This tale of adventure on the high seas is gripping at times but generally slight and rambling.
In Catalano’s semiautobiographical novel, a young college professor sets sail through the Middle East in the 1980s.
Protagonist and narrator Joe Pisano is a college professor and yachting enthusiast, much like Catalano (Music and Literature/Pace; Clifford Brown: The Life and Art of the Legendary Jazz Trumpeter, 2000). As the novel opens, Pisano is sailing through calm waters with his friends, playing captain with histrionic panache. A self-professed romantic, his head is filled with maritime literature. One of the novels strengths is Pisano’s enthusiastic narration, which slides between self-deprecation, naïveté and hypersensitivity. Describing these early, easy sea travels, Pisano quips: “My guests, who referred to me as ‘Captain,’ seemed to enjoy my exaggerated storytelling, but they enjoyed the refreshments and swimming more than anything else.” Then Pisano gets a call to participate in a real sailing adventure: A crew circumnavigating the globe needs an extra crewmember from Cairo to Milan. Before he can quote Homer’s “wine-dark sea,” Pisano is on a plane. Once in the Middle East, he finds only disillusion: The boat is in terrible shape; fellow crewmembers, Roger and Dick, are silently disgruntled on their best days; and the sailing is a monotonous cycle of terrible weather, run-ins with bandits and hard labor. Some of the episodes, like an encounter with a dock full of treacherous-looking gunmen, live up to the standards of classic sea-faring adventure literature. Readers may wish all aspects of the novel exhibited the same attention to detail the author reserves for exploring his protagonist’s inner life. Roger and Dick are sketchily drawn, and most of Pisano’s interactions with them fail to deepen their characters; readers may long to hear their perspective, but it never comes. Catalano rarely explains boating vocabulary for the layman so boating novices will find certain parts of the novel hard to fathom. What is “the gelcoat of the freeboard” and how does a storm wreak havoc upon it? The adventure ends with a rather spectacular scene near Libya, but the novel’s overall lack of depth dulls the adventure.
This tale of adventure on the high seas is gripping at times but generally slight and rambling.Pub Date: Feb. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0615556963
Page Count: 148
Publisher: Aegeon Press
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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