Quietly funny and vaguely sad: an existential traipse implying that it’s those who have no history who make the world go...
The lead singer of a British rock band offers wryly comic glimpses of a young and thoroughly insignificant Berlin man on the eve of one of the most momentous events in late-20th-century European history.
Friends call Frank “Herr Lehmann” because his 30th birthday is drawing near, though Lehmann finds the honorific—like most everything else that happens to him in this episodic debut novel—disruptive, humiliating and unfulfilling, but not so disagreeable that he can’t just shrug his shoulders and move on. When he’s had a few too many with his boss one night and a strange dog parks itself in front of him, Herr Lehmann is terrified at first, and then, recognizing another lost soul, shares some Scotch with the beast. A relationship blossoms with a sexy female chef, Katrina, that peaks at a Star Wars film festival and then fades when they can’t quite figure out whether they’re in love. Late-night brawls with strangely belligerent gays and mysterious men who may or may not be spies leave him bruised but unchanged. A visit from Lehmann’s fuzzy but sincere parents is surprisingly agreeable, even when they send him on a doomed errand to smuggle money to a relative on the Communist side of the Berlin Wall. Alas, Lehmann’s best friend, sculptor and fellow bartender Karl Schmidt, has become mentally unglued (“We made a perfect team, like Bonnie and Clyde or Laurel and Hardy or Simon and Garfunkel or Sacco and Vanzetti”), but, after Karl smashes his artworks (“ ‘Deconstruction,’ said Karl, laughing happily”), it’s left to Lehmann to shepherd the man to a psychiatric hospital ward. Minutes after Herr Lehmann’s pleasantly hopeless 30th birthday, the Berlin Wall, a few miles away, comes down. But, for the Berliners of Herr Lehmann’s crowd, life will go on . . . and on.
Quietly funny and vaguely sad: an existential traipse implying that it’s those who have no history who make the world go ’round.Pub Date: July 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-09-944923-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Vintage UK/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2005
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
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
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BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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