bookshelf

I’VE GOT A RIGHT TO SING THE BLUES

Name: I’VE GOT A RIGHT TO SING THE BLUES
Author: W. E. Smith
ISBN: 978-0-9984847-0-9

by W. E. Smith ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2017

A timely environmental tale with a strong cast.

bookshelf

Native Americans in Arizona oppose a mining operation in this ecological novel.

Tom Rogers, a semicommitted environmentalist, is the editor of the Halston Gazette in southern Arizona. Unfortunately the paper’s owner/publisher is Tom’s father, “the Rhino,” a domineering, self-made right-winger. (The Rhino bought the paper to give his floundering son some purpose.) Tom’s one reporter is Dilip Chakraborty, an Indian immigrant and a tenacious newshound. And Tom’s love interest is Jinny, a talented (and of course beautiful) artist of mixed Navajo and Tohono O’odham descent. Other characters drift in and out like static on a bad radio station. The setup is that an Australian concern wants to level a mountain sacred to the Tohono O’odham for open-pit copper mining. And the Native Americans are not alone in their opposition. Still, the fix seems to be in. That is until bulldog Dilip gets his teeth into it. Readers also have the love story of Tom and Jinny—Jinny’s ex-husband is a “skinwalker,” a shape-shifting medicine man—and a lot of helpful background in Southwestern history and geography. (There is a standoff with the ex-husband in Canyon de Chelly.) The book is narrated in retrospect by Tom from his cabin on the Mogollon Rim, where he has retreated to lick his wounds, which is a good delaying device for the story. Smith—who also writes under the name Moose Eliot (Heaven Help Us All, 2013, etc.)—sets his tale in an intriguing locale both geographically and culturally. He keeps the story moving, and the writing has its moments, though it can get precious (“volupt” for voluptuous?). But his love of the Southwestern landscape comes through. His vivid descriptions transcend tourism clichés (“We…looked into what seemed the basement of the world. Miniature-seeming stands of juniper and mesquite dotted the soft, tan earth of the Canyon’s broad floor….Embracing all, rising all around, towering sandstone cliffs ran from clay red to dark ochres; taller than skyscrapers, they were unreal in their lithic grandeur”). But given the nature of the story’s theme, nuance is not Smith’s strong suit. That is, the rants on both sides sometimes seem scripted and stilted. But that comes with the (ecological) territory. Ultimately, he succeeds in making his characters three-dimensional, not just cardboard cutouts. So there is much to recommend in these pages, a book that’s earnest without being dead earnest.

A timely environmental tale with a strong cast.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2017

ISBN: 978-0-9984847-0-9

Page Count: 330

Publisher: CreateSpace

Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2017

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

bookshelf

SUMMER ISLAND

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2001

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...

bookshelf

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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

bookshelf

LAST ORDERS

by Graham Swift ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 5, 1996

bookshelf

Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.