A bit rough but generally entertaining. At 105 pages, it’s worth a quick read.
Cole’s darkly humorous novella follows burned-out rock ’n’ roller Clifford as he cares for his abusive, mentally ill wife, Suzie, over the course of a day, years after his big shot at fame has passed.
Clifford loves his wife. It’s the only explanation for his staying with her in their dreary English home, trying to make sure she gets her meds and attempting to coax her former radiant self back into the open while she screams at him and tries to kill the neighbor’s dog with a brick. They met when she followed his band from gig to gig—a band she convinced him to leave when the record contract came and undersold his role in the songwriting. She’s obsessed with deceased Queen singer Freddie Mercury; she and Cliff had been regulars at a Queen tribute festival until a year before the action of the novella takes place. Her behavior at last year’s festival might bar them from attending again, though. When Bev, a new festival organizer, shows up at their door to talk to them about going, past behavior and a jealous streak intersect to create an awkward situation. Cole takes advantage of Clifford’s comic possibilities in this literary fiction with a surprising twist at the end. Clifford may be depressed and crusty, but he’s also a loving, doting husband coping with his own needs in a relationship that could charitably be described as distant. (One scene in particular stands out: Clifford at a news agent, attempting to obtain some questionable reading material in the presence of a candy-obsessed priest.) But Clifford is also the only character in the story with any real depth, though this quick read is so short and linear that it’s not much of a problem. The young Suzie makes an appearance as Clifford daydreams of a happier past, but in the present, she’s one-note as she yells at Clifford and eventually Bev. She comes across as dangerous and paranoid, but there’s little underpinning her rancor. In some cases, Cole goes for style over clarity, as in the critical opening scene, for example, in which Clifford prepares Suzie’s pills—although the coy narration won’t admit as much.
A bit rough but generally entertaining. At 105 pages, it’s worth a quick read.Pub Date: March 10, 2013
ISBN: 978-1480021570
Page Count: 112
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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