A charming, soulful entry into a popular (and often disappointing) genre.
It’s 1984, and Michael Hogan is embarking on the adventure of a lifetime, even if he doesn’t know it.
In Hughes’ (Searching for Paradise, 2015) novel, three friends spontaneously journey to London in search of video production jobs. After only one day of searching with no luck and getting chased out of a library, Mike, Declan, and Luke quickly drop that idea, choosing instead to “make a vacation” out of their troubled luck. The cast sustains this impulsive bent for the duration of the novel, much to the reader’s delight. Decky is the charmer of the group, with a winning, irresistible smile. Luke is a calmer, meditative sort. But Mike, who travels with much less money than his friends, has left America mainly to escape a messy breakup with his neglected girlfriend, Colette, and seems to worry constantly. His financial concerns and his emotional journey offer a welcome anchor to this whimsical coming-of-age–via-travel tale. The group spends a raucous night in London where they argue with a self-proclaimed communist and run from the law. They head to Amsterdam, where Mike butts heads with a snotty, rich college student named Blair, and they narrowly escape a life-threatening situation on their way to the red-light district. Decky leaves the group midway in search of his ancestral roots in Ireland, but Luke and Mike head to Oktoberfest for some sobering discussions of the Holocaust interspersed with scenes of congenial drunkenness. Hughes adds flavor with sketches of other travelers met along the way. Particularly striking is a white South African surfer who dismisses apartheid but reacts with deep feeling to a tour of the Dachau concentration camp. Mike finds himself alone, bouncing between familiar faces and new friends as he explores Greece and Turkey, suffering a particularly brutal ride through the Eastern bloc to arrive in Athens. Throughout it all, Hughes maintains a tension that transforms this meandering tale into one of complex depictions of human compassion.
A charming, soulful entry into a popular (and often disappointing) genre.Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-9772-0174-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Outskirts Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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