A beautiful, tragic glimpse into isolation, family and coming of age.
An aging New Yorker reflects on his childhood growing up on a Canadian island in novelist Reeves’ (Bada Bing in Brooklyn, 2012, etc.) linked story collection.
Once a sparsely populated area given to wildlife, Manitoulin Island is now primarily a retreat for Midwestern tourists with little appreciation for its history. At least, that’s true according to Jim, a professor in Brooklyn who spent much of his childhood there. In the late 1950s, he and his parents moved to the island from Indiana in search of simplicity, renting out rooms in their cabin for cash. As an adult, Jim visits the island often, both in person and in memory, haunted by the joyful yet trying years he contended with his increasingly alcoholic father and aided his mother, who suffered from multiple sclerosis. But none of this is explained directly. Details are gradually revealed in nine candid stories, united by their lack of details (Jim is usually referred to only as “the man” or “professor”), the family’s golden retrievers, various objects (e.g., cigars and Kohl binoculars) and a structural formula that typically finds Jim in a present-day scenario conveniently similar to one from his boyhood. Warning a tourist about yellow jackets reminds him of when a customer entered a wasp-infested outhouse. Observing a potential suicide on the George Washington Bridge, he recalls helping his father retrieve a drowned corpse. In an uncharacteristic move, Jim unleashes snakes in a lodge as vindication against the owner, whose mother once stood his up at a lunch gathering. And in the pinnacle story, “Dire Straits,” young Jim secretly purchases a ferry ride to shorten a family trip that results in tragedy. Reeves delivers each tale in relentlessly spare prose that evokes Hemingway’s; often, however, he omits just enough detail to stir frustration. Likewise, sarcastic Jim is always wiser than those around him, and though he finds connections to strangers, he withholds information to avoid interaction. In “The Hoax,” for instance, Jim sips beer in a Manhattan bar where fellow drinkers ask whether he’s heard of their hometown, Muncie, Ind. “ ‘No,’ said the professor, whose parents graduated from Muncie Central High School.” And while Reeves proves himself adept at transitioning back and forth in time, the conceit becomes tiring and ostentatious. Still, his prose is sharp and subtle, his eye attuned to human frailty and offbeat humor.
A beautiful, tragic glimpse into isolation, family and coming of age.Pub Date: Feb. 17, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-9836865-1-4
Page Count: 132
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 20, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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