Second-novelist Dunn (Pink Cadillac, 2001) writes with affection for his characters and admiration for their world, but...
Musical wunderkind battles the establishment and personal demons on Chicago’s South Side.
Blazingly talented young guitarist Willie Lee Reed hones his skills in Detroit, and moves to Chicago in 1963 with a single goal: to dethrone the acknowledged King of the Blues, venerable Heddy Days. Student and blues aficionado Josh Green sees something unique in Willie Lee and hooks up with him. On a hot Friday night at a popular club called the 6-Eye, Willie Lee joins a line of pretenders (including an Elvis look-alike) challenging Heddy in a musical face-off. Also in attendance are scouts from local record labels and an enigmatic girl named Esme, to whom Josh takes a fancy. In the first of two lengthy and pivotal scenes that unfold at 6-Eye, Willie Lee initially dazzles the crowd with his supple sound and lightning fingers. It looks as if the King might go down, until Heddy plays a single blistering note that turns the tide and rattles the kid’s confidence. Though his performance wins him Heddy’s respect and a record deal with operator Vic Abruzzi, Willie Lee views it as a failure and nurtures the single-minded goal of challenging the King of the Blues again. A seductive beauty called Silver (after a distinctive streak in her hair) ensnares Willie Lee, but she’s got more in mind than just shacking up. Born Betty Ann and the victim of childhood abuse, Silver works for Abruzzi’s chief rival, Sweet Home Arthur; her mission is to woo Willie Lee away. Esme, meanwhile, has begun dating Josh and revealed herself as Heddy’s long-lost daughter. Murder, racial tension, and another high-stakes musical performance figure in at the close.
Second-novelist Dunn (Pink Cadillac, 2001) writes with affection for his characters and admiration for their world, but without much insight. Too much of a fan perhaps, he never gets under their skins to the essence of the blues.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2003
ISBN: 0-9708293-2-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Coral Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.
Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1992
ISBN: 1400031702
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
© Copyright 2025 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.
