Although not Super Bowl material, this novel is nevertheless a winner: a fun, breezy read that even lukewarm football fans...
A veteran football player seeks to overcome the odds and lead his team to a championship.
In his first novel for adults, Bentley (No More Hiccups!, 1995, etc.) takes readers through a season with the Buffalo Blizzard, a pro football team down on its luck. The protagonist, Jack Driftwood, a 17-year veteran linebacker, hopes to end his career in glory by propelling the team to the Mega Bowl. Play-by-play accounts of regular and postseason games alternate with chapters delving into Driftwood’s personal and business affairs. He meets Gerry Wainscott, gorgeous daughter of the team’s elderly owner, Gerald Wainscott III, and becomes her lover. But the Blizzard’s general manager, Donald Fegel, desires her too, and hates Driftwood anyway. Scheming to kick this “renegade linebacker” off the team, Fegel bribes a male nurse, aka the Pissman, to doctor results of a random urine test. Enraged at the skullduggery, Driftwood attacks Fegel but is subdued by security guards and sent to a mental hospital for observation. But it turns out Fegel has been skimming money from the construction funds for the Blizzard’s new stadium and an adjoining Native American casino. Driftwood’s wacky friends, including an overweight Buffalo cop, a Seneca tribe member, a restaurant owner from Mexico, and a few shady local underworld types, unite, seeking to expose Fegel, do in his associates, and break Driftwood out of the hospital. Bentley, a former NFL player, shows an insider’s knowledge and love of the game, and gives vivid descriptions of brutal play on and off the field and the quirky, foulmouthed characters in Driftwood’s life. The dialogue is sharp and the wit often acute, but Bentley makes some rookie mistakes. Spell-check hasn’t fixed all his missteps with spelling and word use, such as “teaming” for “teeming.” And the clichés come fast and furious, but seldom with the sharpness that’s needed: “She smoked like a chimney, cussed like a sailor, and drank like a fish but was as healthy as a horse.” Despite all of its humor and big doses of testosterone, violence, and physical and emotional pain, the tale can occasionally become strangely mawkish, as in a Gipper-esque appearance in the locker room by the Blizzard’s sickly owner.
Although not Super Bowl material, this novel is nevertheless a winner: a fun, breezy read that even lukewarm football fans might cheer.Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-943706-00-6
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Five Count Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.
Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.
Written by a Nigerian African trained in missionary schools, this novel tells quietly the story of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior, father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness. But into the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers, teachings so alien to the tribe, that resistance is impossible. One must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of incoherent children. Still, with his guns and persistence, the white man, amoeba-like, gradually absorbs the native culture and in despair, Okonkwo, unable to withstand the corrosion of what he, alone, understands to be the life force of his people, hangs himself. In the formlessness of the dying culture, it is the missionary who takes note of the event, reminding himself to give Okonkwo's gesture a line or two in his work, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1958
ISBN: 0385474547
Page Count: 207
Publisher: McDowell, Obolensky
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1958
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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