An immigrant story with universal appeal.
A young boy witnesses family dysfunction and tragedy in the wake of his seaman uncle’s arrival in New York.
After 50 years, Jack, a ship’s carpenter in the British Merchant Service, is on his last ship before his retirement, and New York, where his brother and his family live, is his final port of call. “The sea has been good to me, blewdy good,” he mutters. “So it’s on now to the next chapter of my life—a crusty ol’ Liverpool pensioner, fillin’ ’is days with pipe, paper, and the occasional pint at Baltic Fleet Pub.” Bird (A Rough Road, 2011, etc.) ominously sets the stage for dire things to come with a gut-punch sentence: “But Jack will never return to England.” The author’s debut memoir chronicled his bout with polio in 1940 at the age of 4. This next chapter in the family saga is set in 1956, the year when the raucous records of Elvis Presley, Little Richard, and other fledgling rockers began turning up on jukeboxes in the pubs frequented (to excess) by 7-year-old Johnny’s father, Bill. This compact book is of a piece, but it is defined by two incidents. The first concerns a family party in honor of Jack’s visit. Bird deftly sketches the close-knit family and friends, including Margaret, the homely sister of Johnny’s mother, Nan, with a predilection for watching TV wrestling; Martin Moran, a recent émigré, who comes from “beyond the far”; and Bill, whose drunken antics on this night will expose the resentments of his wife of 25 years and who administers a shattering payback. The second incident, about which the less said the better, concerns Bill and Johnny’s Easter Sunday visit to Jack’s ship and the aftermath that cements family ties. Bird exhibits a keen ear for English and Irish dialects and the folk tunes that bind the Astoria, Queens, neighbors, as well as a respect for ritual. At the party for Jack, “Nan softly sings ‘Mother Machree’ and Margaret follows with ‘Home to Mayo,’ each delivered with sweet longing.” The slippery rules of memoir allow for conversations to which the author could not possibly have been privy, but they read as emotionally true.
An immigrant story with universal appeal.Pub Date: June 16, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-692-63450-9
Page Count: 134
Publisher: The Big Apple-Hellgate Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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