This is the third volume of the Canadian writer's roman fleuve (Fifth Business—1970; The Manticore—1972); they are interlocked by ideas rather than events (which hardly exist for Davies) and reappearing characters—Dunstan Ramsay in particular. Davies, who has been universally considered very "intelligent," writes a kind of andante cantabile prose which often lulls you into inattention—particularly in this book which appears to be, at the beginning, the soliloquy of Magnus, a great conjurer. He confides the particulars of his life during the filming of a vehicle on Robert-Houdin (Houdini) in which his listeners concur that Magnus is far more interesting than R-H, in fact "the damndest man around." One traces his footsteps as the son of a "hoor" to a carnival to an interim spent putting together the toy collection of a great industrialist to the seemingly interminable time he spends on tour. But this is all just another kind of vehicle for Davies' idees recues on God and the Devil and Faustian bargains and "possessions of the soul" and illusion—above all illusion. Davies, to call a spade a spade, or fustian "the warp and woof of fustian," is an old-fashioned writer; words like a "despoiled girl" or "beglamored" are hardly offset by modernisms ("Oh balls") and his divagations take the strangest turns; after settling down with the notion that you are only following the autobiographical story of his magus, you are back at the close with the almost unremembered and unfinished part of his Fifth Business—the shooting of Boy Staunton. . . . An elaborate, elegant if you will, mummery, not only of the real world but those older other ones. At one point Magnus comments, and all corroborate, that "without attention to detail, you will have no illusion." But then illusion relies on more than detail and sonorous metaphysical inquiry particularly if cast in the form of a mystery play.
Pub Date: March 15, 1976
ISBN: 0143039148
Page Count: 324
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1976
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
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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