by William Hanna ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 19, 2014
A deeply political novel that tackles the long history of struggle in Israel.
A debut work that dramatizes the state of Israel and the plight of the Palestinians.
Hanna’s complex, densely written novel puts a light layer of fiction over what’s essentially an extended history of the modern state of Israel and a condemnation of that country’s government. The book presents readers with characters such as Israeli Antiquities Authority archaeologist Michal Zeldin, who tries to stand against what he calls Israel’s “unethical use of archeology,” reiterating the novel’s frequent claims that Israel has no documented historical claim to any of the territory it occupies; and investigative journalist David Reisner, who’s looking into the titular Hiramic Brotherhood, a secret society within the ranks of Israel’s Masonic community. The Brotherhood seeks to illegally tunnel beneath East Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, in order to build a Third Temple on one of Islam’s holiest sites. Along the way, characters talk about the Illuminati and the Freemasons, and there are tantalizing feints at a thriller-style plot. As the novel goes on, Hanna also details the long, complicated history of the Zionist cause, especially its present form in the 20th century. He takes his readers through two world wars and many other national disruptions. But the book’s main emphasis is on facts, not fiction: Hanna is intent on laying out a case against Israel, against the powerful special interest lobby called the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and against a media which is “serving the interests of the Anglo-Zionist Political Corporate Military Industrial Empire.” Indeed, the book’s final 100 pages comprise detailed accounts of the region from 2009 to 2013. As a result, the thriller elements likely won’t be the reason why readers keep turning pages. They’ll more likely be interested in the book’s dissection of Israeli policies, and what the author sees as a continuous annulment of Palestinian civil rights. Some of the book’s contempt for current politicians and world leaders can be off-puttingly raw (such as a reference to “Barack ‘Uncle Tom’ Obama”). However, the bulk of the book makes a readable argument.
A deeply political novel that tackles the long history of struggle in Israel.Pub Date: May 19, 2014
ISBN: 978-1909425910
Page Count: 504
Publisher: Spiffing Covers
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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...
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
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by Graham Swift ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 5, 1996
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.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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