Contrived and dry, but resoundingly upbeat.
Can a few thousand well-intentioned engineers and scientists help 25,000 hearty, well-intentioned South Africans put the world back together after a comet wipes out most of the planet? You bet!
Instead of following the apocalyptic post-disaster scenarios of On the Beach or the Mad Max films, this fiction debut from technological apologist and scientific optimist Florman (The Introspective Engineer, 1996, etc.) more closely resembles B.F. Skinner's Walden Two. Before he can offer his cheerful take on humanity's ability to solve problems, however, Florman must wipe the slate clean by having technology seem to fail: in the year 2009, a missile fired from Earth with the intention of deflecting a comet goes awry, exploding its warhead in such a way that on Christmas Day the comet slams into the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of northern California. The fiery shockwave, massive tidal waves, and freezing rain are both horrifying and intriguing to an international convention of engineers aboard a cruise ship off the southeastern coast of South Africa, the one part of the globe where the comet's effects are minimal. When the ship hits something and starts to sink, said engineers calmly decamp to the mineral-rich tropical province of Kwa Zulu Natal, where some 25,000 others have also escaped extinction. Narrated in part by technological historian Wilson Hardy Jr., the story moves forward as a series of dialogue-heavy lectures in which Hardy and other characters pile on the fun facts about science, technology, and those plucky South Africans (Muslims and Hindus, as well as Boers and Brits), while the ship's high-tech brains form committees with the mid- to low-tech survivors to rebuild, restore, and make babies. A passing challenge from a marauding pirate queen is almost effortlessly rebuffed, and despite a lack of most 21st-century luxuries, life goes on.
Contrived and dry, but resoundingly upbeat.Pub Date: Dec. 11, 2001
ISBN: 0-312-26652-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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