Brite follows up her electrifying debut, Lost Souls (1992), with a longer work whose horrors, while more focused, have their energies dimmed by fine writing. Set once again in Missing Mile, North Carolina—where in Lost Souls the redneck vampires kept blood in whiskey bottles—this second novel gives its soul-sucking antagonist a psychological reality based less on mad variations on Bram Stoker than on a family tragedy. Back in 1972, famed underground cartoonist Robert ``Bobby'' McGee, a figure clearly based on the R. Crumb whose images stamped the hallucinogenic generation with Mr. Natural and other disrupters of the status quo, fell into writer's block and bludgeoned to death all of his family but his five-year-old son Trevor. Now, having left his orphanage and found his own way as a cartoonist of underground demons, Trevor returns to Missing Mile to find out why his father failed to kill him. He moves into the still empty house of death, where the lights work with no power source, and finds himself deep in the mysteries of Birdland, a psychic state emerging from the alto sax of Charlie Parker, where Bobby McGee's ghost wanders in limbo. Meanwhile, virgin Trevor falls in love with Zachary Bosch, a 19-year-old computer hacker on the run from the Secret Service, who moves into the house of haunted blood with Trevor and experiences Boschian visions. Woven throughout are ties to Parker tunes and Zach's new role as vocalist with the Gumbo rock band at the Sacred Yew. Climax comes with Trev and Zach entering the psychic cartoon of Birdland together via psilocybin.... Brite strives for the explosive lyricism of Lost Souls in rich background descriptions that here bulk out her pages but fail to intensify them. The R. Crumb echoes deliver brilliantly. That there is a Brite future never doubt.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-385-30895-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1993
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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