Serious, important political history narrated by Dame Barbara Cartland.
The honey-voiced prophet of the conservative revival (Spytime, 2000, etc.) runs his hands fondly and semifictionally through the mementos of the past half-century.
Those were the days, weren’t they? When it looked as though the New Dealers and their offspring had a death grip on the machinery of government. When the Rockefeller wing and the Eisenhower wing and the Scranton wing soared in collaborationist triumph with their Democratic birds of a feather on the thermals drifting up over the so-so-misguided capital. And everyone thought that was normal and desirable! When the fate of the great land rested in the hands of microscopic groups of right thinkers. When Ayn Rand was alive and still objectifying. When Robert Welch was just beginning to turn his attention from the family candy works to the invention of the John Birch Society. When the Young Americans for Freedom were driving on learners’ permits. What a great task lay ahead of those visionaries! Even in their wildest dreams could they have envisioned, say, Fox News? Perhaps only Miss Rand had had that kind of vision. She certainly looms large in this sentimental bit of fiction built on the framework of real-life rise of the Right. Woodroe Raynor is the trusty young Mormon on whom Buckley hangs his triumphal tale. During his missionary year in postwar Austria, young Woodroe discovers the evils of communism and the wonders of sex in one night across the last footbridge leading to Hungary. Looking for further education in both fields, the lad stumbles into the 1956 revolution, barely making it back to the West, taking a bullet in the thigh and a dagger in the heart when he discovers his girlfriend is in bed with the commies. Limping back to Princeton, Raynor goes on to become a pioneer staffer at the new John Birch Society, just misses another bullet fired by Lee Harvey Oswald, falls in love with one of Ayn Rand’s handmaidens, gets to know just about everyone who mattered on the Right, and finally comes around to the blue-blooded, temperate wisdom of the National Review.
Serious, important political history narrated by Dame Barbara Cartland.Pub Date: March 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-89526-138-3
Page Count: 344
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2003
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
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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