McCabe, as skilled and significant a novelist as Ireland has produced in decades, follows up 1993's acclaimed The Butcher Boy- -his third novel and American debut—with yet another savagely acerbic riff on the decay of modern life and the modern Irish. Malachy Dudgeon and Raphael Bell are as distant in age and attitude as they are morally removed from their prophet and angel namesakes. Malachy, the younger, coasts on his innocent wits while struggling with the trauma of his parents' loveless marriage that drove his father to suicide. Raphael, older by a generation, can't escape the memory of his own father's murder at the hands of Ireland's vicious Black and Tans. With no gentle irony, McCabe gives both men jobs in the same Catholic boys' school, St. Anthony's, where Raphael establishes a legendary reputation for himself as a principal who prizes discipline over progressive pedagogy, and where inexperienced teacher Malachy soon discovers that his hipster personality is no match for his horribly misbehaved students. Beaten like animals by the likes of Raphael, the boys of St. Anthony's have learned to attack at any sign of weakness. It isn't long before tragedy strikes (a student drowns) and Malachy gets sacked. At the same time, Raphael suffers his own trials: Hippie educational reformers are clamoring for his hide, and he's lost the support of the Catholic clergy. When Malachy's wife cheats on him with a rock guitarist, he lights out for London, where he swiftly degenerates into a dope fiend and derelict. Raphael remains in Dublin, but, following the death of his wife, he barricades himself in his house and starts The Dead School, delivering alcoholic lectures to phantom students while his deceased cat rots on the windowsill. At the close, McCabe recollides his characters in a brief and hilariously awkward showdown—and then permits things to become even worse. The big challenge for an Irish writer is to move in a new direction from the magisterial accomplishment of Joyce, Yeats, and Beckett, and to do it within the remarkable scope of Irish English. McCabe is the man.
Pub Date: April 26, 1995
ISBN: 0-385-31420-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
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
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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