McKeever’s (The Galindez Case, 2013, etc.) crime novel dives into the overlapping worlds of the Mafia, New York City cops and the restaurant business, through the eyes of a war veteran trying to find himself.
After the Korean War, Joey Mancuso, aka “Joey Fizz,” isn’t quite sure what to do. All his friends have places to go, but he doesn’t feel drawn back to his New York City hometown. Rudderless, he visits his friend Clay, who was blinded in Korea. They take a trip to Yosemite National Park in California together, which gives Joey a little more purpose. He decides to take a circuitous route to New York and visit some friends, seeing the real America along the way. In the process, he contemplates spirituality and religion, and tries to figure out his life. McKeever continues this theme of drifting throughout the novel. When Joey makes it back to New York, he gets a job as a waiter and tries to avoid his Mafioso uncle, Vinnie, and the life of crime he promises. Later, Joey falls briefly into a job as a private investigator, which takes him to Paris, but this doesn’t last, and soon Joey is in Las Vegas, once again attempting to escape the reach of his uncle and his shady associate, Fishbone. There, Joey gets the idea to open a delicatessen back East. He thinks he’s finally found the perfect spot to start a quiet life—until he discovers that the deli is a drop point for the Mafia. Overall, readers will find McKeever’s portrayal of Joey’s life to be a colorful journey. At times, however, the novel sometimes seems too eager to provide illuminating insights, as when characters reveal their inner thoughts to complete strangers, just to make a philosophical point. For example, one woman tells Joey, “You make a bargain with your life, and sometimes you don’t get any change back when you pay the price to get in and try to live your dream.” Such moments might have been more effective if they were allowed to unfold more naturally during the course of the story.
A meandering, cross-country novel about one man’s life that too often rushes its epiphanies.Pub Date: June 19, 2014
ISBN: 978-1496915207
Page Count: 290
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Categories: FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS
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Fremont (After Long Silence, 1999) continues—and alters—her story of how memories of the Holocaust affected her family.
At the age of 44, the author learned that her father had disowned her, declaring her “predeceased”—or dead in his eyes—in his will. It was his final insult: Her parents had stopped speaking to her after she’d published After Long Silence, which exposed them as Jewish Holocaust survivors who had posed as Catholics in Europe and America in order to hide multilayered secrets. Here, Fremont delves further into her tortured family dynamics and shows how the rift developed. One thread centers on her life after her harrowing childhood: her education at Wellesley and Boston University, the loss of her virginity to a college boyfriend before accepting her lesbianism, her stint with the Peace Corps in Lesotho, and her decades of work as a lawyer in Boston. Another strand involves her fraught relationship with her sister, Lara, and how their difficulties relate to their father, a doctor embittered after years in the Siberian gulag; and their mother, deeply enmeshed with her own sister, Zosia, who had married an Italian count and stayed in Rome to raise a child. Fremont tells these stories with novelistic flair, ending with a surprising theory about why her parents hid their Judaism. Yet she often appears insensitive to the serious problems she says Lara once faced, including suicidal depression. “The whole point of suicide, I thought, was to succeed at it,” she writes. “My sister’s completion rate was pathetic.” Key facts also differ from those in her earlier work. After Long Silence says, for example, that the author grew up “in a small city in the Midwest” while she writes here that she grew up in “upstate New York,” changes Fremont says she made for “consistency” in the new book but that muddy its narrative waters. The discrepancies may not bother readers seeking psychological insights rather than factual accuracy, but others will wonder if this book should have been labeled a fictionalized autobiography rather than a memoir.
A vivid sequel that strains credulity.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-982113-60-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2019
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS
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BOOK REVIEW
Self-help advice and personal reflections on avoiding spousal fights while raising children.
Before her daughter was born, bestselling author Dunn (Why Is My Mother Getting a Tattoo?: And Other Questions I Wish I Never Had to Ask, 2009, etc.) enjoyed steady work and a happy marriage. However, once she became a mother, there never seemed to be enough time, sleep, and especially help from her husband. Little irritations became monumental obstacles between them, which led to major battles. Consequently, they turned to expensive couples' therapy to help them regain some peace in life. In a combination of memoir and advice that can be found in most couples' therapy self-help books, Dunn provides an inside look at her own vexing issues and the solutions she and her husband used to prevent them from appearing in divorce court. They struggled with age-old battles fought between men and women—e.g., frequency of sex, who does more housework, who should get up with the child in the middle of the night, why women need to have a clean house, why men need more alone time, and many more. What Dunn learned via therapy, talks with other parents, and research was that there is no perfect solution to the many dynamics that surface once couples become parents. But by using time-tested techniques, she and her husband learned to listen, show empathy, and adjust so that their former status as a happy couple could safely and peacefully morph into a happy family. Readers familiar with Dunn's honest and humorous writing will appreciate the behind-the-scenes look at her own semi-messy family life, and those who need guidance through the rough spots can glean advice while being entertained—all without spending lots of money on couples’ therapy.
A highly readable account of how solid research and personal testing of self-help techniques saved a couple's marriage after the birth of their child.Pub Date: March 21, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-316-26710-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2017
Categories: FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS
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