THE SHADOW BOXER

Name: THE SHADOW BOXER
Author: Steven Heighton
ISBN: 0-618-13933-8

by Steven Heighton ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 25, 2002

One of the finest coming-of-age tales of recent years, and a splendid novelistic debut by a writer who seems to be just now...

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The ghosts of Jack London, Thomas Wolfe, and Jack Kerouac all hover approvingly over a terrific first novel by Heighton, an Ontario poet and storywriter (Flight Paths of the Emperor, not yet published in the US, etc.).

There’s even a chapter entitled “Look Homeward, Angel” in this chronicle of the early life and education of Sevigne Torrins, a hopeful writer who grows up in Ontario’s Sault Sainte Marie on the shores of Lake Superior. In beautiful long, looping rhapsodic sentences studded with vigorous images, Heighton begins his tale with a lengthy account of Sevigne’s conflicted relationship with his father Sam, a ship’s cook, devout alcoholic, and effusive autodidact whose habit of mangled quotation from favorite books and authors stimulates and irritates the fledgling poet whom he’s affectionately (if casually) nurturing. Though Sam is a great character, Sevigne’s mother Martine, a vibrant beauty whose love-hate relationship with Sam ends in her departure to live in Cairo with a career diplomat, is less fully realized. In general Heighton does much better with male characters, especially as the story’s focus broadens to depict Sevigne’s undistinguished career as an amateur boxer, his brief trip to Egypt to re-bond with Martine and his older brother Bryon, and his entry into Toronto’s literary subculture, where he begins publishing work and builds relationships with a tough-minded poet (Una), the troubled singer (Mikaela, a.k.a. “Ike”) whom he almost marries, and—most interestingly—moody, mercurial fellow writer Ray, who plays Neal Cassaday to Sevigne’s Jack Kerouac. The climax comes with Sevigne’s retreat to live alone in a lighthouse on remote Rye island in northern Lake Superior: a tour-de-force account of loneliness, privation, and suffering that calls to mind London’s classic story of man-vs.-nature “To Build a Fire.”

One of the finest coming-of-age tales of recent years, and a splendid novelistic debut by a writer who seems to be just now entering a most impressive maturity.

Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2002

ISBN: 0-618-13933-8

Page Count: 400

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2001

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
REACHING MITHYMNA
by Steven Heighton

- BOOK REVIEW
AFTERLANDS
by Steven Heighton

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THE HOUSE OF THE SPIRITS

by Isabel Allende ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 23, 1985

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A strong, absorbing Chilean family chronicle, plushly upholstered—with mystical undercurrents (psychic phenomena) and a measure of leftward political commitment. (The author is a cousin of ex-Pres. Salvador Allende, an ill-fated socialist.) The Truebas are estate-owners of independent wealth, of whom only one—the eventual patriarch, Esteban—fully plays his class role. Headstrong and conservative, Esteban is a piggish youth, mistreating his peons and casually raping his girl servants . . . until he falls under the spell of young Clara DelValle: mute for nine years after witnessing the gruesome autopsy of her equally delicate sister, Clara is capable of telekinesis and soothsaying; she's a pure creature of the upper realms who has somehow dropped into crude daily life. So, with opposites attracting, the marriage of Esteban and Clara is inevitable—as is the succession of Clara-influenced children and grandchildren. Daughter Blanca ignores Class barriers to fall in love with—and bear a child by—the foreman's son, who will later become a famous leftwing troubadour (on the model of Victor Jara). Twin boys Jaime and Nicholas head off in different directions—one growing up to become a committed physician, the other a mystic/entrepreneur. And Alba, the last clairvoyant female of the lineage, will end the novel in a concentration camp of the Pinochet regime. Allende handles the theosophical elements here matter-of-factly: the paranormal powers of the Trueba women have to be taken more or less on faith. (Veteran readers of Latin American fiction have come to expect mysticism as part of the territory.) And the political sweep sometimes seems excessively insistent or obtrusive: even old Esteban recants from his reactionary ways at the end, when they seem to destroy his family. ("Thus the months went by, and it became clear to everyone, even Senator Trueba, that the military had seized power to keep it for themselves and not hand the country over to the politicians of the right who made the coup possible.") But there's a comfortable, appealing professionalism to Allende's narration, slowly turning the years through the Truebas' passions and secrets and fidelities. She doesn't rush; the characters are clear and sharp; there's style here but nothing self-conscious or pretentious. So, even if this saga isn't really much deeper than the Belva Plain variety, it's uncommonly satisfying—with sturdy, old-fashioned storytelling and a fine array of exotic, historical shadings.

Pub Date: May 23, 1985

ISBN: 0553383809

Page Count: -

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1985

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
MY NAME IS EMILIA DEL VALLE
by Isabel Allende ; translated by Frances Riddle

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WIND KNOWS MY NAME
by Isabel Allende ; translated by Frances Riddle

- BOOK REVIEW
VIOLETA
by Isabel Allende ; translated by Frances Riddle

- BOOK TO SCREEN
Eva Longoria To Star in ‘The House of the Spirits’

- APPRECIATIONS
Rereading ‘The House of the Spirits’ at 40

- BOOK TO SCREEN
4 New Adaptations To Watch in April

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OF MICE AND MEN

by John Steinbeck ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 26, 1936

Steinbeck is a genius and an original.

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Steinbeck refuses to allow himself to be pigeonholed.

This is as completely different from Tortilla Flat and In Dubious Battle as they are from each other. Only in his complete understanding of the proletarian mentality does he sustain a connecting link though this is assuredly not a "proletarian novel." It is oddly absorbing this picture of the strange friendship between the strong man and the giant with the mind of a not-quite-bright child. Driven from job to job by the failure of the giant child to fit into the social pattern, they finally find in a ranch what they feel their chance to achieve a homely dream they have built. But once again, society defeats them. There's a simplicity, a directness, a poignancy in the story that gives it a singular power, difficult to define. Steinbeck is a genius and an original.