The comedy and color are muted, though still unmistakably present, in a daring story that blends the contrasting extremes of...
Boyle's eighth novel reenters the risky territory of social concern and criticism that has proved a trap for his least characteristic, and weakest, fiction (East is East, 1990; The Tortilla Curtain, 1995).
In skillfully juxtaposed parallel narratives, reformed radical environmentalist Tyrone O'Shaughnessy Tierwater (the rhythm and ethnicity of whose name connote an authorial connection) speaks to us from the year 2025—alternating with the omniscient narrator who describes Ty's acts of ecoterrorism (mostly against California logging companies) as a member of Earth Forever! and their disastrous impact on his life and opinions. In the late 1980s, Ty, his militant wife and co-protestor/demonstrator Andrea, and their even more committed daughter Sierra ("so imbued with the principles of Deep Ecology she insisted on the ethical treatment not only of plants and animals, but even rocks and dirt") erected human barricades, disabled construction equipment, and embodied "statements," including a kind of Adam-and-Eve month in the woods and Sierra's encampment in a giant redwood tree, oblivious to both the machinations of loggers and her own safety. In 2025, Ty, now 75 and still at heart earth-friendly, manages a private menagerie owned by megamillionaire rock star Maclovio Pulchris—in a globally warmed world where entire countries have become swamps and deserts and continual flooding requires releasing animals from their cages: with predictable comic- horrible consequences. There's a lot to like in this bold accusatory book, because (as he failed to do in The Tortilla Curtain) Boyle locates the complex issue of exploiting people to protest the exploitation of nature in the vivid character of Ty, whose irascibility, genuine decency and courage, and sobered realization of the cost of their sacrifices ("There is nothing I want, except the world the way it was") maintain a firm grip on the reader's sympathies.
The comedy and color are muted, though still unmistakably present, in a daring story that blends the contrasting extremes of Boyle's energetic sensibility in a way that bodes well for his always interesting and highly readable fiction.Pub Date: Sept. 11, 2000
ISBN: 0-670-89177-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2000
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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