An imposing fictional portrayal of the Stalinist terror, set in 1937 in the eastern Russian republic of Kazakhstan (on the Chinese border) and featuring themes and characters from Dombrovsky's earlier novel, The Keeper of Antiquities (1969). That phrase in fact identifies the central character here, Georgi Zybin, an archaeologist who has the bad luck to supervise an expedition during which an ancient gold diadem is unearthed and stolen by workmen employed on the dig. Zybin is accused of the theft, and also other crimes against the state, and is imprisoned and subjected to a long process of interrogation that widens to include his former lover Polina, his colleague Kornilov (who will betray him), and Father Andrey Kutorga, an exiled priest who is writing a history of the trial and crucifixion of Christ. This big book (first published in 1978) succeeds brilliantly on several levels: As a nail-biting anatomy of the repetitive rigor of the imprisonment and interrogation process; as a series of incisive character portraits, not just of the embittered and defiant Zybin and his fellow victims (several of whom tell their stories in excruciating detail), but also of the zealous Soviet functionaries whose determination to emulate the ``show trials'' of supposed traitors currently taking place in Moscow is shown to be rooted in their own servility and insecurity. And, in a stunning parallel narrative, the career of Christ's judge Pontius Pilate is implicitly compared—in a number of impassioned conversations between Kornilov and Father Andrei—to the banality of evil (to borrow Hannah Arendt's resonant phrase) exhibited by those cogs in the Soviet machinery, struggling to express the will of their Beloved Leader Josef Stalin (who makes several vivid cameo appearances). Thickly textured, eloquently argued, as informative as it is dramatic: a superb novel that brings to our attention an important near-contemporary (Dombrovsky died in 1978) whose books belong on the same shelf with those of Bulgakov and Solzhenitsyn.
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 1-86-046053-4
Page Count: 544
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1996
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
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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