A smart, discerning but protracted tale about an extraordinary man’s unique layers of memories.
A young Pentagon employee with a remarkable memory gets caught up in the Cuban Missile Crisis, among other adventures, in this novel.
Indiana native Michael Edwards has a photographic memory on steroids. It’s called eidetic memory and it helps him get a Ph.D. by the age of 22 and learn three foreign languages. In 1962, he is working in the photography room at the Pentagon, analyzing shots of enemy territory taken by U2 spy planes. His early success at spotting missile launchers in Cuba lands him a three-day gig as a “Pathfinder,” and he is dropped off in Cuba posing as a peasant farmer to get a firsthand look at the sites. His powers of observation and recall are so astonishing that President John F. Kennedy himself wants Michael in the Secret Service. After that administration’s tragic end, a childhood friend talks him into working undercover for the FBI at Berkeley, spying on student activists. Michael convinces himself that his information will be useless and no lives will be ruined. But he sends a female friend and others to jail, leading to pangs of guilt. He needs to leave Berkeley and reinvent himself, a process he calls transubstantiation: “It gave me hope that despite this identity-less, hollow, black hole of regret that the whole Berkeley experience had sucked me into, maybe I could transubstantiate myself into a person that I could stomach.” An academic career follows, and marriage and fatherhood, but tragedy and wanderlust pull him overseas to Europe and back again. He traverses various life stages involving the dawn of the tech era and finds himself through a new love. Palmer’s (Two Cities, 2017, etc.) globe-hopping tale is written with a thirst for knowledge and a love of detail that make for an exciting read, especially because it’s about a character who is often on the forefront of new technology or fields. The overall point that people are not one thing but go through a variety of different incarnations is a strong one, especially because this sweeping story progresses through Michael’s retirement. But shifting between pensive and wild, the book is overwritten; a leaner, more concise style would have strengthened the skillful storytelling.
A smart, discerning but protracted tale about an extraordinary man’s unique layers of memories.Pub Date: March 15, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-68114-515-0
Page Count: 252
Publisher: Anaphora Literary Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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