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MEETINGS WITH THE ARCHANGEL

Name: MEETINGS WITH THE ARCHANGEL
Author: Stephen Mitchell
ISBN: 0-06-018245-8

by Stephen Mitchell ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 3, 1998

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If The Razor’s Edge had starred Zero Mostel instead of Tyrone Power, this book might never have been written. And that would be a pity. Well-known translator Mitchell (The Book of Job, etc.) has given us a first novel in the form of an autobiography. And not just any autobiography, mind you, but a spiritual autobiography in the style of G.I. Gurdjieff’s Meetings With Remarkable Men, mixing anecdote with advice, and tossing some poems into the soup of philosophy. Stephen, our narrator, is a Jewish college professor whose disgust with the present-day cult of angels inspired him to publish a best-selling diatribe—Against Angels—attacking that obsession as delusional and puerile. Imagine his surprise, then, when confronted with an apparition of the Archangel Gabriel, who has come to set him straight. After engaging Stephen in an elaborate consideration of God, his angels, and the nature of human life, Gabriel settles back to listen to Stephen’s side of things. Stephen, hardly an atheist, has actually spent most of his life wrestling with religion and philosophy—among the Hasidim of Brooklyn, the Zen Buddhists, and the more mundane graduate students of Harvard, Columbia, and Berkeley—and the better part of the story is his. A husband and father, Stephen wants to understand God in relational terms, and Gabriel makes it clear that this is possible. But only up to a point: “You can’t see God’s face without dying. Are you ready to die?” Much of the story is a debate rather than a narrative, and sometimes it bogs down in the mire through which all such disputations must drive (“One of our most exciting games is standing on the edge of a truth, just before it touches its opposite, and gazing down into the abyss between them”). For the most part, though, this is a pretty good (if giddy) ride. Insanely quirky, but good-natured, unpretentious, and (at times) genuinely enlightening. (Author tour)

Pub Date: Sept. 3, 1998

ISBN: 0-06-018245-8

Page Count: 256

Publisher: HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1998

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
JOSEPH AND THE WAY OF FORGIVENESS
by Stephen Mitchell

- BOOK REVIEW
BHAGAVAD GITA
translated by Stephen Mitchell

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FROG PRINCE
by Stephen Mitchell

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DISTANT SHORES

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2002

Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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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.