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
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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