A tale that deals with a worthy subject, but without the gravity and depth to tackle it in any satisfying way.
Will romantic love keep a 23-year-old Peace Corps volunteer in a country where soldiers will beat him—or worse—for the slightest provocation? That’s the $64,000 question in this somewhat shallow treatment of Chilean life under Pinochet’s savage regime.
Harry Bayliss arrives in 1978 Chile armed for his ordeal with only fluent Spanish and a good batting average. The onetime minor-league player plans to while away a year in tropical climes, teaching baseball to underprivileged children. His naïve vision is shattered, however, during his first confrontation with soldiers. They spit on him and, when he objects, threaten to take him in for `interrogation.` Harry’s eyes open even further when he ventures into poverty-stricken neighborhoods and meets the grief-overwhelmed families of the Disappeared—revolutionaries who are arrested, never to be heard from again. `You have to be tough to live here,` Harry announces. Such trite proclamations plague Hazuka’s second novel (The Road to the Island, 1998). The author seems more intent on dictating the reader’s reaction to his scenes than on adding character depth. He further misses his opportunity for profundity when Harry falls in love with Marisol Huerta, a former wife of one of the Disappeared. True, this twist exposes Harry more deeply to the country’s inequities—he visits a mental asylum for subversives, and a friend is assassinated. But Hazuka’s refusal to sketch Marisol’s background—it’s too painful for her to talk about—robs the story of its more personal and affecting elements. Some sentiment is stirred, at least, when Harry’s firing from the Peace Corps forces him to decide whether love for Marisol makes it worth staying in a brutal country .
A tale that deals with a worthy subject, but without the gravity and depth to tackle it in any satisfying way.Pub Date: June 1, 2000
ISBN: 1-882593-31-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Bridge Works
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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