A collection that includes a baffling fantasia that mixes sexuality, dinosaurs, and a quasar.
A debut volume delivers a trio of irreverent short stories.
A small bar on Jefferson Avenue in New Orleans is the focal point of the main story in Uncle Mike’s collection of three sketches. At this bar, the longtime patrons spend their time swapping tales, ogling lovely barmaid Valerie, joking with drag queens, and speculating on the nature of the universe. Two such regulars, Al Token and Henry Schmitt, decide to attempt to confirm with experiments (conducted on rats they catch at the dump) a theory that sound waves from a quasar are responsible for “turning” so many of the bar’s new clients gay (at one point, a habitué asks, “It looks like this bar is becoming a gay bar. Why are there so many gay people these days?”). That sound doesn’t travel through space is never mentioned as an impediment to the theory. Al and Henry and their fellow customers theorize that this quasar may have made all the dinosaurs gay before they became extinct, and they don’t exempt one another from doubts —characters are suspected of being gay if they have flower gardens, for instance, and they’re flat-out assumed to be homosexual if they have the latest smartphones. The collection’s other tales, “To Be or Not To Be” and “Pilgrim’s Day,” are lighthearted trifles, but the title story is an odious piece. The author prefaces it with a warning: “If you are not gay and want to stay that way, read this book today”—leaving few doubts about his two main implications: that there’s something very wrong with being gay, and that this is a work intended for readers who share that belief. The first is of course untrue (a thing that shouldn’t need restating in 2017) and the second warrants serious reflection—who would find this schoolboy mockery even comprehensible (flower gardens?), much less amusing.
A collection that includes a baffling fantasia that mixes sexuality, dinosaurs, and a quasar.Pub Date: Dec. 9, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-63524-355-0
Page Count: -
Publisher: LitFire Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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