THE LAST DAYS OF PTOLEMY GREY

Name: THE LAST DAYS OF PTOLEMY GREY
Author: Walter Mosley
ISBN: 978-1-59448-772-9

by Walter Mosley ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 11, 2010

Borrowing from Faust, the Iliad and Gran Torino, Mosley (Known to Evil, 2010, etc.) unforgettably transforms Ptolemy’s...

bookshelf

An ancient man living in solitary squalor in Los Angeles is offered an experimental medicine that just might beat back his creeping dementia—and will almost certainly kill him in the process.

At 91, Ptolemy Grey has outlived everyone he ever cared for. His uncle and mentor, Coydog McCann, was lynched back in Mississippi when Li’l Pea was only a child; his much younger wife, Sensia Howard, had a fatal stroke 22 years ago; and as his story opens, he’s summoned to the side of his much-loved son Reggie, his last link with the outside world, killed in a drive-by shooting. Unable to get services from the landlord who’s frustrated that he can’t raise the rent and afraid to go out alone lest he run into Melinda Hogarth, the crazy addict who keeps mugging him, Ptolemy lives amid an unending flood of uncontrolled memories and associations that render his mind as unusable as his clogged toilet. But his life turns around when he meets Robyn Small at Reggie’s wake. An orphan taken in by Ptolemy’s niece Niecie, Robyn has already, at 17, lived through as tempestuous a life as Ptolemy. But she’s emerged from its vicissitudes clear-eyed, tough-minded and eager to help the old man who claims her as a daughter. She cleans and fumigates his reeking apartment, sets up a bank account for the cash he’s socked away and takes him to see Dr. Bryant Ruben, the satanic physician who offers Ptolemy a medical therapy unapproved by the FDA that may improve his memory and his cognition, but at a high price. Robyn is shocked and repelled, but Ptolemy, who’s named after Cleopatra’s father, is eager to get something like his old life back.

Borrowing from Faust, the Iliad and Gran Torino, Mosley (Known to Evil, 2010, etc.) unforgettably transforms Ptolemy’s cacophony of memories into a powerful symphony that makes him “into many men from out of all the lives he had lived through the decades.”

Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2010

ISBN: 978-1-59448-772-9

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Riverhead

Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2010

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
GRAY DAWN
by Walter Mosley

- BOOK REVIEW
BEEN WRONG SO LONG IT FEELS LIKE RIGHT
by Walter Mosley

- BOOK REVIEW
FAREWELL, AMETHYSTINE
by Walter Mosley

- BOOK TO SCREEN
‘Ptolemy Grey’: Samuel L. Jackson at His Finest

- BOOK TO SCREEN
Best of 2022: Our Favorite Adaptations

bookshelf

BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

bookshelf

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

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

TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

bookshelf

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.