Shaham, winner of last year's National Jewish Book Award for The Rosendorf Quartet, organizes this ambitious new novel around the figure of a Marxist revolutionary suddenly struggling in his old age to come to terms with his part in the upheavals he has survived. Avigdor Berkov begins clearly enough with the facts of his life. He was born in Czarist Russia, left it for Palestine in the heady 1920's to work in the Labor Brigade, fathered a son on his girlfriend, but returned to Soviet Russia when his leftist positions led to his expulsion from the Brigade. Back in his homeland, he had time to settle down with a wife, Nina, and a daughter, Olga, before Stalin's infernal machine captured him and abandoned him to interrogation, torture, and a long prison term. Now, in 1970, his trip to Olga in Tel Aviv—where he'll see Vera and her son as well—forces him to reconstruct himself, and his justification for choosing political causes over family, friends, and lovers, through a shattered mosaic of memories. As in The Rosendorf Quartet, a series of narratives (here, four notebooks Berkov keeps on his arrival in Israel) dramatize increasingly powerful episodes in the principals' lives without, finally, giving the labyrinth a center. Berkov recalls his hopeful friendship with Crimean utopian Mendel Elkind, his casual betrayal of a harmless Israeli intellectual, his suspicions of the Polish editor whose desire for Nina led him to produce a forged death certificate for Berkov—all the time trying to explain himself in the present to an avid student of the Labor Brigade's infighting, a documentary filmmaker, his dismissive son-in-law, and his companions in the nursing home where he ends up. Despite Shaham's resolute understatement (``It is melodrama which I want to avoid above all,'' Berkov says early on): a memorable portrait of a survivor of himself, a man whose own actions, and whose continuing detachment from them, have branded him as indelibly as the Holocaust scarred its survivors.
Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1993
ISBN: 0-8021-1001-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1993
BOOK REVIEW
The book reads like a cheesy episode of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer.
Love is challenging for any species—but things get more complicated when you’re a ghoul who wants to eat anyone who gets close to you.
In DeAngelis’ (Petty Magic, 2010, etc.) third novel, 16-year-old Maren is determined to track down her father after her mother, who clearly loves her but is scared for her own life, abandons her, leaving behind some money and the girl's birth certificate, which includes some important information: her father’s name. Maren started eating people when she was a little kid. She devoured the kind babysitter who showed her affection, and things only got worse from there. She ate a boy who befriended her at summer camp. She ate the son of her mother’s boss during a party. She ate other people. It isn’t until she sets out on the road to find her father that she finally meets one of her own kind. Sully is a talkative man, and there’s something a bit sinister about him, too. He weaves a rope out of hair from people he's eaten. Maren decides to find her dad by herself, and at a Wal-Mart in the middle of the country, she finally meets another cannibal closer to her own age. Lee is someone she quickly relates to. His first kill was his babysitter, too. But as she tells him: “I make friends…I just can’t keep them.” Lee joins Maren on her quest to find her father, and a good portion of the book is about their developing relationship. Even though there are entertaining moments, DeAngelis’ prose is run-of-the-mill and her observations, somewhat obvious.
The book reads like a cheesy episode of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-04650-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
An overstuffed tale that can’t decide if it’s a mystery or a romance.
Moriarty’s second novel follows the Doughty clan as they fight to protect family secrets.
The Doughtys became famous more than 70 years ago when Connie and Rose Doughty found a baby on their island home, Scribbly Gum. The baby’s parents, Alice and Jack Munro, vanished, leaving few clues to their whereabouts. The circumstances around the abandonment created a national media sensation. Dubbed “The Baby Munro Mystery,” the case captivated Australians and turned sleepy Scribbly Gum Island into a tourist destination. Connie and Rose jumped at this chance to make money. They offered tours and concessions based on the Munro’s disappearance. Their schemes created a financial windfall for the Doughty family. As the business grew, Connie and Rose managed to keep the younger generations of Doughtys on a tight leash by controlling the purse strings. After setting up this bleak bit of history, Moriarty focuses on the island’s current residents. The Doughty grandchildren and great-grandchildren seem to have prospered in their pristine surroundings, but in reality they are a tortured bunch. The family’s troubles surface when the matriarch, Connie, dies. Infighting breaks out among the relatives, and the careful fabric that bound the family together for years starts to unravel. The comparatively sane and notably saucy Sophie Honeywell is thrown into this den of nutcases—Sophie had only met the dowager a handful of times, when she was dating one of the Scribbly Gum natives, but apparently Sophie made such an impression that Connie bequeathed to her her home. Eager to toss aside Sydney’s stale singles scene for the opportunity to live rent-free on the picturesque island, Sophie joins the fray. Moriarty (Three Wishes, 2004) presents far too many characters (five generations are accounted for), and none of them are likable. The old ladies are cantankerous and the younger folk are addle-brained. Sub-plots involve postpartum depression, gay relationships, mid-life crises and weight-control issues.
An overstuffed tale that can’t decide if it’s a mystery or a romance.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-089068-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2006
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