bookshelf

THE LAST BOY

Name: THE LAST BOY
Author: Robert H. Lieberman
ISBN: 1-57071-943-8

by Robert H. Lieberman ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2001

Intriguing, but more a mission statement than a novel.

bookshelf

An empty-at-the-center ecothriller in which the disappearance, and then reappearance, of a boy in the town of Ithaca, New York, makes him a new messiah.

Harried single mother Molly Driscoll comes to pick up her four-year-old son Danny from his daycare center only to find that the center has absolutely no idea where he’s gone. Molly is at a loss, especially since Danny’s father abandoned her the day Danny was born and never showed any interest in him. And although the daycare center is run-down, and unruly kids are locked in a basement, the workers hardly seem kidnapping suspects. Detective Lou Tripoli, assigned to the case, is quickly at a loss for leads, and hope for Danny fades—though not before a desperate romance blossoms between distraught Molly and gruff but caring Tripoli. Then seven months later, Danny walks back into his mother’s trailer as coolly as he apparently walked out of the daycare center. He looks healthy and well, though refusing to say where he’s been or with whom. And it isn’t long before Molly notices great changes in him. He wants to be called “Daniel,” is disgusted by meat, hates fishing—previously his favorite hobby—is remarkably attuned to weather cycles, is sickened by any type of chemical smell, and has preternatural reading and comprehension abilities. Bit by bit, Tripoli and Molly divine that he must have lived with some bearded hermit who taught him the ways of the land, and now, back in the industrialized world, he has the aura of some sort of eco-Christ with a message. Soon, news of Daniel spreads and penitents flock—even as the weather turns radically for the worse. Lieberman (Baby, 1981, etc.) hits all the right environmental notes here, and there’s an ample amount of mystery, but his characters are never developed much beyond their reactions to Daniel—himself a cipher given to pronouncements like “Now they’re destroying our Earth.”

Intriguing, but more a mission statement than a novel.

Pub Date: March 1, 2001

ISBN: 1-57071-943-8

Page Count: 512

Publisher: Sourcebooks Landmark

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2002

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

bookshelf

SUMMER ISLAND

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2001

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...

bookshelf

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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

bookshelf

LAST ORDERS

by Graham Swift ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 5, 1996

bookshelf

Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.