Hardly a work of art, then, but a fine, feisty addition to the impudent and entertaining Albany Cycle.
“She named me after a housekeeper? Why? / Same reason she threw hard-boiled eggs at her poodle.”
If that sublimely loony exchange appeals to you, you’re going to like this seventh installment in Kennedy’s ongoing Albany Cycle (whose crown jewel is the Pulitzer Prize–winning Ironweed, 1983). The quotation refers to an embittered matron who’s suing for custody of the illegitimate son she gave away when he was an infant. This situation seems quite reasonable in a busy anecdotal melodrama that’s set in and around Albany in 1945, and features political infighting, murder for profit, corrupt cops and officeholders, convivial prostitutes, and the occasional ghost. Better still, it features adipose and sentimental Roscoe Conway, wounded WWI vet (a “heroic deserter”), number-two man in his city’s Democratic Party hierarchy, and longtime admirer of gorgeous Veronica Fitzgibbon, whose husband (and Roscoe’s boyhood pal) Elisha kills himself to avert a family scandal (or so it seems). Through the many ensuing ramifications, Kennedy sticks close to Roscoe’s boozy street-smart consciousness, as meetings with old friends and enemies (who are sometimes the same people) are juxtaposed with brief fantasy sequences and staggered flashbacks that reach as far back as the old pol’s boyhood days of breeding “fighting chickens” and doing favors for gentlemanly mobsters. “Legs” Diamond, FDR, and New York governor Al Smith drop in briefly, sharing the spotlight with such engaging fictional creations as thuggish powerbroker Patsy McCall, “peephole columnist” Roy Flinn, and sagacious whoremistress Hattie Wilson. Kennedy’s hit-and-run narrative precludes anything really resembling a plot (structure isn’t his strong point), but Roscoe dishes the dirt with agreeable energy, and it’s crammed with one-liners that the late George V. Higgins would, as they say, have killed for (e.g., “ . . . lies are my business, and without avarice we’d have chaos in City Hall”).
Hardly a work of art, then, but a fine, feisty addition to the impudent and entertaining Albany Cycle.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2002
ISBN: 0-670-03029-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
None
Tremendous in scope—tremendous in depth of penetration—and as different a Steinbeck as the Steinbeck of Burning Brightwas from the Steinbeck of The Grapes of Wrath.Here is no saga of the underprivileged—no drama of social significance. Tenderness, which some felt was inherent in everything Steinbeck wrote, is muted almost to the vanishing point in this story of conflict within character, impact of character on character, of circumstances on personalities, of the difficult acceptance of individual choice as against the dominance of inherited traits. The philosophy is intimately interwoven with the pace of story, as he follows-from New England to California over some fifty odd years-the two families which hold stage center. There are the Trasks, brothers in two generations, strangely linked, strangely at war the one with the other; there are the Hamiltons (John Steinbeck's own forebears), a unique Irish born couple, the man an odd lovable sort of genius who never capitalizes on his ideas for himself, the tiny wife, tart, cold-and revealing now and again unexpected gentleness of spirit, the burgeoning family, as varied a tribe as could be found. And- on the periphery but integral to the deepening philosophy which motivates the story, there is the wise Chinese servant scholar and gentleman, who submerges his own goals to identify himself wholly with the needs of the desolate Adam Trask, crushed by his soulless wife's desertion, and the twin boys, Cal, violent, moody, basically strong enough to be himself—and Aron, gentle, unwilling to face disagreeable facts, beloved by all who met him. In counterpoint, the story follows too the murky career of Adam's wife, Cathy—who came to him from a mysteriously clouded past, and returned to a role for which she was suited—as a costly whore, and later as Madame in Salinas most corrupt "house," where the perversions of sex ridden males were catered to—and cruelty capitalized upon.Shock techniques applied with rapier and not bludgeon will rule the book out for the tender-skinned. But John Steinbeck, the philosopher, dominates his material and brings it into sharply moral focus.
None NonePub Date: Sept. 19, 1952
ISBN: 0142004235
Page Count: 616
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1952
BOOK TO SCREEN
A thoroughly empathetic examination of the fragile human spirit, Backman’s latest will resonate a long time.
In Beartown, where the people are as "tough as the forest, as hard as the ice," the star player on the beloved hockey team is accused of rape, and the town turns upon itself.
Swedish novelist Backman’s (A Man Called Ove, 2014, etc.) story quickly becomes a rich exploration of the culture of hockey, a sport whose acolytes see it as a violent liturgy on ice. Beartown explodes after rape charges are brought against the talented Kevin, son of privilege and influence, who's nearly untouchable because of his transcendent talent. The victim is Maya, the teenage daughter of the hockey club’s much-admired general manager, Peter, another Beartown golden boy, a hockey star who made it to the NHL. Peter was lured home to bring winning hockey back to Beartown. Now, after years of despair, the local club is on the cusp of a championship, but not without Kevin. Backman is a masterful writer, his characters familiar yet distinct, flawed yet heroic. Despite his love for hockey, where fights are part of the game, Peter hates violence. Kira, his wife, is an attorney with an aggressive, take-no-prisoners demeanor. Minor characters include Sune, "the man who has been coach of Beartown's A-team since Peter was a boy," whom the sponsors now want fired. There are scenes that bring tears, scenes of gut-wrenching despair, and moments of sly humor: the club president’s table manners are so crude "you can’t help wondering if he’s actually misunderstood the whole concept of eating." Like Friday Night Lights, this is about more than youth sports; it's part coming-of-age novel, part study of moral failure, and finally a chronicle of groupthink in which an unlikely hero steps forward to save more than one person from self-destruction.
A thoroughly empathetic examination of the fragile human spirit, Backman’s latest will resonate a long time.Pub Date: April 25, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6076-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
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