A 20-year Oxford student’s precocious debut: dazzling in its inventive plot, persuasive in its mannerisms, and much too susceptible to mistaking agile chatter for deep wisdom. Mason has created a grabby premise: in an effort to explain why James Farrell has just killed Sarah, his wife of four decades, the now 70-year-old recalls the privileged, wainscoted, chandeliered, wealthy England of his youth—way back in the1990s. The story begins in 1994, with just a few closing pages devoted to the “present” in mid-21st century. James sees enigmatic Ella Harewood meditatively smoking on a park bench and falls immediately in love. Though she is engaged to be married, Ella discovers she shares James’s covert disgust with convention, and together they conspire to upset the wedding plans. Though educated and raised in America, Ella confides to James that she stands to inherit Selon Castle and its island, a family property Ella’s cousin Sarah yearns to inhabit. Conventional, restrained, and proper in the English way, Sarah develops an ardent jealousy of her spoiled cousin. Worse, Ella’s groom is the one love of her life. The wedding is indeed disrupted, and Ella requires James to prove his love by setting in motion a series of events that end with the death of his best friend. James is stricken by grief and, after Ella apparently murders her father, he marries Sarah. Years later, on the eve of his 70th birthday, James discovers the cruel secret that leads to Sarah’s death. Throughout, our protagonist considers the nature of time and memory, guilt and sin, etc., in pointless musings that impede the progress of an otherwise compelling, artfully revealed plot. Mason’s prose is unremarkable, as is his distinctly unfascinating attempt at “larger themes,” but his storytelling is solid and his sense of intrigue nicely developed. (Author tour)
Pub Date: May 12, 1999
ISBN: 0-446-52524-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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