An arduous read, but well worth the effort.
A prizewinning 1989 novel exhaustively explores the intersecting lives of Israeli soldiers-to-be.
Narrator Melabbes describes their experiences in the early 1950s at Training Base 4, a unit to which draftees with “minor” physical ailments and disabilities are assigned. His promise to himself “to be a stranger everywhere, not to strike roots” is frustrated by the “infiltration” into his consciousness of his comrades’ personalities, goals, and fears. Virginal soccer star Micky has a heart murmur, and a stubborn resistance to new experience. Creepy, resentful Rahamim compulsively exhibits unsoldierly behavior that gets them all into trouble. Miller, a German Jew and concentration camp survivor, keeps to himself, and is subject to epileptic fits. The two most fully drawn characters, kibbutz veteran and model soldier Alon and sardonic, rebellious Avner (a near-dead-ringer for Heller’s Yossarian), embody the contrasting extremes of unquestioning devotion to duty and irascible mockery of it. Kenaz (Returning Lost Loves, 2001, etc.) reproduces the tedium and redundancy of military routine all too faithfully: Infiltration is much too long, and exceedingly slow-paced. There’s some variation, however, during sequences depicting soldiers on leave (where their problems with family and girlfriends too often mirror their miseries at Base 4), and in several efficiently detailed set pieces, including an in-barracks “investigation” when a trainee’s beloved guitar is smashed, an accident with a grenade that brings down on them the wrath of a sadistic drill sergeant (Melabbes’s former misfit schoolmate). There’s also a splendidly described simulated-combat exercise in the desert that ends with one unexpected death and sows the seeds of a subsequent, even more surprising one. And Kenaz tops it off with a bittersweet ending all the more reminiscent of (this novel’s partial counterpart and possible inspiration) Catch-22.
An arduous read, but well worth the effort.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2003
ISBN: 1-58915-205-8
Page Count: 600
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2003
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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