A short but sweet tale that arrives in a foreseeable place, but provides an enjoyable journey on the way there.
In Farrara’s (The Royal Flush, 2012) latest fictional work, a former circus performer comes to terms with the successes and wasted opportunities of his youth when a reporter promises to thrust him back into the spotlight.
Clyde Herring is no longer the world-famous juggler he once was. His career with the Barrington Brothers Circus spanned from 1945 to 1989, and he was once a talented violinist and war hero, but now he lives alone in a shabby apartment in Reading, Pennsylvania. He never saved any money, nor did he ever marry or have children, although he did love someone once—Julie Pullman, now one of the richest and most successful women in the world. But the two haven’t seen each other in years, and the elderly Clyde has little else in his life, other than his daily routine and vodka. When it’s announced that the Barrington Brothers Circus is coming back to town, local sportswriter John Ryan gets the assignment to write a feature on Clyde. John’s goals are to increase publicity for both the circus and the newspaper, and to explore what Clyde has been doing with his life since 1965, when the paper published its first article about the juggler. Clyde later experienced a disastrous, drunken fall that ended his career and sent him into a downward spiral. The author deftly weaves together the threads of Clyde’s life, introducing bits of his past and present to reveal the consequences of the decisions he’s made over the years. The juggler isn’t the abject alcoholic that readers might expect, however. Instead, Farrara shows how Clyde brings a spark of cheerful humor to all of his interactions, balancing his melancholy with a refreshing self-awareness that will keep readers eager to see how his story turns out. Although the plot is a simple one, and often veers into predictability, it doesn’t make the juggler’s life story any less engaging.
A short but sweet tale that arrives in a foreseeable place, but provides an enjoyable journey on the way there.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2014
ISBN: 978-1434937285
Page Count: 98
Publisher: Dorrance
Review Posted Online: Dec. 17, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Thoroughbreds and Virginia blue-bloods cavort, commit murder, and fall in love in Roberts's (Hidden Riches, 1994, etc.) latest romantic thriller — this one set in the world of championship horse racing. Rich, sheltered Kelsey Byden is recovering from a recent divorce when she receives a letter from her mother, Naomi, a woman she has believed dead for over 20 years. When Kelsey confronts her genteel English professor father, though, he sheepishly confesses that, no, her mother isn't dead; throughout Kelsey's childhood, she was doing time for the murder of her lover. Kelsey meets with Naomi and not only finds her quite charming, but the owner of Three Willows, one of the most splendid horse farms in Virginia. Kelsey is further intrigued when she meets Gabe Slater, a blue-eyed gambling man who owns a neighboring horse farm; when one of Gabe's horses is mated with Naomi's, nostrils flare, flanks quiver, and the romance is on. Since both Naomi and Gabe have horses entered in the Kentucky Derby, Kelsey is soon swept into the whirlwind of the Triple Crown, in spite of her family's objections to her reconciliation with the notorious Naomi. The rivalry between the two horse farms remains friendly, but other competitors — one of them is Gabe's father, a vicious alcoholic who resents his son's success — prove less scrupulous. Bodies, horse and human, start piling up, just as Kelsey decides to investigate the murky details of her mother's crime. Is it possible she was framed? The ground is thick with no-goods, including haughty patricians, disgruntled grooms, and jockeys with tragic pasts, but despite all the distractions, the identity of the true culprit behind the mayhem — past and present — remains fairly obvious. The plot lopes rather than races to the finish. Gambling metaphors abound, and sexual doings have a distinctly equine tone. But Roberts's style has a fresh, contemporary snap that gets the story past its own worst excesses.
Pub Date: June 13, 1995
ISBN: 0-399-14059-X
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1995
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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