God knows what to make of this. We don’t. Spiritual rebirth it’s not.
Style imitates theme in this seriocomic novel, but it’s no more effective than it was in Wintner’s jivey previous effort, The Prophet Pasqual (1999).
Set largely in the hills of Central Mexico, the story is told in a smart, boozy, homuncular (read: grotesque) prose not always to be grasped. Lead character Tony Drury is a drunk from the States; his alter ego is Charles, a drunken actor and egoist, with whom he forms one character. The plot slips like a drinker’s elbow toward the vague regeneration of Tony and aborted saving of Charles. Underpinning in any picture of a completely pickled society, however satirically new-fangled the author’s handiwork, should be some sense of moral outrage. But Wintner seems more than half in love with his easeful metaphysics of the brain-damaged than not, as Tony makes clear early on: “Waiting is natural for spirits adrift . . . so why not drift in good fun with good will in the meantime?” Not badly said, but Wintner fills each page with a vegetative overgrowth of booze pathos and neural map of the pathways of alcohol that in no way carry the force of Under the Volcano, since the pathetic Tony/Charles never achieves the tragic stature of Malcolm Lowry’s Consul. Instead we get at novel’s end: “That time in that place was a last time in a last place. It was another ending, though it begins again elsewhere and people still seek it. Piss and old beer become a stink you get used to, especially after a piss makes room for a new beer. Tony Drury went south and didn’t know it.” Does Tony sober up? For a few days. But boggling hairpins of illogic in the writing, with metaphors left burning in the ashtray, don’t allow much hope.
God knows what to make of this. We don’t. Spiritual rebirth it’s not.Pub Date: May 1, 2000
ISBN: 1-57962-062-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Permanent Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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