This novel won for Mosley (Judith; Rules of the Game, Beyond the Pale, p. 523, etc.) the British cash-rich Whitbread Award last year, and some English high opinion—as much for, it would seem, ambition and social/moral seriousness as for its artistic merits. Mosley is a quirky and interesting novelist, severe and secretive in technique; and here he posits the yin-yang relationship of a German woman, Eleanor, and a British man, Max, who together neatly interfit to roll down the corridor of mid-century history, illustrating as they go Freud, Einstein, Fascism, Marxism, Hitler, and the Bomb. But this huge agenda (and the corollary argument, ceaselessly presented, that we must not merely biologically but also morally evolve) not surprisingly loads upon these two poor characters the enormous representative burden of always thinking about and being physically situated in the most meaning-laden nodes of modern life. The book has a ponderous march-step, then, and everyone in it bears so clear a role that they lack all personality. Also: Mosley's notion to constantly interpose Max and Eleanor's thoughts in separate paragraphs (``I thought—Indeed, there is potency in the image of the hand that draws a hand that is drawing itself!'') gives the book the unfortunate feel of pre- Baroque opera or of a mystery play: vatic recitatives you find yourself sorry you didn't just skip as you read. Serious and pondering—and most of the time unbearably tedious.
Pub Date: Dec. 2, 1991
ISBN: 0-916583-85-6
Page Count: 551
Publisher: Dalkey Archive
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1991
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This seems a simple — almost an obvious book — until its overtones and undertones begin to do their deadly work. Then one realizes that, compact in less than 200 pages, is the story of what is happening to the conquerors and the conquered the world over, today. The yeast of freedom, of democracy, the soul of unconquerable man, is working to destroy those who deny freedom. No country is named — but it might be Norway. No person nor persons are named — but their types are truly drawn. Mayor Orden stands as a hero with none of the trappings of heroism. Curseling, the traitor, epitomizes the Quislings of the world. And the story? A tale of the unnamed men and women who are breaking the morale of the conquering beast with silence, hate, mass resentment, and the use of weapons forged by imagination and passion while the weapons of the enemy become powerless to break their strength, their unity of anger. An extraordinary achievement.
Pub Date: May 6, 1942
ISBN: 0140187464
Page Count: 148
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1942
A good beach read, set in a beach town.
A fast-paced novel about the enduring friendship of three young women who spent their summers in Avalon on the Jersey shore before dispersing across the country.
The book opens with Kate, now a lawyer in the girls’ original hometown of Philadelphia. Kate’s fiance, a man she met in law school, breaks up with her the same day she learns she is pregnant with their baby. Then we meet Vanessa, now living in New York City. Vanessa has given up her career as an art dealer in the city to raise her daughter Lucy and is struggling with her husband’s confession that he recently came close to cheating on her. Then we meet Dani, an aspiring novelist who has just lost her job in a bookstore in San Francisco. Dani is still dealing with drug and alcohol addictions and is still looking for Mr. Right. When the three decide to get together and spend the 4th of July holiday back in Avalon, they are each haunted by memories of Kate’s twin brother, Colin, who tragically drowned there eight years earlier when they were all on the cusp of adulthood. Woven into the mystery of Colin’s demise are other issues of childhood that influenced each of the young women. As they look back on the painful past and flirt with future opportunities, the women finally share the secrets they had kept all those years, forgive one another and prepare themselves to move on in positive ways.
A good beach read, set in a beach town.Pub Date: May 21, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-220381-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
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