Impressive speculative fiction, and a bracing tonic for an election year.
Smart, funny yet dead serious Second Coming novel from Merullo (Breakfast with Buddha, 2007, etc.), who has Jesus offering America spiritual renewal by way of a run for the White House.
Russ Thomas is an ambitious TV reporter in a small market, West Zenith, Mass. The 30-year-old narrator has nice hair and a great girlfriend in Zelda, a skilled therapist. His boss Wales, a jaded TV veteran, has Russ investigate a strange event: A boy has fallen off a fire escape, died and been revived by a mysterious stranger. Next, a terminally ill girl in the local hospital is cured by the same stranger’s magic touch. The Good Visitor, as Wales dubs him, summons Russ to a café rendezvous. He introduces himself as Jesus (“Hay-Zeus, to my Spanish-speaking friends”) and explains that he wants Russ and Zelda to quit their jobs and work on his presidential campaign. Somewhat disarmed by this nice but obviously nutty guy’s magnetism, cynical Russ has no intention of giving up his paycheck—until down-to-earth Zelda has a vision. That does it, and Russ gives notice, only to discover his boss is already onboard. Russ’s Jewish father, Catholic mother and Down syndrome brother also join the inner circle. These ordinary, fallible people will be Jesus’s staff. Why pick us, the insecure Russ wonders, but Zelda gets it: “we’re all worthy.” Merullo grounds his story superbly, understanding that the more we believe in his human characters, the more we’ll believe in Jesus, who has his own American background: Caucasian father (deceased), Navajo mother (a quietly reassuring presence) who home-schooled him on the reservation. Is he all-knowing? “I let there be gaps.” What is his platform? “I’m running on the Beatitudes.” And run he does, indulging in campaign hoopla, but no more miracles, and confronting his fiercest enemies, the Christian Right. Jesus gains in the polls, and Merullo handles the horse race smoothly, but the most riveting element here is the interaction between fearful humanity and this convincing embodiment of divine love.
Impressive speculative fiction, and a bracing tonic for an election year.Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-56512-607-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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