-578-17273-6
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Green Isles Press
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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