Tea and Tyranny: Still Shaggin' in Boston

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Tea and Tyranny: Still Shaggin' in Boston

Name: Tea and Tyranny: Still Shaggin' in Boston
Author: William E. Johnson
ISBN: 978-1500387624

by William E. Johnson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 13, 2014

An often fun, if overpopulated, novel featuring bawdy melodrama, derring-do and political intrigue.

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Johnson’s (The Seeds of Love...and War: Still Shaggin’ for a Shillin’, 2009, etc.) most recent historical novel views the American Revolution through the eyes of the Founding Fathers—after tankards of ale and trysts with waterfront doxies.

One of the more impressive and confounding aspects of this novel is the size and scope of its cast. The characters include such real-life luminaries as Samuel Adams, John Hancock and Paul Revere, as well as various fictional workingmen and -women of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, including Big Bessie Clump and Amanda Griffith (of the Bunch of Grapes Tavern and the Snug Harbor Tavern, respectively); candle maker Zeke Teezle; and Amos, an African-American barman. Some 25 characters populate the narrative, most driven by the pursuit of liberty and following the axiom “that men are driven to drink if they are mad, sad, happy or horny.” According to the novel’s opening lines, “the doctrines of liberty and tyranny, superstition and enlightenment, wealth and poverty were clashing.” The overarching plot, framed by the Boston Massacre (1770) and the Boston Tea Party (1773), focuses on the political and economic, as well as the libidinous, tensions of the time. Adams, Hancock and Revere frequent houses of ill repute, away from the prying eyes of Tory spies, as they hatch a plan to oust their Colonial oppressors and the administration of Lt. Gov. Thomas Hutchinson. One intriguing technique they employ is propaganda; for example, when Revere unveils his now-famous engraving of the Boston Massacre, Adams recommends adding “a few musket barrels sticking out of the second story windows” of the local Custom House; Hancock requests that a sign on that building be changed to read “Butcher’s Hall,” a move that another character says “guarantees a noose will be placed around the necks of those redcoats—and perhaps a customs officer for good measure.” However, Johnson’s female characters, and their overexposed décolletage, transform this story of the American Revolution into a Gothic tale reminiscent of a Hammer horror film, in which women with perky bosoms are paired off with bloodthirsty, lusty men. Ultimately, Johnson’s apparent effort to expose the differences between the classes largely consists of filles de joie conspiring to lure the men of Boston into the sack.

An often fun, if overpopulated, novel featuring bawdy melodrama, derring-do and political intrigue.

Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2014

ISBN: 978-1500387624

Page Count: 676

Publisher: CreateSpace

Review Posted Online: Nov. 20, 2014

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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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...

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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

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LAST ORDERS

by Graham Swift ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 5, 1996

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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.