Nearly ten years after Thornley (Attempts to Join Society, 1986, etc.) won the George Orwell Memorial Prize for the film project of Coyote comes instead a period pieceboth ponderous and hallucinatoryfeaturing a nimble young British actor who journeys to 1830s America, ultimately to confront Death on the banks of the Mississippi. In London, John Gay is a promising Harlequin, but the freak death of a uniquely talented fellow acrobat in a cattle stampede unhinges him, sending him to seek his fortune in New York. He travels with acclaimed actor Edmond Parsloe, intending to stage with him a Harlequin version of Mother Goose, but after a rough sea journey complicated by a bizarre company of fellow travelers, the two arrive bruised and shaken. Unable to overcome a shipboard back injury, Edmond dies in a catapult collision with Gay onstage, and in a fog of suffering and guilt, Gay allows Rennah Wells, the slithering Yankee who crossed the ocean with them and who has an obsession for heads, to dig up Parsloe's. Drawn by stories of Indian dancers and shamans, Gay travels west, accompanied by the skull of his friend and also by Wells, but in a British fort outside Detroit, Wells is imprisoned while Gay and ``Edmond'' go free. Starving and feverish, Gay totters westward into the prairie until found by the medicine man Waboshiek, inhabitant of a former Indian village on the Mississippi whose people had been betrayed and slaughtered by US soldiers. Waboshiek relieves Gay of a peculiar mental disease stemming from his friend's death in the stampede, trying to use it to enhance his own power, but when Wells reappears hunting both their heads, a deadly showdown ensues. For all the marvels and fantasies detailed here: a sluggish, fever-laden vision of history in which effects outweigh substance and mood overshadows meaning.
Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1995
ISBN: 0-224-03891-5
Page Count: 226
Publisher: Jonathan Cape/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1995
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
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
