This world-renowned, award-winning author has produced more than two dozen novels, including a major one, Bettany’s Book,...
Both the lure and the ordeal of the priestly life, as explored in gratifying detail and depth by the eminent Australian novelist and historian (Abraham Lincoln, p. 1591, etc.).
The conflicted protagonist is Father Frank Darragh, a recently ordained young Catholic priest serving in a suburb of Sydney during the early 1940s, when war in the Pacific Theater includes Japan’s takeover of the Malay Peninsula and increasingly threatening nearby presence. Father Frank, an imperfectly obedient “young Turk” to his worldly superior Monsignor Carolan, soon becomes involved with—and troubled by—a rich variety of errant parishioners: a guilty young bloke traumatized by his single sexual experience with a transvestite; a ménage including terminal TB patient Mrs. Flood, her passive husband, and fiery younger lover; an American soldier who seems prepared to buy absolution for himself and his several loved ones; and—crucially—beautiful Kate Heggarty, whose husband is a German POW and whose frank embrace of adultery triggers several tense conversations with Father Frank. The narrative in fact abounds with such conversations, as the hopeful novice intrudes himself into the case of an AWOL black soldier held in a military prison, and incurs suspicion when Kate Heggarty is found murdered and the priest’s “relationship” with her is revealed. The story is very neatly plotted, and Keneally handles with great skill Darragh’s climactic meeting with the guiltiest of his flock, just as Japanese submarines invade Sydney Harbor. Nevertheless, Office of Innocence succeeds best as a searching analysis of the religious life; it’s a richer, more mature counterpart to Keneally’s somewhat similar 1969 fiction, Three Cheers for the Paraclete.
This world-renowned, award-winning author has produced more than two dozen novels, including a major one, Bettany’s Book, that preceded this one—and has not yet appeared in the US. Why not?Pub Date: March 18, 2003
ISBN: 0-385-50763-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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