Part Back to the Future with slivers of an Inconvenient Truth, Frank’s debut science-fiction novel starts with a fatal accident and ends with social and environmental responsibility.
A successful advertising executive, 42-year-old Summer has had over a dozen years of stressful board meetings, aggressive negotiations and an impressive winning streak of international accounts. But her high-octane life plummets out of control as subordinates conspire, and memory lapses make her the target of office gossip. She needs a break, a true holiday and rejuvenation. At her boss’ request, Summer books a hiking trip to Alaska, intent on climbing cliffs and rediscovering her inner tiger. As night sets over the terrain, her mind wanders and her footing fails. She stumbles into a crevasse, where her body remains in ice for more than 70 years. With a stellar opening and the naturally compelling question of “what happens next?”, the novel unravels the intricate details of Summer’s second life after she is found and revived from the snowcaps. Her old world is dead, wiped away by human wars and natural disasters. People have retreated into the wild, carving out small villages that live sustainably close to the land. Food is grown in gardens, and communities function as families. Summer struggles in this world where no one keeps secrets, fast food is extinct and love begins to thaw her cold heart. While the first three chapters show great promise in terms of pacing and prose, conflict and science-fictional aspects of the story fall to the wayside. Readers will ask themselves why certain characters are introduced in detail and then simply dropped from the narrative. At several points, the story analyzes humanity’s culpability in its own demise. For pages, Frank dispenses a dissertation of synthetic foods, artificial preservatives, pollution and even the idea of “latchkey kids.” As a result, the story resembles a lengthy lecture of humanity’s irresponsible behavior rather than an exploratory journey through time. While science fiction often touches on these themes, this book lacks the dramatic drive of other futuristic tales. With an honorable message of sustainability and a compelling opening sequence, the book struggles to deliver the sense of wonder and discovery that often defines this genre.
Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2011
ISBN: 978-0615530369
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Vibrant Village Media
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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