Like actors who wear masks not only to hide their identities but also to create new ones, the characters in this luminously rendered third novel (Small Gathering of Bones, not reviewed, etc.) by Jamaican-born Powell are not what they seem. The story is set in the Jamaica of the late 1800s when poverty was endemic, whites were in control, and racial tensions were exacerbated by the presence of indentured East Indian and Chinese laborers. Married to white Miss Sylvie, the Chinese Lowe, who runs a small store, had always been good to his customers. But one night as he started to write a letter to his daughter, Liz, the shop was burned down with a white man, Cecil, trapped inside. Depressed, Lowe couldn—t continue the letter, of course, a letter intended to tell Liz the truth about her birth and the past. Now, Lowe’s life has no purpose, and his long masquerade seems even more futile as he finds himself recalling his childhood in China and the closeness to his father that ended when he was a teenager and his father betrayed him. He recalls how he became a stowaway, and how he was rescued, only to be raped by Cecil, the ship’s captain, who discovered that Lowe was really a woman. In Jamaica, she again became Lowe, a man, set up with a shop and wife by Cecil. Lowe’s despair eases only when he decides to build a pagoda for the island Chinese, but he now finds Sylvie has her own secrets to share. As confessions and confusions multiply, Lowe has an affair with Joyce, a black woman—-but Sylvie, haunted by her past, runs away. Now Lowe, missing Sylvie, whom he realizes he truly loves, finally writes to Liz. Suffused with grief and regret, the letter tells his story and reveals his conviction that he’s never lived fully but “always through some kind of veil.” The ending is quiet but an appropriately elegiac counterpoint to the preceding emotional turmoil. Impressively conceived. (Book-of-the-Month Club selection)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-679-45489-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1998
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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