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
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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