Whether read as thriller or allegory, Ishmael’s fall from grace has a lacerating power.
A psychologically harrowing and literarily provocative portrait of a mind unraveling from tragedy.
Though the prolific Everett (Wounded, 2005, etc.) has employed a variety of different narrative strategies, this first-person confession finds the novelist at his metafictional best. In almost claustrophobic fashion, the reader inhabits the mind of “Call me Ishmael” Kidder, who steeps his narrative in the richness of literary and philosophical allusion. While pondering the essence of storytelling, of identity, of words themselves, Ishmael continues to circle around his plot’s pivot: the rape and murder of his 11-year-old daughter, Lane. The incident followed Ishmael’s separation from his wife, Charlotte, which may or may not have been preceded by Ishmael’s infidelity (he can’t be sure whether he cheated in his mind or in truth, wherever truth may lie). Yet living apart from her father plainly had a disturbing effect on Lane, making Ishmael feel complicit (though not of rape or murder) well before the fatal brutality suffered by his daughter. “I may not be at fault or to blame, but I am guilty for the death of my child,” he confesses. Ishmael is also a storyteller, a writer of romance novels using a woman’s name, and the rest of the story he tells concerns the revenge he wreaks on his daughter’s murderer, a diabolically deliberate process that takes as much toll on Ishmael as it does on his prey (unnamed, perhaps even imaginary, whom Ishmael ultimately refers to as his “victim”). Within what Ishmael refers to as “this sick thing I call a mind,” there is wordplay that evokes Joyce, Chaucer and Lewis Carroll. There are philosophical debates between Plato and Socrates. There are meditations on what Ishmael calls “the functions of language,” the last of which he asserts is “to cause pain.” For Ishmael, there is no escape from his mind in this novel. And none for the reader as well.
Whether read as thriller or allegory, Ishmael’s fall from grace has a lacerating power.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-55597-476-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Graywolf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2007
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
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
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BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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