A fine first effort, shifting smoothly from coming-of-age comedy to sharp-edged images of the sea change in American life...
In Santana’s heartfelt debut (winner of 1999’s Chicano/Latino Literary Contest), trauma for San Diego’s Sahagún family begins in 1969 when son Chuy returns from Vietnam an aloof, bitter man. He barely acknowledges the party his family throws for him and within days has bought a Harley and disappeared down the road. Chuy’s departure coincides with yearnings toward independence by his sisters, especially the older ones, who chafe at being forbidden to date by their domineering father. Caroline simply brings her Marine boyfriend home one day, willing to face her father’s apoplectic response in order to show her younger siblings the way. Quiet, watchful 14-year-old Yoli is the reader’s witness: to secret meetings between another sister and an older man; to the outrageous behavior of her womanizing older brother; even to her own adolescent pining for a dark, handsome schoolmate. Chuy’s return, months later, opens a more dangerous phase in the family chronicle, as his pent-up wrath finally explodes in the face of an innocent neighbor. Now wanted by the police, Chuy goes into hiding, and only after weeks of worry and her own bad-girl displays can Yoli find a way to bring her brother out of his private hell.
A fine first effort, shifting smoothly from coming-of-age comedy to sharp-edged images of the sea change in American life brought by its involvement in Vietnam.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-8263-2435-5
Page Count: 276
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2002
A major novel — the first since East of Eden — this brings into focus a conflict within a man's personality which will have wide, perhaps too wide, recognition value. John Steinbeck's special gift of compassion might have turned this into a sentimental exercise. As it develops, however, this is a taut, realistic, controversial portrait of Ethan Allen Hawley, scion of an old family, bearing his heritage of high ideals, intrinsic honesty — and fear of insecurity, while confronted with a shattered fortune- the old homestead the only thing left, and a job as grocery clerk in a store he had once owned. The pressures on him come to a head in this winter of his discontent, as his wife (who is basically an ideal mate, sensitive, perceptive, loving) lashes out at him for not giving his family the wherewithal to support their name; his son and daughter chide him for his failures — and a tiny inheritance of his wife, Mary, offers a possible loophole for taking a long chance. And then he is shown a way — involving a compromise with his integrity, a betrayal of his standards-and he succumbs, actually going beyond the initial opportunity to trap two men to whom he owes affection and loyalty. What happens is not wholly within the accepted pattern — nor is the outcome predictable. But Steinbeck sustains the reader's suspense, poses issues of responsibility — a man to his friend, to his employer, to his son, to himself — and leaves the resolution in final analysis to the reader. It is a fascinating and disturbing book, uncomfortably close to the challenge the average man faces in today's materialistic world.
Pub Date: June 23, 1961
ISBN: 0143039482
Page Count: 274
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1961
SEEN & HEARD
Laymon moves us dazzlingly (and sometimes bewilderingly) from 1964 to 1985 to 2013 and incorporates themes of prejudice,...
A novel within a novel—hilarious, moving and occasionally dizzying.
Citoyen “City” Coldson is a 14-year-old wunderkind when it comes to crafting sentences. In fact, his only rival is his classmate LaVander Peeler. Although the two don’t get along, they’ve qualified to appear on the national finals of the contest "Can You Use That Word in a Sentence," and each is determined to win. Unfortunately, on the nationally televised show, City is given the word “niggardly” and, to say the least, does not provide a “correct, appropriate or dynamic usage” of the word as the rules require. LaVander similarly blows his chance with the word “chitterlings,” so both are humiliated, City the more so since his appearance is available to all on YouTube. This leads to a confrontation with his grandmother, alas for City, “the greatest whupper in the history of Mississippi whuppings.” Meanwhile, the principal at City’s school has given him a book entitled Long Division. When City begins to read this, he discovers that the main character is named City Coldson, and he’s in love with a Shalaya Crump...but this is in 1985, and the contest finals occurred in 2013. (Laymon is nothing if not contemporary.) A girl named Baize Shephard also appears in the novel City is reading, though in 2013, she has mysteriously disappeared a few weeks before City’s humiliation. Laymon cleverly interweaves his narrative threads and connects characters in surprising and seemingly impossible ways.
Laymon moves us dazzlingly (and sometimes bewilderingly) from 1964 to 1985 to 2013 and incorporates themes of prejudice, confusion and love rooted in an emphatically post-Katrina world.Pub Date: June 15, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-932841-72-5
Page Count: 250
Publisher: Bolden/Agate
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2013
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BOOK REVIEW
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