A gentle, intelligent exercise in nihilism: Life, Jelloun seems to say with a pained smile, is hardly worth discussing.
In this consideration of the meaning of friendship, desertion and lies become an expression of loyalty.
Mamed and Ali have been best friends since their school days in Tangiers. They discover sex together, in brothels and with their willing but necessarily circumspect peers—girls who cheerfully embrace sodomy as a means of preserving their virginity for marriage. Through aimlessness as much as conviction, they become involved in left-wing politics, and both are imprisoned. In prison, each man saves the other’s life. Although both marry women who are jealous of the friendship, it survives, remaining the main relationship in the men’s lives even after Mamed leaves Tangiers to take a long-term job in Stockholm. One day, without warning and for apparently fanciful reasons, Mamed turns on Ali, brutally accuses him of using the friendship to steal from Mamed’s family, and refuses to ever see or speak to him again. Ben Jelloun (Islam Explained, 2002, etc.) tells his story in three first-person narratives: The first is from the perspective of Ali, the abandoned friend; then Mamed tells the same history, exposing the reason for his rejection of Ali; finally, a mutual friend of both adds a postscript. This structure is employed to depict the delicate shades of difference between similar minds. The tone is placid, at times almost bored. The only characters of importance are the friends, and the book suggests that the ultimate significance of a life can be expressed in a single relationship. In making that relationship humdrum, passionless and lacking in substance, the author has produced a work that may be likened to a long, disappointed sigh.
A gentle, intelligent exercise in nihilism: Life, Jelloun seems to say with a pained smile, is hardly worth discussing.Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2006
ISBN: 1-59558-008-5
Page Count: 192
Publisher: The New Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2006
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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