The story of a man who went looking for America and found that it’s still there after all.
A young man goes west to find himself and discovers more than he imagined.
It’s a good thing that the book’s unnamed narrator retains such a unique, sincere and persuasive voice because his adventures, well-written as they are, are lifted straight out of a Bob Seger song. At least it’s a good one, “Against the Wind,” maybe crafted for an audience of post-modern millennials aching for a bona-fide experience. Something snaps in our 28-year-old hero when he catches his fiancée cheating on him. He dumps his white-collar job, mounts his Harley-Davidson motorcycle and hits the road to reinvent himself as a hard-drinking, Walt Whitman-reading vagabond. Along his journey, he meets several similarly minded rogues and scoundrels including a good-natured but shallow party animal, a coked-out singer-songwriter and a bevy of barmaids and good-time girls. None of his new acquaintances, however, match the charisma of his hetero-soul mate Bryan, a wanted fugitive from New York high society who plays the ill-fated Neil Cassady to our man’s Jack Kerouac. There’s not much intensity to Bryan’s philosophical bon mots (“It is the memory of the journey that you will carry with you.”), which are cribbed straight out of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Yet his rough-hewn charm stands out and his absence at times is palpable. The paths of these two resolute easy riders converge and separate across lonesome roads from Kansas to Colorado and Austin to Key West. They indulge in ribald encounters in one-horse towns and endless drug-and-alcohol-induced macho bonding sessions. There’s traditional romance, too, with a married British temptress who captivates the narrator, but it’s his doomed love affair with his own youth and his wry observances of American rural life that make the book a winner.
The story of a man who went looking for America and found that it’s still there after all.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-9794128-0-6
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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