Poet Carpenter hits the ground running in his first novel with rich language and lofty ideals, but loses steam with a premise that becomes exhausted by the end. Penguin Solstice, a radical feminist freshman at Dartmouth, and three activist friends translate their passion for justice into arson when they torch the Beta Sig house in retaliation for a gang rape that took place there. Expelled from school, Penguin travels to Squid Harbor, Cape Cod, where her divorced father, a famous sculptor, and his 26-year-old protÇgÇe and new wife, Dorothy, are living in a seaside cabin. Unsure of her next move, Penguin accepts the invitation of long-time family friend and neighbor, distinguished Harvard professor Joshua Brand, to care for his dying lover while he's out of town. Responsibility has never before disturbed Penguin's cynical, cerebral life, but she rises to its challenge by tending well and becoming attached to her patient, Arnold Franchetti, a composer who is fighting to complete his last score before succumbing to AIDS. The plot conflict—and the obstacle to readers' appreciation of the novel- -involves the unquestioned assumption that nobody must know of Arnold's existence or disease. When proselytizing Dorothy discovers and reveals it, the community's fearful reaction (extreme even for a late '80s setting) strains the novel's credibility. Would nobody in a small town, even friends, know about Joshua's love life? Would bohemian artists be shocked and frightened by AIDS? Aside from this big wrinkle, the novel is intelligent and strong. Literary images and devices—the blood-carrying mosquitoes, the purple birthmark that gave Penguin her nickname, sheep—show their effectiveness with their seams, and the trials of our scrappy heroine transform her convincingly from a self-righteous student into a thoughtful adult. The vigor and insight of the poet's pen overcomes his sometimes overwrought material in a promising debut. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1994
ISBN: 1-57131-000-2
Page Count: 328
Publisher: Milkweed
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
However charily one should apply the word, a beautiful book, an unconditionally involving memoir for our time or any time.
Maya Angelou is a natural writer with an inordinate sense of life and she has written an exceptional autobiographical narrative which retrieves her first sixteen years from "the general darkness just beyond the great blinkers of childhood."
Her story is told in scenes, ineluctably moving scenes, from the time when she and her brother were sent by her fancy living parents to Stamps, Arkansas, and a grandmother who had the local Store. Displaced they were and "If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat." But alternating with all the pain and terror (her rape at the age of eight when in St. Louis With her mother) and humiliation (a brief spell in the kitchen of a white woman who refused to remember her name) and fear (of a lynching—and the time they buried afflicted Uncle Willie under a blanket of vegetables) as well as all the unanswered and unanswerable questions, there are affirmative memories and moments: her charming brother Bailey; her own "unshakable God"; a revival meeting in a tent; her 8th grade graduation; and at the end, when she's sixteen, the birth of a baby. Times When as she says "It seemed that the peace of a day's ending was an assurance that the covenant God made with children, Negroes and the crippled was still in effect."
However charily one should apply the word, a beautiful book, an unconditionally involving memoir for our time or any time.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1969
ISBN: 0375507892
Page Count: 235
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1969
SEEN & HEARD
IN THE NEWS
SEEN & HEARD
A powerful voice on behalf of young people who should not be stigmatized but need support from schools and communities to...
An unvarnished account of one woman's painful “journey from victim to survivor,” as she came to understand the “dynamics of commercial sexual exploitation, especially child sex trafficking.”
In this debut, Smith, a public advocate for trafficking victims, begins in 1992 with her own experience. At the age of 14, she was briefly a prostitute before being rescued by the police. Since she was manipulated rather than subjected to violence, she was shamed by the false belief that she had chosen to be a prostitute. Only in 2009, three years after her marriage, did she feel able to reveal her story and give testimony before Congress. She blames the media for objectifying sexuality and creating an environment in which an estimated 100,000 in the U.S. are victimized annually. Smith describes how one afternoon, she was walking through the mall when a young man approached her. They flirted briefly, and he slipped her his phone number, asking her to get in touch. She describes her vulnerability to his approach. She was socially insecure. Both of her parents were alcoholics, and before the age of 10, she had been repeatedly abused sexually by a cousin. In her eagerness to have a boyfriend, she responded to his come-on and agreed to a meeting. As it turned out, he was profiling her for a pimp, and it was the pimp who met her—accompanied by a prostitute, there to show her the ropes. Their approach was nonthreatening, and they suggested that, in the future, she might have a career in modeling. Many unhappy children, writes the author, “are lured into trusting their traffickers” due to their lack of self-esteem. In the aftermath of the experience, although she finished college and had a successful career, Smith struggled with depression and substance abuse.
A powerful voice on behalf of young people who should not be stigmatized but need support from schools and communities to protect them from predators.Pub Date: March 18, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-137-27873-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2014
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