Landesman aspires to literature in his first novel, a moody sea story whose ambitious reach ultimately exceeds its considerable grasp. During early summer 1941, the pleasure craft Raven puts out to sea from Bailey Island offshore Maine and disappears carrying 36 day-trippers from the mill town of Rehoboth. Lobsterman Clayt Johnson and his nine-year-old son, Ezra, recover the drowned bodies of the women who were aboard and the dead captain (found nearly naked and tied to a tuna keg), but the other men have vanished. Even so, there's no lack of scuttlebutt as to what happened; theories range from an unprovoked attack by one of the German U- boats prowling Maine's coastal waters through pilot error and insurance fraud. The generation-spanning narrative unfolds by fits and starts through the eyes of some of those affected by the tragedy. Mavis Beauchamp, who lost a father and two brothers, flees Rehoboth at the first opportunity. Walter McAlister, whose father kept him from the outing, returns home to stay after WW II and keeps the memory of his childhood playmates ever green. Also keeping the story alive is Leslie Everett Dove, the self- aggrandizing author of irresponsible but popular books on New England's maritime past. And there is Ezra, who quits Bowdoin a few weeks short of graduation to join his father on the water he abhors. Ezra unearths what seem to be the facts of the mysterious wreck more than 40 years earlier, but he refuses to help the sensation-seeking author. In the concluding chapters, Landesman discloses the ironicif anticlimactictruth of how Raven wound up on the bottom. Despite a letdown at the close, an impressive debut. Landesman has a genuine feel for the hard people and places of a region made bleak by man as well as nature, and he makes the most of a twisty plot that will keep readers guessing to the end.
Pub Date: Oct. 20, 1995
ISBN: 1-880909-37-5
Page Count: 360
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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