Fanciful trimmings can’t disguise Mullen’s failure to fully penetrate a vanished world.
Two brothers keep robbing banks after they’re dead in this turgid Depression-era novel from Mullen (The Last Town on Earth, 2006).
Jason Fireson and his younger brother Whit (aka the Firefly Brothers) come back to life in the police morgue in Points North, Ind. They gingerly examine their gunshot wounds—ugly, but they’ll heal, and they’re no longer bleeding. The Firesons will have two more resurrections before they finally die. What’s the point of these Twilight Zone episodes in an otherwise realistic novel? Near the end, the author offers an explanation rooted in family dynamics, but their real purpose is to vault the brothers into the exalted company of such legendary robbers as Dillinger. It doesn’t work. Jason and Whit remain run-of-the-mill lawbreakers, their glamour borrowed, their attributes secondhand, their resurrections attended by bathos; one accomplice, confronted by their revived corpses, says, “I need to go lie down.” They were raised, along with their law-abiding milquetoast of a brother, Weston, in the manufacturing town of Lincoln City, Ohio. Their highly ethical father owned a small grocery store and was outraged by Jason’s decision to work for bootleggers, a move that twice landed him in prison. Pop himself is jailed after allegedly murdering a business partner, another puzzle only solved at the end. The brothers’ final heists and three deaths occur during two weeks in August 1934. That’s a nice, compact time frame, sabotaged by frequent flashbacks, point-of-view switches and Mullen’s determination to cram in as much canned Depression background as he can. He regales us with breadlines, Hoovervilles, reverse evictions and those brutal marathon dances. There’s also a subplot involving the kidnapping of Jason’s moll, or rather super-moll, beautiful automotive heiress Darcy Windham. By the end we’re too exhausted to care who ratted out Jason, a betrayal that led to the shootings in Points North and the brothers’ hectic final days.
Fanciful trimmings can’t disguise Mullen’s failure to fully penetrate a vanished world.Pub Date: Jan. 26, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6753-4
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2009
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
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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