The questionable medical practice of German neurologist Dr. Oskar Vogt extends from the 1890's to WW II—and by chronicling those decades in his knowledgeable, droll, and spirited first novel, Spengler offers an entertainment following Europe's history from last century's end to the moment before Nazi defeat. Not a Freudian he, from the outset of his career Dr. Vogt believes genius is a physiological presence in the brain that can be discovered through dissection and analysis—and so his fin-de- siäcle lament may be understandable that ``at a time like ours...there is a general shortage of elite brains available for scientific research.'' To support himself in the highly competitive medical world, Vogt treats neurasthenia—particularly in well-off patients like Margarethe Krupp (of the great industrialist family), whose husband's consuming homosexuality threatens to bring about family scandal and confusion—and reveals Dr. Vogt's ability to survive and flourish by such means as may be available. The times move forward as Dr. Vogt attempts to do the same himself: the reader first glimpses Lenin at an intellectual gathering outside Geneva in 1905; WW I comes and goes (``The recent war was a disgrace as far as brains are concerned''); Bolshevism triumphs; and with the death of Lenin in 1924, it is the by-then-renowned Dr. Vogt who is called upon to make 30,000 microscopic slides from frontal slices of the great leader's brain (``I've never seen such collapsed convolutions'')—with political results that will later lead to richly absurd comedies of jealousy, suspicion, espionage, and paranoia as Russia and Germany draw apart in preparation for WW II, with the aging Dr. Vogt caught up—and dropped (``No, Vogt had really become superfluous'')—by ideological forces as absurd at bottom as his own scientific theories had ever been. If not always limpid in the reading, a brilliantly tapestried and deadpan look at a half-century possibly as hilarious as it was mad.
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-374-18502-6
Page Count: 332
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1993
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
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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