Wacky while paying close attention to storyline, making for a strange caper indeed.
From Kennedy (An Introduction to Fiction, 2014) comes a novel about life at a peculiar Catholic college in New Jersey.
Now that World War II has ended, thousands of former soldiers are able to attend college on the GI Bill. Looking to make the most of the situation, St. Cassian of Imola decides it will “become the largest Catholic college east of the Mississippi.” Filling faculty positions with displaced persons and Quonset huts with students, the college makes ambitious if hasty plans. Weathering the storm is one Father Douglas Knox, a priest with a knack for karate and a love of Gauloise cigarettes. He also coaches the basketball team despite death threats recommending he do otherwise. With many of the school’s dealings linked to mobster Ricky Peru, Knox has his suspicions about who might be behind it all. Meanwhile, a boy nicknamed Moon—“Somebody in high school said I looked like Moon Mullins in the funnypapers”—finds himself in love with his beautiful, sex-crazed biology teacher, Aisling Vastasi. Though he’s warned not to go near her, as she’s married to one of Peru’s lackeys, Moon can’t resist. With these and other equally colorful characters set to collide, possibilities for excitement abound. There’s plenty of sassy dialogue—as when Aisling informs her biology class, “I used to be a second lieutenant in the WAVES, so don’t think you can get away with any happy horseshit”—and randiness: “Scrotum Pohl lay naked on the bed, his six-foot-eight body rippling with muscle, skin shining with massage oil.” The wonky adventure is at its sharpest when following rough-and-tumble Father Knox, as if he’s traversing a comically scripted film noir. However, the book falls into stereotypes with much of the opposition. Ricky Peru owns not only a black Rolls Royce with vanity plates, but also the well-preserved “Pizza of Paramus,” a pie that has cheese melted into the shape of the Virgin Mary: “The Virgin had a pepperoni mouth.” While distracting, the clichés don’t derail the overall quirkiness of this raucous tale.
Wacky while paying close attention to storyline, making for a strange caper indeed.Pub Date: July 14, 2014
ISBN: 978-0692270738
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Curtis Brown Unlimited
Review Posted Online: April 8, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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