An anecdotal memoir that could possibly appeal to a new generation of free-range parents.
Taylor (Wheels Up, 2014) offers tales of his Southern youth that ramble easily from one high-risk adventure to another.
Describing his early years in South Carolina as a form of parental “benign neglect” and noting that his mother was a “powerful influence” worthy of her own book, Taylor uses his prologue and epilogue to focus mainly on the strong influence of his father (“the finest man I ever knew”). The author makes clear in these sections he was deeply affected by the childhood freedom his father granted him—and much of the rest of the book goes on to show that he’s very lucky to have survived that freedom. He received his first gun (and “stern ownership instructions” from his father) when he was quite young, and the book also features knives, firecrackers, and even dynamite. Some stories even contain potentially jail-worthy events (which apparently inspired the title, based on an acquaintance’s comment). Although Taylor was “absent more than I was present for several years” of school, he goes on to tell of how he eventually got a degree from The Citadel and had a successful career as an international airline pilot. Overall, the book has a loosely woven structure, which is effectively highlighted in a relatively benign chapter that introduces a man named Old Jim, with a “face black as a cast-iron skillet [that] radiated a pleasant, mischievous look,” who manages a neighboring farm. After relating a tale of an impromptu horse race with Jim when the author was 13, Taylor segues into a comparison between Jim and a hired man named James and discusses the latter’s indebtedness to a loan shark. Taylor tells how his father stepped in to put an end to the outlandish usury, and then the story leads back to Jim, a mishap with a slingshot, and an almost tragic story of a horse getting stuck in the mud near a creek. Occasional black-and-white family photos offer even more nostalgia.
An anecdotal memoir that could possibly appeal to a new generation of free-range parents.Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-578-16366-6
Page Count: 268
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2015
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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